The Crafty Writer

Posts Tagged ‘Fairy Tales’

Spring is here

I’ve been enjoying catching up on Fairy Tales this week I finished page 4 and got onto page 5 which means I’m now about 45% of the way through.  There’s a lot more of her hair on this page though so it’s lots of changes of dark browns and it can be a bit more difficult to see the difference between them all.  Parking and working in columns really makes a difference for me.  But I did forget to park the colours in the next pages and finished them off instead there isn’t so many colour changes so it shouldn’t take too long to get them all started again.

I’ve treated myself to some bars for my millenium frame so I can swap this piece onto them.  I really like the tension I can get with this frame it holds the fabric nice and taught.

I used a different camera to take this picture and found some pictures I took a few weeks ago, it had been a lovely sunny day  before it began to rain so there was a beautiful rainbow that just got brighter and brighter.  Luckily I had a filter for the camera so I was able to get a nice picture it really makes me think of spring when I see rainbows.

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.

New project

I started this one back in early December after my last finish.  The design is called Fairy Tales and is a freebie from Heaven and Earth Designs, just a pdf download from their website

I have attempted one in the past but I chose to stitch with one strand over one on 25ct linen fabric and it really wasn’t working; but I’m always looking at the website and getting tempted to try again so I thought I would do this quick stitch design.  This time I decided to go with evenweave and two strands of thread, after a little while I was struggling to get the needle through so I decided to change to tent stitch (half cross).  There was no way I was going to unpick the full stitches that I had already done; they’re only in the corner so it doesn’t notice too much.  I’ve also done some token gridding on this piece, it isn’t something I usually do, I’ve marked out the outline of the pages of the pattern using some nylon thread which can be pulled out easily once the stitching is done.  It’s a useful way of knowing where you are and allows you to start anywhere you want my first page is the top left corner.  I’m really enjoying this at the moment so The Enchanter has once again taken a back seat all the stitching is done on that one so I just have to do the backstitch and the beading I think I shall see if I can get it done before new year.