Cross Stitch Card Shop 94

This will be such a flying visit that if you blink, you`ll miss me. I`m in the middle of another Maria Diaz design, a huge Paris scene (cca. 13x13", about 33000 stitches, tons of backstitch and 320 French knots), plus 6 Lesley Teare cards - all to be finished within the next 10 days so I`m stitching from dawn till dusk, with only the occasional tea break (on the upside, though, I`ve lost some of the Christmas blubber, yay!).

Anyhoo, as I`m slurping my tea just now, I thought I`d share some (rather creased!) piccies of the Mothers` Day cards that appear in this month`s (?) Card Shop - I haven`t seen the actual magazine yet but I know it`s in the shops... I think...?

*stares into middle distance with a confused expression, having no idea which day of the week this is supposed to be, then shrugs and, without even noticing, picks up needle to continue with the cobble stones*

Cross Stitch Collection 232

Apparently, publications are like buses too. This week another magazine is in the shops with my stuff in it; this is the project I`d been working on when I said I was stitching something so stunning, it`d take your breath away when you saw it. Well, unfortunately, I don`t think that`s likely to happen any more - not if you see it in the magazine where, in my humble opinion, it`s been treated rather poorly (it, or its designer, is not even listed among the tags of this issue if you go and check The Making Spot). I think the same thing`s happened as with my glorious pink cushion that ended up looking more like a pincushion in the magazine photos: the props, the angles, even the distance don`t seem to enhance the stitching and while I can understand the attempt at turning it into a tapestry, in keeping with the theme (it is a castle, after all), but I`m afraid they didn`t pull it off. Actually, `pull it off` probably popped in my head because it looks more like a bell pull, or maybe a very ornate tie that somebody left lying on an old briefcase.

***Added on 20 February, for comparison: here`s the original photo the magazine`s photographer took, before the captions were added; on this, the stitching looks a bit bigger and more impressive:

Courtesy of The Making Spot

Back to the original post :) ***
You wouldn`t tell it was an A4-size picture, would you? And yet, it`s a 30x20 cm piece of wall-to-wall stitching. Luckily, I have my progress pictures that will probably (hopefully!) give you a better idea of the detail that Maria Diaz put into this design. So here we go:

4 hours

12 hours

21 hours

31 hours

38 hours

47 hours

And, finally, after 70 hours (photographed on a cushion, hence the lumpiness,
but I didn`t have the heart to put it on the floor!)

Cross Stitch Gold 108

Before I forget: Happy New Year, everyone! It`s been so long since I last posted, we`ve started another year since then! Hope you all had a lovely holiday season.

During the past few hectic weeks I didn`t have the time to write, nor do I know exactly when this came out, although I should - after all, it`s made me a cover girl!! Yep, my LOVE cushion is on the cover of this issue - yay! My progress piccies for this one are more like `one letter at the time` and I didn`t even bother with the L; the sequence was perfect for me as I like to work from hardest bit to easiest, from biggest towards the smallest, and in this case that meant E - O - V, and, finally, L, being the smallest and least difficult of the four. This also meant that I could stitch from right to left, which was a bonus: since I hold the fabric in my left hand while stitching with my right, this way I didn`t have to crumple already stitched fabby for too long, which makes the ironing a doddle. So, without further ado, here are the pictures: