Star of Skyros in a Teal/Turquoise Colorway

I've had this in my queue for a little while and loved the design but the colors in the kit didn't quite fit in anywhere in my home. The Man picked a skein of floss out of my collection and declared it to be the perfect color. I elected to use the gray that came with the kit (DMC 317) and add his teal (DMC3809). To my eye, these were a little too close in value and I was worried the design would disappear and look muddy. So I added the turquoise color (DMC 959).

Here's the result, along with The Man's favorite mermaid dish:

I can just see him munching his favorite dinner and all of the sauce drippings that will result. But use your best stuff every day!

Here's a bare naked shot of the front of the finished work:

You can see a couple of visible fold lines that didn't come out in the first washing. Since I'm confident this will need washing on a regular basis, these will likely relax over time. If not, anyone rude enough to question this will just be told this is an ancient family heirloom that lay folded in a chest for many years until it was discovered and brought out into the daylight. That's a good fib, no?

Here's a close up of the finish. More on that in a little bit:

As you can see, there is a very tiny hem, not quite 3/8". I would not recommend doing this. Ever. Unfortunately, I made some sort of boo boo when calculating where to begin stitching and wound up with an edge that was much too close for comfort and didn't realize it until I was completely done stitching. I literally had to unpick the serging to use that bit in the hem. Imagine my swear box now - rich with quarters. I found my note of calculations and they were actually correct. But my placement was off. By nearly an inch. Ugh.

If you look carefully at the back, the corners aren't exactly beautiful, but they're secure. Imagine trying to weave little nibs of thread back together and make an origami crane from the fan of frustration that resulted. I had to take it slow, get up when I got frustrated, and keep telling myself that this lesson in humility was somehow what I must have needed. And any fantasies I had about making a drawn thread masterpiece hem would just have to wait.

Anyhow, the piece survived washing like a champ and the hem is really secure. I still aspire to be a hotshot hemmer, but that isn't likely to happen without a few more lessons in humility and patience and a few more coins in the swear box.