summer cottage, unicorn, sunflowers and more Rome

You wouldn`t believe the last 2-3 weeks I`ve had! 🙈 It all started so well: I dug out Rome and enthusiastically threw myself into stitching, but I also wanted to make the most of being temporarily commission-free, so I equally enthusiastically started working on projects around the house that I never have time for, from going through drawers and cupboards to painting the bathroom and the bedroom... and then, just when I had the bedroom half emptied, the front door blocked by big bags and boxes of stuff ready to take to the charity shops, my few hundred magazines neatly organised and two of the three bookcases taken out... I first had a sciatica flare-up (piriformis syndrome, to be precise) and I couldn`t move for days, then out of the blue, first I got the dreaded lurgy (not covid, the other one that`s like flu) and now my two boys are sick too. 😞 Luckily, though, I`m well enough now to look after them and just as well because the `holiday` is over, and I thought before I get too absorbed with work again, I`d better post here re. the most recent publications, the first of which is WOXS 322, with Susan Bates`s summer cottage on the cover:

This lovely colourful project took 75 hours, and after finishing the XS on Pattern Keeper...

... I added the backstitch detail - and just in case the difference doesn`t jump out at you from the first two pics, I add a photo of my paper chart that I marked with felt pens, I think the amount of backstitch shows up better on that.

Also out this week is issue 20 of XStitch Magazine, with this magnificent unicorn by Climbing Goat Designs that was a joy to stitch - I love the clever colour choices, the confetti sts blend so well that there`s more glimmer to this design than to many projects I`ve stitched where I had to add metallics for some extra sparkle.

Apart from not being able to sit in my craft chair for many days, then having a fever, and now having this weird side effect of the lurgy that makes my eyeballs ache (#WTF?!?), a lot less private stitching got done than I`d have liked - but to ease myself back into `stitchy mode` gently, I finished this little cover kit because I needed a needle case...

... and pre-lurgy, I also added more to Rome. I`m actually quite pleased with how it`s coming along, the Spanish Steps are almost completely finished now, and once page 10 in the bottom right is done, page 5 in the top right corner should be a doddle, just a few vertical lines, basically. Hopefully, I won`t have to wait too long before I can work on this again - here are a couple of pics of where I picked it up at the end of May and where I am just now, happy stitching, peeps! 😊

Rome update (mostly)

I`m tidying up my magazines and only just realised that last month I forgot to post about these wedding cards! 😳 Luckily, I have the time now to rectify the problem (hence the tidying of magazine shelves, etc. because I plan to repaint the bedroom). So:

These easy-to-personalise cards by Megan Caines of Meloca Designs were featured in issue 320 of The World of Cross Stitching, and I had great fun stitching them as they were just the right blend of get-on-with-it-quick-symmetrical (handy when time is of the essence!) and something-unique-to-this-particular-card-before-symmetry-gets-monotonous. 😊

So as I have mentioned, I`m trying to make the most of being between commissions at the moment, running around the house cleaning, painting, reorganising - but I also dug out some of my own projects that I hadn`t seen for months and months, e.g. this Autumn cottage by Carol Thornton from Gold 140:

My progress on this is frustratingly slow, not only because of work commitments but also because in my wisdom, I picked this pale yellow aida from my stash, and if you`d ever heard me moan about cardboard thick fabric that I have no choice but work on, you`d wonder why I put myself through this misery voluntarily, but waste not want not, amirite, and this freebie that came with a kit or a magazine was the perfect size for this project, so on I plod, I suppose... 🤷

However, just to give my poor hands a wee break, yesterday I also dug out my Rome stitching from under the bed - er, not that holding this rigid tube of linen is much easier after a while, but I desperately want to see some progress on this one too. I had to go back to a post in 2020 😲 to see where I last wrote about this Thea Gouverneur design - looks like the last time I took a photo, I`d just finished the first A3 page of 10:

This was in December 2020, and I must have picked it up at some point since then because I have some of the Spanish Steps done, so I`m just plodding on with those horizontal lines at the moment, hoping to reach the right edge of the design before I have to put this away again - I`m about to start Page 10 in the bottom right corner, I`m so excited! 😀

As I was reading this older post, I also realised that I`m mentioning there how I spent four days going through all the threads, matching them up to my DMC stash (in case I run out of a colour - I don`t like that kind of pressure when I`m stitching), but I never showed y`all the storage system I upgraded from 3 cushions to just one folder, and since I`m supposed to be giving some tips here 😉, I thought I`d share it with you, in case any of you finds it a handy idea.

