The Crafty Writer

Archive for March, 2010

Full Steam Ahead

So there isn’t much actual train to see yet apart from the lantern and a little blue bit in the corner near it but it feels like I’ve got lots done this week – 3200 stitches actually which is really speedy for me.  It means I’ve got about 8% of the picture done.  In pattern terms I’ve completed page one and I’ve started on page 10 which is the page immediately underneath which makes up the entire height of the picture.

The bottom part of the picture has all of the foreground elements so it’s nice to get some of those done on my way to the train.  I started parking now that it’s on a frame which could explain why it sped up so much.  The moon has a lot of colour changes in it and parking makes me work colours in the order they appear on the chart rather than spending an age working out which colour to do next.  You can just make out an eye on the moon, more features will appear in the next column.  Normally I’d be putting this one away for a couple of weeks but the change to my rotation means that I carry on with it next week too and being easter it will mean some extra hours available for stitching.

Rotation Changes

I’m nearly there with SunKissed now, about three quarters of the way through and heading up to the final sunflower head that fills the top right hand corner.  I might have got more done this week but I’ve been suffering with a cold so it has been difficult to concentrate.  I’m also struggling with the pattern which goes over two pages, for a start there’s no overlap so I have to count closely on both pages to make sure all the stitches line up.  It’s a magazine pattern and the symbols are rather small so they could get the design done on the two pages, and the chart uses symbols and colours.  The symbols are all different so there is no need for it to be coloured as well.  I expect that some people find it easier but I think I am so used to using black and white patterns that you usually get that I find the colours distracting rather than being a help.  I’m sure that it’s just more noticable now as I am getting closer to getting it finished and getting more frustrated that it isn’t stitching up quicker.

So I’m happy that I get to take a break from it for now.  I made a decision last week that I wanted to focus on Train of Dreams because I really enjoy stitching it and wanted to spend more time on it.  So to make sure I can do that I’ve tinkered with the rotation plan a little and will spend two weeks on the train and then one week on fairy tales before spending another two weeks on the train followed by a week on sun kissed.  I think it will give me enough of a break from sun kissed to enjoy getting back to it again and I think there’s only a couple more weeks to be spent on it .  Obviously I’m already planning on what to start next.

New frames and framing pictures

Some good news this week I finally framed Woodland Enchantress.  I found a place online which had just the type of frame I wanted which was a relief after the local framer I used closed down and relocated out of town.  I’ve framed my own work before so that isn’t so daunting for me and with the hard work of the frame made and the mount cut it’s just a matter of putting it all together. Grumpy Cat got shut out of the room as the picture was put inside the frame and then taken out again to remove the bit of fur that had still managed to find it’s way in.  Eventually the job was done and the finished picture finally hanging on my wall.

This week was also a week spent on Train of Dreams.  I’m having so much fun stitching this design but as the fabric is nearly 32 inches wide I had been stitching using q-snaps rather than the scroll frames I usually use.  But as a special treat and early birthday present I got a millenium frame from needleneeds, apart from being one of the few places where I could get a frame over 30 inches they also have stretcher side bars which are an excellent way to get the fabric tension just right.  They are also lovely and solid but you do need to use a stand of some sort because it would be too heavy to use any other way (the bars are 36 inches).  It took a little bit of getting used to but it does mean that I can now get back to stitching two-handed.  I could also think about parking on this one as well as Fairy Tales but I’m not so sure because I enjoy working on each individual element at a time and I don’t think the parking would really let me do that.

At first I didn’t think I was making much progress with the Train this week but I’ve done a lot more than I thought I had.  It’s so difficult to put it away at the end of it’s rotation but in a way I’m looking forward to spending some time back with the sunflowers next week.

Parking

Last week I was back on Fairy Tales and I decided to give parking a try after having read up on the subject and reached a point where I understood it.  There’s all sorts of ways of parking your sewing so it’s mostly a matter of finding what works for you.

Parking is leaving your thread still attached to your sewing and working with another colour.  The thread not being used is parked in the position where it will next be used.  So you’ll need to be sure of your counting (gridding helps a lot here) because in areas with lots of very similar looking colours it’s easy to get lost.  On the other hand in areas of large patches of confetti stitches where your colours are here and there it should save you fastening off the colour constantly.

I began parking by stitching each 10×10 block of stitches in a row across the page and parking the thread in the block underneath.  It felt a little cramped with all of those threads so I began working in columns down the page but still keeping each one 10 stitches across.  It was really quick to stitch the blocks which were mostly background and only had two or three colours.  Then I got onto the confetti heavy columns (you’ll see it as the lacing on her top) each 10×10 block felt like it had fifteen or so colour changes but I think it would have taken me even longer had I been constantly finishing off the thread and adding a new one.

To keep the threads clean while they’re not being used I’m putting them into little grip seal bags which should also prevent them tangling.  I haven’t had any problems with tangles and knots in fact I’ve had less knots during the course of the week than I normally do.  Perhaps that’s another advantage.

I think I shall give the experiment a little longer it speeds up my sewing because the decision of what colour to stitch is made for me and I can usually spend ages planning in advance what colours I want to stitch next.  I don’t think I shall use parking on the Train of Dreams though because I’m using q-snaps for that so the parked threads might get in my way too much.