blackwork birds - Card Shop 97

Another publication in the shops, yay! It`s Cross Stitch Card Shop 97, and in it are the gorgeous Lesley Teare cards I stitched back in January. I think they`re fab - a stunning combination of vibrant colours and the timeless elegance of blackwork (a great favourite of mine). I enjoyed working on these immensely and I`m happy that, after all these months, the magazine is finally in the shops.

Since I`m going on holiday in a few short days, I`ll write another post and time its publication so as not to miss issue 113 of Gold that`s coming out while I`m away. Hope you all will have a lovely summer, see you in August! :)

tea cups - Cross Stitch Collection 238

The latest issue of Cross Stitch Collection is in the shops today and in it are the little tea cups that have had me wondering for months now... well, not so much the actual cups - lovely, vintage china designs by Maria Diaz -, but the size of the pieces of fabric I had to stitch some of them on. Of course, now it all makes perfect sense: the smaller ones have been turned into napkins and a pocket sewn onto a pretty little apron, but the largest one ended up as a tea cosy - a matching set fit for the best of kitchens! I can think of at least five people off the top of my head right now who`d love to have these - maybe for Christmas? ;)

The blue cup pattern can be downloaded free from www.crossstitchcollection.com :)

Cross Stitch Gold 112 - parasols

I thought the time would never come when one of my stitches actually appeared in a magazine, it`s been sooooo long since anything of mine has been published! Or maybe that`s just how it felt to me... Anyway, here`s the latest one: my cheerful parasols, designed by Durene Jones, which ended up on an oh-so-summery beach bag.

It has been a real pleasure to work on this - deceptively? - easy-looking, smallish design; after all, it`s only 128x123 (on 14ct, 23,5x22,5 cm) and uses a total of 26 colours. However, it definitely needed the deployment of a good, easy-to-follow marking system, both for the similar shades of cream in the background and the backstitch. Oh, and for a little teaser, at the back of issue 112, you can see my sunflowers advertised from the next issue of Gold - yay! This might just mark the beginning of a summery cheer-spreading offensive on the part of Durene and yours truly...? ;)

Over halfway there, trying not to mix up which handle belongs to which parasol ;)

Just remembered in the nick of time that I wanted to take a photo
of the finished cross stitch, before starting the backstitch (ooops!)

And a mere 56 hours later - the finished product :)

surprise post

This post is not only a surprise to those who thought I`d disappeared (it is truly shocking how long I`ve neglected my blog!), but the title also refers to the surprise I got a few minutes ago. I was looking for a Riolis design and while browsing the Sew and So website, I spotted Twilleys on their list. I clicked on it, and sure enough, I came across some familiar pictures! :) I stitched these for Twilleys of Stamford such a long time ago that I can`t even remember where I saved the photos, so I`ll use Sew and So`s links. I worked this poppy wreath sometime last autumn, and this beach sign... oh, it must have been over a year ago now...? Gosh, and as I`m scrolling down the Sew and So page, I`ve just discovered some bookmarks here and here that were also stitched by me - wow, what a strange `reunion`!

That reminds me: this year it`ll be 20 years since we`ve graduated from high school and my old classmates are busy organising the party - for the first weekend in September! :( If everything goes according to plan, we`re going to Hungary in July for a wee holiday, so I`m going to miss this reunion again - such a pity, I`d love to see the old faces after all this time! Ach, well, I just have to wait another 5 years now... ;)

In other news, the reason why I`ve been neglecting my blog is that I`m super-busy with more (!) Christmas stitching - big piccies, cards, you name it. I`ve been humming Jingle Bells since the end of March now but photos, alas, I can`t show you yet - my next project will be in Gold 112*, out around the middle of June. So until then: happy stitching!

