Finally, the long wait is over! Just received my copy of The World of Cross Stitching this morning, and Part 1 of the Moon Hare is in it - yay! I`m ecstatic!
I stitched this in February and March - the magazine says it takes approx. 15 weeks, which is roughly correct if you only have a couple of hours a day to stitch. It took me 252 hours to complete it, and towards the end, with the deadline looming, I had to pull some all-nighters, but it was all worth it and anyway, I caught up with my sleep within days. ;)
This was the first HAED (Heaven and Earth Designs) chart I`ve ever attempted - remember The Starry Night I`d bought about 2-3 years ago? I`ve always loved that Van Gogh painting and in my enthusiasm, I even got the fabric, the colours of thread I`d need... and then I lost my courage. To start with, I even got stumped as to how to organise the 49 different shades - the largest number I`d seen in a design thus far, magazine charts usually use a lot less. And the sheer size of the fabric, I mean, how am I supposed to hold that kingsize sheet in my hand, as I don`t use a frame or even a hoop... So, in the end, poor Vincent ended up in the drawer under the bed.
And then this commission came along: 88 colours on a 22" by 18" piece of aida - nothing like jumping in straight at the deep end, right? And to my surprise, I found that I loved it: no matter how clumsy I felt first with all that extra fabby - I just rolled it up and pinned the top and bottom with two bulldog clips (then did the same on the right hand side too, only I stitched that half upside down):
Similarly, it didn`t matter how many shades of thread I had to juggle - although I quickly discarded the idea of the over-complicated system I`d worked out for Starry Night: it turned out that the easiest way to see through all 88 wee bags of thread is to simply stack them in a tray in numerical order. I also learnt that even if at first it seems a waste of time to mark the symbols that come next, it is something worth doing as it`ll save time in the long run - so I marked the symbols I was about to stitch with bright yellow, then with a darker colour as I completed them. Wanna see my psychedelic chart? :D
Similarly, it didn`t matter how many shades of thread I had to juggle - although I quickly discarded the idea of the over-complicated system I`d worked out for Starry Night: it turned out that the easiest way to see through all 88 wee bags of thread is to simply stack them in a tray in numerical order. I also learnt that even if at first it seems a waste of time to mark the symbols that come next, it is something worth doing as it`ll save time in the long run - so I marked the symbols I was about to stitch with bright yellow, then with a darker colour as I completed them. Wanna see my psychedelic chart? :D
I`m glad this hare came along because - I think I`m not exaggerating when I say this - it taught me not only some technical know-how about cross stitch but even some life lessons. I`m glad I took on a challenge that I was first weary of but eventually conquered, and the fact that I succeeded has given me the confidence to start my own HAED... although not just yet, because atm I`m stitching my own (HAED-style!) photo conversion, and I`m glad to say, I`m sailing through it! :D It`s going to be a Twelfth Night cushion cover, I`ll show you when it`s done - in the meantime, here`s Bunny Wabbit`s 252 hours summed up in a minute - enjoy! :)
