Blackwork

I've been stitching scissor fobs lately, for an exchange I'm in here. I belong to a couple of Yahoo groups, one of which I do swaps with regularly but this is the first thing I've done for a blog exchange. This isn't the fob I'm using for the exchange, I don't want anyone to see that until it is received by the person I was assigned. The three that I have made are done on linen evenweave fabric, two are blackwork stitching and one is canvas work. The blackwork ones turned out nice but the canvas work one didn't look so good because the linen was a bit slubby and the strands of thread tended to look a bit uneven in places. The method of sewing the back and front together was the same as in this tutorial, a very neat way of finishing this type of work.

This is the canvas-work fob, it is adapted from a free pattern - I had to leave off the border for two reasons, one, it made it too big to use as a scissor fob and the second reason was that I have trouble with counted work and kept going wrong!!! The butterfly is a fancy paper fastener, you can get some lovely ones for using in card making but I think they are also useful on stitching.