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 

Peacock Band Sampler - getting close!

It's been a while since I took a photo of Peacock Band Sampler. The last update was the center band and the narrow one just below it. Since then, I've added three more and started a fourth. :)

These have been relatively easy going, especially compared to the Jessica stitch nightmare on the top half. The wide blue band with the satin stitch hearts was a little boring, and I'm not sure if I want to add the little partial heart nubs at the corners. I did one at the bottom right corner of the band but I still don't know if I like it. There's still a parked thread in case I decide to do it. :)

The narrow band under that went fast, and then the wide green one took... a while. Too long, honestly, with just under 2/3 done when I sat down to stitch today. I was determined to power through and get it done, and it took about 2.5 hours, but it's done! I had to substitute a different thread for the specialty stitches because the two greens were impossible to tell apart. They worked better on the top half band where they were paired, probably because the specialty stitches were bigger/denser.

There's a little start on the next band from when my attention started to wander last week. Well, now I can give this new one my full attention instead of using it to avoid the wide one!

Only three bands left, including this barely started one! :3 

Raven Queen progress & Apr/May goals

Finally, an update on Raven Queen! I didn't quite finish the dress but I made some good progress and I'm happy with how she's coming along. :)

Showing off the black stitching first because it's easy to see exactly where I left off last time and how much of this dress is new since last time. 

 I wasn't able to completely fill in the top by the end of April but I made a good effort!

I also made good progress on Peacock Band Sampler but I can't find the pictures I took. Or maybe I didn't actually remember to take pictures? Not sure but I will show it next time. :)

April's goals were: 

• add one band to Peacock Band Sampler - DONE! (actually added two)
• finish Raven Queen's dress - not quite, but made good progress!
• finish Cucumbers - DONE!
• probably no buy of any stitching stuff - bought Tomatoes (Owlforest)

I thought I already had the Tomatoes pattern but alas, no. I bought it to go along with Cucumbers, and it uses the same fabric and threads so no additional expense beyond the cost of the chart. Less than $5 since I got it direct from their website - their Etsy shop is almost 2x the price!

So for May:

add one band to Peacock Band Sampler

finish Raven Queen's dress

stitch half of Tomatoes

probably no buy of any stitching stuff

Starting to feel a bit excited about nearing the end of Peacock Band Sampler! It's really beautiful in real life and everything feels like a breeze after the Jessica band, lol. Should be done soon!

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...