So this was my original setup, something I just quickly came up with when I opened the kit because I wanted to start stitching straight away (er, and some think I have the patience of a saint?!? 😂). But I soon realised that not only did these 3 cushions take up a lot of space, there was also the danger of my needles with leftover threads disappearing into the cushion, so I needed another solution. Eventually, I ended up buying some of these numismatic sheets: there are various sizes of pockets, depending on what the coin collector wants to store/display in them; I chose the 12-pocket pages because these are small enough to store just a few lengths of threads but not too small so that my fingers would struggle to get the threads out (plus, the design uses 119 colours, so 10 pages worked out perfectly).

I decided that the easiest (for me) way to find a thread is to group the symbols by shape - I admit, this pic is not the best example, there are easier ones like squares or triangles... I guess this page is the `they have a dot somewhere in them` group 😂. Anyway, hope some of you will find this idea useful, thanks for visiting and happy stitching! 

Forever Friends, more Rome and Van Gogh, snowman on a box and loads of Disney

I don`t even dare look at the date of my last post 🙈 Although if I go by WOXS time, it`s only been one issue... but by Disney time, it`s been 4 or 5 or 6... meh, anyway, here I am again! 😁

So after some delays this month, issue 302 of The World of Cross Stitching is in the UK shops now, and the cover kit is this cute Forever Friends teddy with his little heart: 🥰

My mum says he should have pulled that scarf up a bit to cover his nose 🤣 - I dunno, this seems to be how the majority of people I see in the shops wear their masks, Tesco`s full of these Poirot wannabees in their moustache protectors 😂 Anyway, talking of facial hair: I`ve stitched myself a little Van Gogh portrait to go with my collection:

The chart is from Artecy, it`s part of a Van Gogh sampler, which I might sew one day as a whole OR use the individual smaller designs for mini pics like this (I have more of these wee canvas + easel combos). I am also the proud owner of several of these stitchable trinket boxes (because I kept ordering the wrong size 🤦‍♀️) but eventually, I found the right one for this snowman design by Durene Jones:

I already have another design picked for one of the larger boxes, it`s a tiger head and will look awesome, now I just have to squeeze it in between all the other projects I`ve started or am about to start: apart from the Thea Gouverneur `Rome`, I`ve also started an autumn cottage by Carol Thornton AND I`m just waiting for the fabric to arrive for a fractal lion that I charted for myself *wilfully ignores mentioning other WIPs like the Museum Shelf or Starry Night* Um, but I have a page finish on Rome, yay! 😉

I take a pic with my phone at the end of every day I manage to work on this, so apparently, I`ve had 11 days so far to play with this project since I started it in September. Of course, I would be on Page 2 by now if I haven`t started that cottage, but 1. I wanted something on easy 14ct aida to give me a break from the 36ct linen, and 2. my chart for the cottage is on the Pattern Keeper, whereas Rome is on big A3 sheets of paper full of miniscule squares that I`m marking with highlighters (and as we all know, after a few hours, it`s hard to tell if a circle has a smaller circle inside or a dot 😵😖🤪

Anyway, usually by the time I`d make up my mind which project to continue with, another Disney lot comes in and that`s me sorted 😂 I`ve had a look on the Hachette Partworks website and seen that the images of magazine covers are uploaded (up to issue 19, I think), so I`ve made a little montage of the projects I recognise (the step-by-steps of each character from the 4 big samplers are published over every 2 issues, the rest are various projects from hoops to buttons, from stockings to cards). Hope you`ll enjoy the mini-vid, happy stitching and have a wonderful holiday season - see y`all in 2021! 😊

WOXS 300 bells and gifts, lions and unicorns, Tigger and Dumbo, Mona Lisa and Rome

The three-hundreth (300!) issue of The World of Cross Stitching is in the shops now, so I can finally share Fiona Baker`s two lovely Christmas designs that I stitched a while back:

I love 1) anything Christmassy, 2) designs that combine cross stitch and blackwork, and 3) multi-purpose projects. And since the cute bell and tartan gift designs are to be made into cards that can also be used as tree ornaments, they definitely tick all those boxes for me. 😉

