Finished! And the Mysteries of Life.

16.5" x 9.5" Punch needle embroidery. The pattern is Green Mountain Gala, ©2022 to the Old Tattered Flag. They offer both a pattern and a pre-planned kit, but I opted for just the pattern and used my own color plan with variegated sock yarns and lace weight yarns in the UltraPunch medium needle set on #2. With 2 painted wooden buttons added. Isn't the pattern elegant? Julie Thomas from OTF is a genius designer.

I've done a zillion punch needle embroideries and truly love this one.  Imagine my surprise when the foundation (an excellent quality weavers cloth from Old Tattered Flag) began to shred.  I had this happen on another piece years ago and ended up patching and re-punching the shredded part with no problem--but on this piece, for some reason, I couldn't get the patch to hold and tried at least 6 different methods to re-punch with no luck.  In the end I sewed on the 2 wooden buttons at the bottom of the piece to hide the shredded foundation.  The only other option was to throw the piece out.  Wow.

What a puzzle!  All the rest of the piece went just fine.  I do NOT attribute this to Old Tattered Flag's foundation as all their material is superb quality.  And it only "went wrong" in those 2 small areas.  I suspect that the yarn I was using--which worked fine everywhere else in the piece--might have had a thickness change at that point and caught in the needle.  But I'll never know.  One of life's mysteries.