Quatrain

I worked on this on and off for quite a while - probably around 2 year.  The pattern is Quatrain designed by Frivole.  When I first started seeing the design pop up on various blogs, the square motif immediately caught my eye.  At about the same time I bought this ball of Lisbeth thread to try out.

The square motifs are bit more fiddly to make than I had bargained!  I decided to make each square in two rounds since I tend to not wind my shuttles CTM. Initially I had planned on making only a square of 9 motifs, but I realized I might as well make it bigger and use some more thread since I don't see myself using this thread ever again.  The 3 x 3 square grew into a 3 x 4 rectangle and then a 4 x 4 square.  I had toyed with the idea of making it even larger (4 x 5 or 5 x 5), but decided enough was enough.  Last thing I really wanted was to end up one motif short of a row...  The funny thing is that towards the end, although I still made each motif in two rounds, I did wind the shuttles CTM, since I think that resulted in a slightly neater second round.

I am fairly certain the thread is size 20 and the color is "mountain breeze".  Although I like most of the colors in the colorway individually, I am not crazy about the combination.  On a side note, mountain breezes are not the first thing I think of when I see these colors...  I do like how the colors pooled as I was joining the motifs.  After seeing how the colors tend to pool, it only took minimal planning to keep it going.  Anyone that has read my blog before can probably guess that I did not enjoy working with the size 20 thread.  Maybe in size 80 it would have been more enjoyable and I would have kept on going.

It has been a few weeks (months?) since I finished the last square so I can now look at this completed item more objectively.  It's not as garish as I first thought, but I still have no plans to pick it up again and make it bigger.  Overall, I think this would have looked nicer if I had made the centers of each motif a single color (the dark brown would probably have worked well) and only used the "mountain breeze" color for the outer round.

Overall the piece is OK.  I do still like the pattern and I am glad I tried it out.  I also suspect that after putting this aside for a few more months, the finished piece will grow on me some more:)  One thing I do find kind of funny is that I have plenty of patience for working on large pieces like doilies that are built row by row, but I have much, much less patience for making many motifs.

Made with Lisbeth size 20 (?) in "mountain breeze".