Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Cirque des Carreaux - update #5

Quick post, before and after on Cirque!

Before the weekend:

And this morning!

I'm pretty much done with page 4 already, haha. Need to fill in that huge motif there near the center, then get the straggler bits of the page near the center of the bottom. From there, I still have a bit of page 2, so I'll work on that along with page 5.

Not quite halfway there yet, but very close! :)

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Cirque des Carreaux - update #4

Update time! Spent a couple of days on Cirque des Carreaux and it's looking great!

Before and after:



Unfortunately, I can't seem to get a good picture of the thread color, but trust me when I say it's beautiful in person. It's the recommended thread (Carrie's Creations in Epiphany) but I'm using the silk, and I suspect the model project for the photo was done in cotton, because my thread is a lot darker and richer than the cover photo. Which is a good thing, I love it!

Oh, and this is 40 count linen, so I'm only using one strand of thread, which works really nicely with vareigated threads. No worrying about the two threads ending up misaligned somehow. That always happens to me, they end up off a little bit as I work. Annoying. :p

Anyway, this is most of pages 1 and 2 of the pattern, with a bit of page 4 starting to appear near the bottom left. I'll probably continue working down page 4 next time. :)

Monday, June 19, 2017

Coffee Quaker - update #5 (finished!)

All done! I finished this up on Saturday, despite having a bit of a cold. :)



You'll have to pretend it's not crooked, haha.

By the time I got halfway through the pattern, I stopped using the "conversion" I'd written down (replacing each symbol with a similar color from my stash) and I started to wing it, choosing colors by eye when comparing to the cover photo. And also making sure there wasn't too much or too little of any one color, both overall and near each other. 

Still, the only major changes are making the beans and harvesting forks in the top right motif green (instead of yet another brown) and using darker browns in the starry motif in the middle of the right edge. Everything else is pretty close to what I'd chosen with a few tweaks to keep all the colors balanced as noted before. :)

So what's next? I've gone back to Cirque des Carreaux for now - no update pic, sorry! I think I'll make that my project for this week and see how well it goes. I'm tempted to go for a new start, but I've promised myself that I'll finish two projects for every one I start. Since I have a few "easy" projects on the go right now, I think I can stick to that for at least a little while!

And no, I haven't forgotten about the pile of fabric, but we've been decluttering the entire house and I'm super busy with prepping other stuff to sell, so... fabric has to wait a bit longer. :3

Friday, June 16, 2017

Coffee Quaker - update #4

As promised, I worked on Coffee Quaker all week and I think I'll continue through to the end at this point! This is quite a bit of progress, even for me... been having a rough week emotionally so I decided to stitch all day yesterday. Well, not ALL day, but you know what I mean!


And now it's back to stitching for me, because I'm trying to finish up this LP series I've been watching so I can... move on to watch more LPs. Haha. :p

Monday, June 12, 2017

Air - update #3

Hmm, I think this is update #3, since there's only four posts total and the last one was just a repeat of an older post, before this fell into UFO land.

Here was my starting point, or at least, the old picture. I actually had a bit more done when I pulled it out of the UFO bin, but I forgot to take a new starting photo. So pretend this is it. :p


I made a ton of progress this weekend! Two pics from the same day:



It doesn't look like a lot between the two pics, but I'm trying to fill in the confetti I missed near the top (see all those tiny white spots?), which doesn't look terribly impressive. When I get sick of that mess, I work on the blue background.

But she's been put away again for a bit, because I'm going to focus on Coffee Quaker during the week, since I really want to get that finished this month. :)

Thursday, June 08, 2017

Coffee Quaker - update #3

Once again, no posting, but I've been stitching! I've finished most of the bottom part of Coffee Quaker, except for the basket motif in the lower left, which his my next mini goal.


Looking really good for a finish this month!

I might stray for a little while, though. I joined the new HAED group on FB and I've been enjoying all the progress photos so much that I want to work on one of mine again. Not sure if anyone remembers, but back in March 2013 (eep), I started one titled Air ACEO by Sara Butcher.

Here's my oooooold progress photo and a sample of the original artwork:


I like her because she reminds me of Princess Serenity from Sailor Moon. :)

This is the full width of the design. It's actually quite small for a HAED, just four pages total if I remember correctly. I'm doing tent/continental stitch, two strands over one square on 25ct magic guide fabric. I'm not a big fan of the 25ct but back then that was the smallest available. It looks like there's now 28ct pregridded white fabric, so that might be a future option! Well, assuming I do any of the other charts I have... let's not forget about Transcendence. :3

Well, I'll finish up that basket motif on Coffee Quaker before I work on anything else. I really do want to get it finished this month!