Night - finish!

I thought the day would never come. Night was my first large WIP back when I was in high school and it is now... a number of years later. Heh.

This isn't the original one from back in the day - that one was started on fabric that was too small and I discarded it ages ago. This one was started around October 2017, put aside for a long time, then restarted (like completely restarted, ripping out all of 2017's stitching) in February 2020. So... a bit less than four years to finish, haha. Listen, I finished like 50 other projects (not an exaggeration!) in those four years, so I think I did pretty well. :p

Anyway, less blabbing, more pictures, starting with an awful overall pic:

The colors are better in all the closeups.

Tried to get an angled picture to show the blending filament but I don't think it shows up well. I didn't blend it with the DMC, but topstitched it at the end as a half stitch over top of the completed crosses. That keeps it from tangling weirdly and also helps keep all the sparkle on top where you can see it!

I used rose gold size 15 beads instead of the recommended yellow size 11 MH beads for a more delicate look. All but one of the yellow-tipped pink flowers had beads charted around them, so I added beads around the one that didn't to make it match the rest.

I freaking LOVE the colors in the dress. Kind of wish the backstitch on the cream flowers was just a bit darker to match more with the contrast of the pink flower backstitch.

I redid all the satin stitch blocks in all four corners (and some of the eyelets I messed up while taking them out) but I'm still not happy with them. I'll just have to live with it.

 

Barf.

 

Also barf, this really out of place angular leaf among all the natural-looking ones.

By the time I realized how weird it looked, I was in too deep to change it. I mean, I could always go back and change it later, we all know this won't be framed any time soon...

 

I should probably change everything that's bugging me before I put away all my leftover threads... 

 

But this is definitely going in the finish pile for now and I'm taking a well deserved break from blended threads, double highlighting (yellow to mark what needs doing, then blue once it's done to turn it green), fighting with FOUR thread cards that love to tangle, etc etc. Back to something EASY!

For at least a couple of days, anyway. :p

Night - so close!

Cross stitching is done and the end is in sight!

Well, sort of. I didn't do any of the blending filament yet, but I like to stitch that on top of the completed crosses instead of blending it in with them. More sparkle that way. :) I may also redo some of the satin stitch blocks because the eyelets pulled them out of square a bit. It's not super obvious from the picture but it's obvious (to me!) in real life and I don't think I can live with it.

The joys of perfectionism. :p

A couple of closer shots:

Model photos do NOT do this pattern justice. Look how pretty the colors are! All the model photos are dark and skewed toward yellows, but the real thing has such a pretty blue border and lots of soft colors in the dress. Even the grass and flowers look so much nicer.

These pictures are a couple days old... I'm already done with backstitching the dress and about half of the grass. Next post on this one will be a finish! :)

Peach Cranes progress

It's time to put Peach Cranes away for a bit, so I thought I'd make a progress post! I worked on this from October 4 to 23, so almost three weeks total. Unfortunately it's moved up the qsnap so I can't show a full picture, but this is how far I got overall:

Once I finish the flowers on the left side (mirror image of the right side), this will be 3/4 done. The last page at the bottom is pretty simple stitching, so the next time this comes out, it will be finish time!

Speaking of finishes, I've switched back to Night again and will be pushing for a finish on that. I only have a little bit of the border and then all the grass at the bottom of the main design... and then a billion backstitches. So we'll see. :p

plans are always changing

So I posted about goals for the rest of the year back in August and of course everything went out the window once I picked up Night again. :) I would still like to get Mushroom & Fern done this year, which means I need to put that bad boy back onto the qsnaps. I think Night will be a finish this year, while Dragons of Sumatra will have to wait a bit longer.

And of course I started something new. :p

This is Peach Cranes by Owlforest Embroidery:

It was one of those situations where I saw it and immediately HAD to have it. The closeups of the Bargello style mountains at the top completely destroyed me, haha. There was a bit of a wait because I ordered the thread pack (and the thread packs for like ten other patterns lalala) and it took an eternity to arrive, but once it got here I started right away.

It took an afternoon of pawing through my fabric box to pick a color, but I finally settled on A Very Peri Winter from Fiberlicious, which I had received only a few days before! I guess it was meant to be.

The colors are a little off, as always. This looks amazing in real life and awful here! The fabric is more blue and a bit brighter, and the thread that looks orange is more of a deep salmon pink. Or peachy pink, since the design is of peach blossoms. :3

This was the break my brain needed after too much Night! Though now that I'm rested up a bit mentally, I'm wanting to get back to Night again, so I'll probably pick that back up when I get tired of this one!

finish triplets

Because I am absolutely incapable of being chill about anything, my little break to work on smalls ended up with three days of finishes in a row.

First was Forest Song by Elizabeth's Designs, started September 27 and finished on the 29th. It's stitched in HDF silks from my stash that were close enough to the model picture. Actually, the thread for the leaves is very different, but I like my choice more. :3

Then I moved on to a cute leaflet of smalls, Button Up Birdies 8 by Victoria Sampler. I have a number of their charts but this is the first I've stitched! These were small and simple, each taking only one day of stitching to fully complete. Here's Oriole:

And Barn Swallow:

Again, stitched with colors and beads from stash that were a good enough match to the cover photo. I think the white flower beads on the barn swallow are especially cute!

I have two more leaflets in this series (so four more birds total) but those will have to wait for another time. After looking carefully at the tiny sample pictures, I realized that the branches at the top of EVERY pattern in this series are exactly the same, just with different leaves or flowers. And they're all pretty hard to stitch because there's nothing to anchor threads to when finishing off, except by weaving and winding around the backstitches many times and hoping that will be enough.

Still, I really like these little birds and I know I'll enjoy the rest when I get to them. The fabric I used is big enough for all six with plenty of room to cut out and make into ornaments as suggested on the cover:

 

 

Super cute! I'll be making them exactly as shown.

 

Still not ready to go back to a big project, but I haven't picked my next start yet. Soon, though!

good night to Night :)

I've been working on Night for about a month now, and it's time for a little break! I thought I might press on until it's done, but I dug through my stash last night and realized I need to stitch something small and easy for a little while before going for the big finish.

Current progress:

Compare to almost exactly one month ago:

 Amazing, isn't it? Kind of hard to believe even though I'm the one who did it!

yes, it's Night again

Another week, another progress pic. :)

So... yeah, lots more progress. I need to take this off the qsnap and extend the long sides a bit as it's just a little too close for comfort on the bottom. And it's starting to get skewed from too much handling, so it would need to come off for realignment anyway.

Not much to say except I'm going to keep at it! Maybe this will be a surprise finish soon?