Highland living, fame, free kits and Regency lady

Before I dive into details of my latest stitchy escapades, a warm welcome to anyone who`s seen this in WOXS 317 and thought of checking out my blog. 😊

You might need to dig deep for the aforementioned `handy tips`, but there are more pics of my recently reorganised threads in this post, and examples of my route planning - as evidenced in my progress photos, which I sometimes string together in mini videos - are abundant (as is my waffling, whenever I have the time to go on, and on... and on).

Case in point: now. Not only have I finished my 5th pre-Christmas commission (you know, those tasks trickling in at the beginning of Dec, when mid-Jan and end of Jan deadlines seem so, so far away, and the next thing you know, it`s Jingle Bells... Should old acquaintance... Oh, it`s 20 January!! 😨). Anyway, so not only have I finished those 5 projects but I finally managed to get back to my Mary Hickmott pic too - the second one after finishing this Rialto Bridge for myself. Only this morning, I added the last few clouds:

It`s called Highland living, available from Mary Hickmott`s Etsy shop, and even though the key calls for 16ct ice blue aida, I stitched it on 14ct so that it`ll fit nicely in this gap above the Monarch of the Glen (it`s about 60 x 10 cm on 14ct), whenever I get round to framing it.

Because of the mad rush of the past few weeks, I completely forgot to post here about the previous issue`s cover kit: the free gift with WOXS 316 was this cute little Emma Congdon design:

The magazine`s finishing team turned it into a banner, and this month`s free gift, Lucie Heaton`s leafy plants in macramé hangers can be used either as a card or as a bookmark.

Finally, here`s Heather Nugent`s Regency lady, also from issue 317 - I loved working on this! Not only because I`m a Jane Austen fan, but also because I love stitching big blocks of colour, and this project had not only those but a little bit of everything as well, from intricate backstitch detail to beads and petit point. It took just over 50 hours, and instead of unrolling the fabric for every progress pic, I took a photo of my Pattern Keeper screen at the end of each day. I put them in a mini film, together with my finished stitching and the framed picture as it appears in the magazine. Hope you like them, thanks for scrolling through 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!

cover kits, cards, coasters and scrapbooking

This week the latest issue (242) of Cross Stitch Crazy is out and I`ve got several projects in this mag - technically, two, but one of them is 7 cards, so... Anyway, first up is the cover kit:

This Emma Congdon design has been turned into a funky wee hanging on green felt - I love the cute little dowel rod they put in the kit! 😃

Also in this issue, there are Fiona Baker`s 7 applique cards with the lovely butterflies... most of which you can`t see in this pic...

...but they all make sense once the wing-shaped pieces of fabric are added:

In other news, we had a great Easter. My mom came to stay with us for the school break so we did some "going to places & seeing things" again - and not only that but we actually managed to put all our postcards, tickets, etc. in the frame that`s been waiting patiently since Christmas, so now we have a permanent "scrapbook on display". 😊

A lovely reminder of our trips to York, Rogie Falls, Balmoral, Blair Castle, Kenmore, Queen`s View, Oban, Mull, Iona, Dunnotar Castle,
the Discovery in Dundee, Fort Augustus, Loch Ness, Falkirk, Stirling and Glasgow

The day my mom flew back to Hungary was my gran`s birthday, so I made a card and a coaster for her that mom took home and since gran already received them, I can share their photos here. Hope you all had a great Spring break too, happy stitching!

The Hunt of the Unicorn - The Stirling Palace Tapestries

Yesterday was a magical day in many ways. My mum`s here for the Spring school break and after anxiously watching the weather forecast (and the persistent snowfall) for days, it finally stopped on the very day we`d planned to go on a day trip and so we could set out in brilliant sunshine to Stirling.

I`ve visited this beautiful place in the heart of Scotland once, back in 2000, well before I got married, had a baby or even toyed with the idea of ever attempting any form of needlework. So little did I know that this time, when I went back with my family, one of the main attractions of Stirling Castle would be The Tapestry Exhibition.

