Tomatoes finish & May/June goals

Finished up Tomatoes a few days ago and here it is!

I made a few tiny changes as always. First, the tomatoes all the way on the right side were all the same color, but I changed two of them to the lighter red for some more variety. And there was some sort of green thing under the tomato cage to the right of the house. I guess it was meant to be a topiary? It honestly looked like nothing. So I copied one of the flower pots with a young plant from the bottom middle to put under the tomato cage instead.

I also goofed and stitched the tomato juice bottle one stitch too far to the right, which threw off a lot of other things but shhh... You don't really notice it unless you look closely. Honestly the table and basket above the juice and jarred tomatoes looks better one stitch to the right. It was way too close to the tomato cage originally. So I fixed it lol. :3

And finally, the goals. For May, I had:

• add one band to Peacock Band Sampler
• finish Raven Queen's dress
• stitch half of Tomatoes
• probably no buy of any stitching stuff

I... actually don't remember for the first two. I didn't take a lot of pictures this month (so I can't check my progress) and I was distracted by a lot of negative real life things. I think I made a lot of progress on the band sampler but my sense of time has been a bit messed up. Tomatoes obviously got more than half done in May (though I finished up in the first few days of June), and I did buy a few things that I've had on my wishlist for a while. But everything in the past 2-3 weeks is really fuzzy...

Anyway, new goals.

• finish current band on Peacock Band Sampler
• visible progress on Raven Queen
• visible progress on a Chatelaine WIP
• probably no buy of any stitching stuff

I've had fun with the small projects and I'm feeling the itch to work on a Chatelaine again. Not sure which one but probably Chinese Garden Mandala as that's the closest to a finish. I think I'll keep it in my monthly goals for a while as it would be nice to actually finish this beast!

Tomatoes - update

Tomatoes are growing! :)

I'd say this is more than halfway done already! I cropped the picture to show about how big it will be once finished. Just one more tall motif on the right side and that will be the entire boundary of the pattern.

It's been a lot of fun with all the cute tomatoes and plants so far. My favorite part is the bottle with tomato juice and basil near the bottom center, but I'm also pretty fond of the cut in half tomatoes under the house too. And also the sliced yellow tomatoes at the top. It's all so cute. :)

I might try to finish this month but I won't push it too hard. Depends on how much time I have. :3 

Tomatoes - new start!

I finally got started on the companion piece to Cucumbers last week. Say hello to Tomatoes!

Not quite a quarter finished, but this section I'm working on defines the boundaries of the top left quarter of the design. It's very cute so far and an easy stitch. I've been distracted by a bunch of things recently but I think it's still possible to finish half of the pattern this month if I can focus up a bit. :)

And that's all for now! Hopefully I'll be back with an update soon. :3 

Cucumbers - finish!

It took a bit longer than I expected, but Harvest Season: Cucumbers is done! It's stitched on PTP Sterling Belfast, which is a greyish green color that's almost a perfect match for the recommended solid fabric. It's a little greener in real life vs here:

Okay, now that I look at this, I see that I missed a few stitches in the cucumber slices in the bottom right. Whoops. I've already taken this off the qsnaps so I'll have to fix it in hand. Should be easy enough.

Oh, and I made one kind of major change in the top left. There was a multicolored paisley-ish pattern up there that didn't seem related to cucumbers or pickles in any way. I changed that area to some white clouds adapted from other Owlforest designs. Sort of. About halfway through I decided to just wing it and I think it turned out okay. :3

Here's what the model looks like, just for comparison: 

And now a funny story. I ended up running out of the medium green color used for the leaves/stems of the plant on the right after stitching the largest leaf at the bottom. I have a few Owlforest kits from several years ago, before the bobbins were marked with color codes, and was frantically trying to find the same color in one of them. No luck, but then I remembered that I have a few Owlforest thread packs as well, so it was off to rob one of those.

Guess who had the thread pack for this design the entire time?

Well... I still have the thread pack for this design, minus one length of the medium green. Oh well, surely I have another pattern that uses similar colors. Like the matching Harvest Season: Tomatoes...

