After struggling mightily last night, I realized that I needed way more safety pins to keep the woven cloth strips from shifting while I stitched.
I also realized that stitching on either side of the strip borders wasn't turning out the way I wanted. Fortunately, I resisted the urge to tear last night's work out and start over. Instead, I just tried something else ...
It's a subtle difference that will result in half the stitching ... and with a bit of practice, I'm hoping the intersections will become more recognizable cross stitches.
Finally, for all you thread-nesters out there, here's my latest attempt at organizing my floss. I have to confess that I've always pushed the limits on thread length (30" on average), but I cut everything in half and secured it all with a bit of considered weave. So far, I haven't had to untangle a single thread knot.
And while I don't think I'll ever be happy about having to re-thread my needle more often, I do think the shorter thread lengths will encourage more color changes as I work. At least that's what I'm telling myself ...
