Hopes and Dreams 2

I changed a few of the hearts from yesterday to more solid colors rather than the attempt at shading I was trying to do. Shading like I was trying to do would probably work with a smaller cut size than the #6's I am using on this. On the lettering I did use a smaller cut. I cut the strips into 2 strips for the lettering and the cream was all ready in a smaller cut size maybe a 4? I love the dark background so far. It's actually a dark blue and green Black Watch plaid. I think Gene is using something similar on one of his baskets, and I thought I'd give it a try. It may not be the same plaid as what he is using but it's working well on mine. I decided not to use the sky blues I was originally going to use as the inner background, and cream wasn't going to work and neither was gold or tan because I have gold in the stars, and will have tannish golds in the basket part. I'm really going to have to do some thinking on what the outer background is going to be.

The lettering is not easy to do. I almost gave up on doing it until I figured out how to make it work. Even tried yarn at one point and that didn't work out. The trick was finding a fabric that would stay together for hooking once I cut a #6 strip in half. I found some of my dark herringbone worked. I did each letter individually as I went upwards surrounding it with the cream before I did the next letter instead of doing the letters and then filling them in. Seemed to work better for me. I'm using a fine hook on this part rather than the medium one I'm using for everything else. The burlap seems to be doing okay hooking wise for this project. I don't know if the monk's or something else would have been better.

Time to go work on the ever ending laundry. Hope this is looking okay? I'll get more done on this today and this evening.