Filling in....

This morning Ann had a question about filling in motifs. Filling is for me is like rubbing your tummy and patting your head at the same time. I worry so much about the eveness of my stitches that I forget about the contours and directions of the shapes... and pretty soon I'm crooked and unevern. I don't know how others have solved the problem but I stitch a grid on the shape in question... with the grid in place, I can focus on the stitches and the shapes take care of themselves....

If your look closely at the bunny on the far left you can see the grid stitched in on his hindquarters. On the bunnies I filled in with a stem stitch rather than a satin stitch. I used different colors of thread at once. But on the doves you can envsion where I had stitched my grid before filling in with the satin stitches.. You can achieve an entirely different look on the dove by intermeshing the satin stitches....

On some things I use both a stem stitch and a satin stich like this dove...The head and chest were a stem stitch and the wing and tail were a soft, feathery satin stitch..... Both fill in nicely but give an entirely different look.