Talking about WOXS - do you remember the girl with unicorn from issue 297? I posted here about Anne Stokes` artwork, translated into a cross stitch chart by Fiona Baker, at the time when the magazine came out - and look who`ve found their way back to me? 😍

I`m so happy to be reunited with them, I`ve already ordered a white frame/grey mat combo - similar to what they used at the photoshoot -, so as soon as it arrives, I`ll just have to wash and iron the fabric and it`ll be ready to go on the wall... to join my lion, designed by Durene Jones, that I`ve also managed to finish recently, yay! 🤗 Here`s my progress video - for once, I managed to place the image roughly at the same place whenever I took a photo, so the last few seconds of the colours gradually filling out the spaces between the black lines look almost like stop motion animation. 😊

As you can see from the last pic, I`ve made some modifications: I omitted the FKs in the eyes and the whiskers because what grabbed me in this design in the first place was its stylised quality, so after some inner debate, I decided not to add the realistic whiskers. And instead of turning the finished piece into a round cushion, I opted for framing it in a hoop, which I bound with dark brown ribbon (with the help of my patient hubby, who held the hoop for me while I went round and round the plain wood for about 20 minutes). 😊🦁

Stop motion animation reminds me: remember these 4 Disney samplers I stitched for Hachette Partworks?

Since they are published in weekly instalments, with one character per every 2-3 issues, each of these 35 characters have to be restitched in a one-colour-at-a-time step by step fashion:

The other day, this cute little stop-motion ad came up in my news feed on Facebook - so here`s 🐘🐘🐘 Dumbo 🐘🐘🐘 from issues 3 and 4, one colour at a time! 😃

What else has been happening? 🤔 I`ve bought a new chart for myself - noteworthy only because I hardly ever do, thinking I`d never have the time anyway, which is still the case, only I couldn`t miss the half price sale at HAED, so... ta-dah! 😆

I have no idea when I`m going to even start this, especially as now that some kinks have been worked out with Pattern Keeper, my Starry Night chart is a go, too! 🤪 Meanwhile, in Rome:

So far, I`ve managed to spend 2 evenings working on this - and 4 (FOUR) days going through my entire DMC collection (several times!!) to try and match the pre-sorted threads that came with the kit:

Don`t laugh at my cushions - I almost never stitch kits so I don`t need fancy needle keepers, etc. 😉 I`m happy to report that it might have taken ages but eventually, I managed to identify all 119 colours of the design, so now that ominous line in the instructions about using them sparingly doesn`t daunt me so much - not that I`m not frugal with my threads anyway, but tangles, etc. happen and when you have 1 length of a colour, that`s not ideal (who wants to be under pressure when they cross stitch, anyway?) 😉 And on that note, I`m off to sew a few more little Xs, thank you for visiting my blog and happy stitching! 😊

Scottish tartan lavender sachet, Rome and more Disney

I have a finish that I can share as soon as it`s done! 😲😱😂 This weekend, we`re celebrating my mother-in-law`s 85th birthday and, among other things, she`s going to get this lavender sachet:

I bought this kit a couple of months ago when we took the first road trip of 2020; we went up to Loch Ness and came back the next day via Aberdeenshire where we did a bit of castle spotting. As soon as I saw this little cutie in the Drumnadrochit gift shop, I thought of MIL: she`s a passionate collector of lavender sachets and the kit included that too so not only did I have fun stitching it, I didn`t have to hunt for dried lavender once it was finished, either. 👍

I promised more Disney pics in the title and I will add them in a minute, but first here`s a quick peek of my newest treasure: I don`t often buy large kits (because I have plenty fabric and threads so I tend to buy charts instead) but recently I saw this picture and fell in love with it:

It is a large (80x50 cm) design of Rome by Thea Gouverneur and as well as being stunning, it also features almost all the attractions we visited last summer, so I can`t wait to start on it - I`ll be remembering the summer of 2019 every time I look at it. 😊

OK, more Disney. I wasn`t going to post so soon but the editor from Hachette Partworks has sent me some official photos and they`re such beauts I have to share. 😉 So from my last post, you may remember the sampler(s), the 4-part cushion and the two Alice in Wonderland pictures...? Well, this is what they look like when a professional photographer does them justice. 😃 Stay safe, peeps, and happy stitching!