In 2002, a dedicated team of master weavers embarked on a 13-year-long labour of love, recreating 7 tapestries depicting The Hunt of the Unicorn (the original gobelins are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York). According to the guide book, "the Stirling Tapestries project has been the biggest weaving task undertaken in Britain for a century, conducted in partnership with the Quinque Foundation of the United States. With contributions by 18 weavers from all over the world, and more than 16,000 hours spent weaving a single tapestry, this has been a labour worthy of medieval master-weavers." I could not agree more and, to honour the 18 amazing people who gave all this time and talent to achieve their goal, here are their names and the length of time they each dedicated to these tapestries:

And here are a few examples of what they`d been working on - everybody should see these tapestries "in the flesh" because photos don`t do them justice but for the now, they`ll have to suffice:

Like the originals, the new tapestries were woven on their sides too; as the guide book explains, "there is a technical reason for this. The lines of a tapestry look softer when it is woven sideways to the warps; whereas a stepped effect is produced when a line is woven vertically". 

In the modern tapestries, silk was replaced by the stronger mercerised cotton, and instead of gilt, gold thread spun around a cotton core was used. However, the main weft thread was, as in the originals, wool: after careful colour matching, large batches were dyed (with chemical dyes, as opposed to the natural dyes that would have been used in the 1500s). The teams also decided to break with the tradition of making the gobelins from the back: "weavers prefer to see what they are working on, and weaving this way is much more interesting for visitors to watch".

In the specially designed studio constructed at Stirling Castle, over 5 million people saw the birth of 4 of these tapestries (the other 3 were woven at The West Dean Tapestry Studio in West Sussex). And now, after the work has finished, the studio houses an exhibition telling the story of this mammoth project and visitors can also watch short films, see the loom and touch the cones of colourful wool. There is also an extensive introduction to the history and symbolism of the Unicorn Tapestries - something I didn`t have the time to read with a 12-year-old itching to see the armoury and the cannons of the castle... so here`s tonight`s reading material - I hope you`ll enjoy zooming in too! 😊

Kate Knight cushion - Cross Stitch Gold 130

I`m so chuffed that I can finally share pictures of this gorgeous design! :D I stitched it in February-March - it didn`t take 2 months to stitch (actually, it was a fairly quick one at 70 hours) but there was a little delay due to fabric hiccups. I loved the first one I got, it looked a bit like washed denim but it was evenweave; unfortunately, I realised pretty soon that it`d be more suitable for freehand embroidery. The warp and weft of the fabric was so dense (or fluffy?) that I couldn`t see the holes not only with a white pillowcase on my lap but I actually put a lamp (= a torch in a box with a see-through lid) under it - NB. Don`t try this at home! I still couldn`t see the holes but nothing else on top of that, I almost blinded myself, rofl.

So after a quick discussion with the editors, we decided that since I don`t have 3 or 4 years to finish this one project, we`d better get some `more standard` evenweave from Zweigart - and I`m so glad we did! The new fabric was perfect not only because of the holes were easier to see but also because the darker navy blue was closer to the shade of Kate Knight`s original artwork and it made the colours of the birds and the leaves stand out even more dramatically.

I took this photo to plead with the editors, lol: the one on the left shows the progress after 2 days of stitching;
the one on the right took 2 hours on the new fabric ;) #Irestmycase

I`ve decided not to make a `film` this time: since it only took 70 hours, I only have 7 photos, taken every 10 hours. I thought in this case it`d be pointless to stop after every five because it`s one of those designs where not much seems to be happening between progress pictures. Once the middle section was done and I stitched the first shade of green on the leaves, it was just a matter of going round and round, adding more and more shades in cross stitch and backstitch. So here are my photos first, and finally the picture of the cushion in Cross Stitch Gold, one of my favourite finishes of all time! :)

Jumbo birthday wishes - Collection 260

The latest issue of Cross Stitch Collection is in the UK shops and it`s full of designs of all shapes and sizes celebrating the coming 90th birthday of HRM Queen Elizabeth II. One of these is Jenny Barton`s Indian elephant that`s been turned into a birthday card:

A fun stitch with lots of interesting detail (10 hours in total)

While tidying up my photo folder, I also found this picture of the wee highland coo I`d stitched for my Mum for Christmas (and now I can share). You know how you ask your loved ones what they`d like for Christmas, assuming you`ll get a useful hint, a little glimpse into some secret desire? Erm, my Mum said, `a pocket`. Of course, you have to time it well and I asked her when she was wearing a dress with no pockets and she was in the middle of a rant how there was nowhere to put her handkerchief. Still, we aim to please, don`t we, so here it is, one of her Christmas prezzies: a pocket. ;)