Blackwork Bookmark Completed

The Blackwork bookmark is finished!  Monday evening found me stitching the final stitch.  I have about 9-10 hours of work into it.  Once the pattern was stitched onto the top half of the bookmark, I no longer needed to follow the book's pattern and I cruised along much faster.

The diamond on the left is an example of the Holbein stitch that is suppose to be used when stitching Blackwork.  Sometimes I just couldn't make it work and did a lot of back stitching.  Therefore, the backside of the project looks a little messy, but I don't mind.

With the Holbein stitch you stitch one direction skipping every other stitch, then turn around and stitch the stitches that you skipped.  This seems like it would be fairly easy to accomplish, but I just can't seem to get the hang of it yet especially on the more "organic" and detailed patterns.  The diamond outline was easy though haha!

Here is a photo of the whole project. The thread cutter is another Christmas gift from DH.  It is so handy!  Unfortunately, I don't have a long enough chain for it yet, so I improvised with a bit of floss.

Here is the project completed! Yea!

I realize that it's a bit off-center.  I am going to cut along the left side to center it and trim the top and bottom as well.  Am thinking about finishing off the edges somehow, but will have to read-up on how to do so.

That's all for today, tune in tomorrow to see some new vintage goodies!
Until then, have a happy stitching day!