You know where this is going.
Four hours of effort got me from this point:
This is where we left things last time.
To this point:
And this is where they stand now.
I’m still amazed at how time-consuming this was.
If it had just been a matter of making stitches as fast as I could with an endless amount of thread on the needle it would have been a different story, but the more thread you have trailing off of the back of the needle the more knots and tangles you get. You end up having to perform a balancing act. If you have too much thread you’ll get knots and have to stop to untangle them. On the other hand, if you have too little thread you just have to stop more often to re-thread the needle.
Also, when making the pad stitches, you have to be careful to at least try to evenly distribute the “ease” (the extra slack in the felt cover piece) so that it will shrink evenly later on, so you can’t just go on autopilot. You need to pay attention to every stitch.
I could go on and on about this. I certainly had enough time to think about it.
Anyway, that’s all the pad stitching . . . for now. Yes, another step, later on, calls for more pad stitching, but it’ll be different . . .in that those pad stitches are actually much more challenging to execute.
However, I’m simply not going to think about that right now.
See you next week!