The Crafty Writer

Archive for January, 2010

Always looking forward

It’s been a tough week this week not only laid low by a cold but also very impatient to get started on Train of Dreams.  But I will not give in I must finish one of the current sewings before starting a new one.  That doesn’t mean that I can’t get everything together though and so I’ve made a list of fabric and extra threads that I need so that when I do finish one I’m ready to go on the next.

This week it was the turn of Fairy Tales on the rotation and I am now a quarter of the way through having completed page 3 of 12.  Page 3 was a small page and quicker to get done but this was mostly background and there’s only so many rows of the same colour I can do before getting bored.  So I broke it up with browsing on the internet, doing some writing and looking forward to next week when I pick up Sun Kissed again.  I have been thinking about adding some more gridding lines to this one to make it easier to count across to all the little individual stitches that are dotted about.  I think there should be time to get some in before the end of the evening.

Good Progress

Very often with sewing I have found that it’s difficult to tell how fast a picture is progressing.  Sometimes I can spend most of the day working on something and feel like I haven’t made any progress at all.  Other times I feel like I only have a moment here and there and as if by magic a large chunk of the picture appears under my fingers.

The last time I worked on the sunflowers picture, which I have checked and it’s called Sun Kissed, I had managed to complete the centre of the sunflower.  I picked it up again on Monday as part of the rotation and in the week I’ve managed to get lots done and that’s with time taken in the week to get some writing organised.

I really love the daisies in this picture, they really stand out against the dark background.  Sometimes when stitching light colours in bright areas the thread picks up fibres from the darker colours so I had to plan ahead and get the daisies stitched first before putting the reds, browns and oranges in around them.  There are more groups of daisies in the bottom portion of the picture so I’ll be doing the same then, I have to check my counting carefully but I’d like to keep the white and creams as fibre free as possible.

Back to Fairy Tales next week and I’m looking forward to getting back to it.

The trouble with plans

The trouble with plans is that they can be difficult to stick to.  This week’s rotation was Fairy Tales and I’ve completed page one and I’m about halfway through page two.

The trouble is that it’s now the end of the week and tomorrow it’s time to go back to the sunflowers but I really want to carry on with Fairy Tales.  But I’m going to swap, I want to do the sunflowers just as much and it will be good to get back to larger stitches.

I tried to park the threads, that is to leave the thread where it will next be used but I got a bit confused with the similar colours and it didn’t really work for me.  Instead I worked on doing the confetti stitches first and not worrying about trailing the thread along the back, when I went back and stitched the main colours all the trailing threads were secured safely and I didn’t have such a messy back where I had been fastening on and off the confetti stitches.

Rotations

Since starting on the detailed and time consuming Heaven and Earth Design picture I decided that I would allow myself to have two sewings in progress at a time to keep the enthusiasm going.  I got off to such a good start with Fairy Tales that I found I was spending most of my time on it, that isn’t a bad thing but I was worried that I would get fed up with it so I decided that I would try to work in rotations.  This is my first attempt at it really, I used to only have one picture on the go at a time and then it got to one large picture with a small one on standby for when I didn’t have a lot of time to settle down and stitch; now I have stepped it up to two large projects.

Each Monday I change what project I’m working on, this week has been spent on a sunflower design by Nel Whatmore which was printed in Cross Stitch Crazy magazine.  As soon as I saw this design I knew that I would have to stitch it, I really love the colours and the way it looks painted.  So far I’ve done a few petals of the sunflower and yesterday completed the centre of it, I can spend a little more time on it today and then tomorrow I’m back with Fairy Tales.

It feels a bit strange at first to swap between the projects week on week, what I’m hoping will happen is that as I near the end of each week I’ll be looking forward to working with different colours and different size stitches the following week.  Sunflowers is being stitched on 14 count aida whilst Fairy Tales is being done on 25 count evenweave, I think it’s been a little while since I’ve done any stitching on anything larger that 16 count so the stitches feel huge.  Once I’ve done a couple of months with this rotation I’ll think about how it’s getting on; if it’s working well I’ll leave it as is but if a week doesn’t feel long enough I’ll consider doing a two week rotation.

A good start to the year

It isn’t often that I start the new year by finishing a cross stitch but I managed it this year.  I have finally finished The Enchanter by Teresa Wentzler.

I say finally because I started it roughly 10 years ago, so long that I can’t remember when but I’m pretty sure I started it not long after it was released.  At first I think I set it aside for some reason or other and then mislaid the chart and the threads, once I had found them again I had gained grumpy cat and didn’t think that stitching was a good hobby to have with a cat.  Since then I’ve found out that the two can get along very well indeed – although grumpy cat gets grumpier when stitching is being done and he wants fussing – and I’ve been making up for lost time by doing lots of other kits and charts.  But all this time Enchanter has been there making me feel guilty for leaving him unfinished especially when there was only really the border to do.  So in November I got started again and finished the stitching just before christmas.  Then for Christmas I got a freedom frame and an aristo lapstand so in the days leading up to new year I was frantically backstitching and finally I attached the beads on New Years Day.  Next job it to take him to be framed, I think after all this time he doesn’t really deserve to languish on the waiting to be framed pile.