castles and butterflies - Gold 156 and Crazy 256

Oh, how cool, just noticed that there are exactly 100 issues between these 2 mags! 😁

And they`re both in the shops now so I can share a few pics of the Carol Thornton castle I stitched for Cross Stitch Gold and the lovely butterflies by Cheryl McKinnon that`s this month`s free gift with Cross Stitch Crazy.

This project was custom-made for me: not only do I love Carol Thornton`s paintings-turned-into-cross-stitch-designs, but landscapes are my favourite cross stitch subject AND I love castles (we usually try to organise our family holidays around visiting as many as we can... which is not a difficult task in Scotland btw 😉). The project took just shy of 100 hours, mostly thanks to the confetti-heavy foreground of the flowers, but I loved every minute of it. Here are my progress pics strung together in a mini film:

And here are the lovely butterflies that are the free gift with issue 256 of Crazy, complete with purple hoop - I like it when there`s a different finishing idea for a project (but of course, this could be made into a card as well). 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! 😊

Rapunzel - Cross Stitch Crazy 200

Happy New Year! I know it`s almost the end of January but this is my first blog post for 2015 - I know, they`re becoming increasingly few and far between. Even though I`m constantly crafting something, it`s either a surprise to someone or some official magazine thingy but the end result`s the same: I can`t post pictures until the recipient has got the prezzie or a publication is in the shops.

So in the past weeks (months?) I`ve knitted e.g. a jumper - but I`m pretty sure the owner of it wouldn`t like his picture all over the Internet -, and over Christmas I stitched a glasses case for my Mum for her birthday - but as she can`t see it before the end of February, I cannot post a piccie of that, either. However, as my parents have already received it, I can finally show you the Lucie Heaton cuckoo clock I stitched for them from issue 284 of Cross Stitcher:

I stretched it over a ready-made canvas I`d bought in an arts shop but as my Mom wants to put it in the kitchen, it`s still an ongoing project, now in my Uncle`s capable hands, who`ll box it in (probably with glass, he didn`t sound too keen on plexiglass) to protect it from greasy fumes.

I had another `emergency project` over the holidays: my adorable wee boy dreamt one night that his two favourite teddies have met and become friends with a green alien teddy - cue a trip to the shop to find the perfect shade of `alien green` yarn, and I had to knit this bear for him the very same day, following his instructions to the letter (hence the slightly "giraffesque" antennae):

And finally, the latest issue of Crazy is out and in it another Lucie Heaton design I stitched. I`m sure little girls all over the world will love this Tangled-themed picture - I certainly enjoyed stitching it!

See you again "soon" - hopefully, before the end of 2015, lol!

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!)