Muslin Is Not The New Linen

After visiting so many inspirational sites like  Feeling Stitchy  and Blooming Thread I decided it was time to try my hand at a larger embroidery project.

My MIL gave me some muslin she had laying around and I thought it would be good to practice on.  I found a design I liked online, modified it slightly and started stitching away. 

The pros of muslin: Ya can't beat the price for practicing and you can see through it well enough to trace the design right onto the fabric.   The cons of muslin: the thinness of it is only good for tracing, it doesn't stand up well to my embroidery.

I'm also having trouble keeping the fabric taut in the hoop; it tends to stretch as I go.  Which is totally bumming me out.

Here's the design... 

Notice how the fabric is a bit wavy where the flower buds are?  This was caused by my hands holding on to the fabric while making all those knots.  It may iron out, but I'm not sure.

I love, love, love the way the knots look. I mixed two different colors of green floss, which looks great on the photo close-up. I'm not sure it makes a noticeable difference from a normal distance though.

All in all I enjoyed the project thus far. I think I'm going to purchase a square of linen for this and begin again. The impetus for this is the very large white wall space that sits above my craft table and I'm thinking the linen would look much nicer framed than the muslin.

Feel free to share links to your latest project. :)