Cucumbers start & March/April goals

It's close enough to the end of the month that I think it's fine to post this already.

So first, I got a teeny start on "Harvest Season: Cucumber" by Owlforest. I'm stitching this on PTP Sterling, which I always expect to be grey like sterling silver, but it's a light green instead. Perfect for this design as the recommended fabric is almost the same color. And I'm using old/leftover threads from previous Owlforest thread packs so they're all a perfect match.

I've been feeling kind of sick recently so this is not good progress at all, but at least I started. Also the color correction on this isn't great but I think it will be better once I have more stitching done and can zoom out a bit. Or maybe the addition of the orange-red color will help balance it. Something like that!

And as for goals, here's what I had for March: 

• finish central band on Peacock Band Sampler - I forgot I'd already finished this!
• add one flower on Pennelate di Magia - change of plans, see below!
• finish(?) Raven Queen's skirt - DONE!
• start my next "small" - DONE!
• probably no buy of any stitching stuff - DONE!

So... Pennelate di Magia. I like the design but I cannot stand the fabric I chose. A while back I bought (aka wasted money on) some SMF evenweave from another stitcher who was destashing, even though I knew I wouldn't like it because it's 28ct. Even more so because it was the cheapest 28ct fabric possible, like jazlyn or something? Super stretchy but also very thick and with tight holes. Just awful. And unlike some other dyers where the fabric shrinks a bit when dyed, this fabric is solidly 28ct and my stitches all look like visually distinct Xs instead of making a cohesive image.

But I already did two flowers on it! So I tried my best to convince myself that I liked it buuuut... no. I can't. This fabric is terrible and the dye is so pale it's basically white anyway, and I loathe stitching on white. So this project is officially cancelled and I'm going to turn the two completed flowers into a needle book. I've already added the backstitch border around the flowers, I just need to do it around a blank portion with the same measurements and assemble it.

And now, new goals!

• add one band to Peacock Band Sampler (or at least half if it's a super huge band)
• finish Raven Queen's dress
• finish Cucumbers
• probably no buy of any stitching stuff

Same as last time, I'll no buy unless I need something for a current project. Some DMC is a bit low but I don't think any colors are in the actual "omg about to run out" zone yet. I do have my eye on a couple of indie patterns on Etsy and I might pick them up if the designers run a sale, but that's all.

Raven Queen update and Feb/Mar goals

First up, Raven Queen! I did a lot more of her skirt over the past week or so and had a nice time with it. Sometimes big blocks of color are what you need! Here's how she looks now.

I added one darker shade of blue to the skirt's edge in place of the grey that's been used in a few other smaller spots to show folds in the fabric. You can see that in the bottom right part of the blue trim. The grey area was too big and looked unnatural. It works well for the sharper folds on the left, but in this large area it didn't quite work. Luckily there was another blue in the same color family that works great. :) 

And now, goals! February went better than expected. 

• one section of Jessica stitches on Peacock Band Sampler - did the whole damn thing! :)
• one section of central band fills on Peacock Band Sampler - almost finished this too!
• add one flower on Pennelate di Magia - DONE!
• 100% no buy of any stitching stuff - DONE!

So for March...

• finish central band on Peacock Band Sampler
• add one flower on Pennelate di Magia
• finish(?) Raven Queen's skirt
• start my next "small"
• probably no buy of any stitching stuff

I say probably to the no buy because I have a few DMC colors that are running low and I'm not going to force a no buy when I need a basic supply to finish an active WIP. And Raven Queen's skirt might be a bit overly ambitious, but probably not. I'll push myself to get there and if I don't, that's okay. :)

My new start will be Harvest Season: Cucumbers by Owlforest. At 120x88 it's not really a small, but it's smaller than my usual nonsense. :3

Isn't that cute?? I just have the chart, not the kit, so I'll be grabbing fabric and threads from stash. I do have a good amount of Owlforest floss left over from previous thread packs, so I might have a few of the charted colors. If not, no worries, I definitely have something that will work!