* Technically, if you`ve seen issue 111, you`ve probably seen my pic too in next month`s preview, but I`m such a tease, I won`t even tell you it`s the pa... oooops, it almost slipped out! :)

Escape to Paris - Cross Stitch Collection 236

Well, here it is! My biggest project so far is in the shops now, so finally I can show you what it is (I`ve been bursting for months!). It`s a Parisian street scene by my favourite designer, Maria Diaz, and as it happens, it`s been selected as the chart of this month - which meant I had to send in a more-or-less presentable mugshot, eek! I managed to find a pre-double chin piccie of myself, and as a bonus, I`m stitching in it, so that was fine...well, I`m saying `fine` - you decide for yourselves:

I spent practically the whole of January stitching this stunning, 180x180 (32.5x32.5 cm on 28 ct evenweave) picture and I absolutely loved every minute of it, even the 7 or 8 hours` worth of backstitch and the 320 French knots - when you`re working on a picture of Paris, you tend to say c`est la vie more readily. ;)

When working on a magazine project, I have to time myself (as well as take notes of the lengths of thread I use of every colour), so with this one, I started to stop and take a photo after every 5 hours. Little did I know at the beginning that it`d take me 122 hours to finish - thus I ended up with so many photos that this blog wouldn`t be big enough for all of them! :) So for the first time ever, I tried to turn them into some sort of a montage, a very basic mini-video with no sound or special effects... or even proper lighting, lol. I`ve seen more professional ones on YouTube but this one`s special to me; I love watching how the picture grows, and I hope you`ll like it too! Happy stitching! :)

Mama`s cottage

I know, it`s been a while AGAIN, but I haven`t had any magazine pictures to share lately, and the only `private` stitching I`d done* was a secret until last Sunday. But now the recipient, my Gran, has been presented with it for her 81st birthday, so I can show it y`all; moreover, I can even report that she loved it.

It`s a lovely little cottage, designed by Michael Powell, from issue 234 of Cross Stitch Collection. The design measures 9x9 cm on 28 ct evenweave and originally uses Anchor threads but I substituted them for DMC, because I have more of those. I took 3 photos of the finished picture: one after all the cross stitch was done, and one with all the backstitch - if it`s true that the backstitch makes a design really come to life, I think it`s doubly true to Michael Powell`s creations. And the third picture is of my finish: I bought this mini easel off Ebay, it`s about 12 cm tall and the actual frame I stretched my canvas (!) over is about 10x10 cm. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of the back, so you can`t see how neatly it`s stapled and covered with brown paper - very professional looking, even if I say so myself, lol!

If I don`t see you before then, HAPPY EASTER, everyone - and now back to my snowman (yep, I`m already stitching for Christmas... in April). Is it me or are the years getting shorter??

* apart from a couple of heart-shaped fridge magnets I made for `the girls` for Mothers` Day, of which I forgot to take a photo, and now they`re away, my Mum took them home and she and my Gran are not supposed to open their cards until the first Sunday in May.

entrelac beauty

Apologies for the shorter-than-usual posts but my Mommy`s here and I`m busy doing all kinds of fun stuff with her - normally, I wouldn`t include `spring-cleaning` in this category, but doing it with my Mum, even that can be fun! ;)

Anyway, I just wanted to share a quick photo with you of the finished entrelac garment, which is yet another proof of my Gran`s genius: she knitted a rib for the bottom to stop it from curling, and another one for the neckline, plus she crocheted two shoulder bits to make room for said neckline. And as a bonus, the whole thing got 3-4 inches longer, so now it can be worn as a sort of tunic - as I said, the woman is a genius!!!

Mummy marvelling at the mini Christmas tree that we`d bought 2 years ago for  Gregory`s
teddies (?!?), and after Xmas we relocated it outside in this empty planter, little knowing that
the previous tenant left some bulbs in it, probably daffodils, which we`ll replant soon elsewhere

Cross Stitch Gold 110 - the Poodle Bag

The latest issue of Gold is in the shops now, so I can share a few pictures of the bag I stitched. It was my first project designed by Debra Page, and I totally enjoyed working with a slightly different medium this time - a ready-made, 20-ct linen bag, on which I had to use 3 strands for better coverage. And here`s the end result:

Halfway there...

All finished!

Professional magazine photo with accessories :)

another 4 cards - Cross Stitch Collection 234

I don`t want to over-use the phrase about buses but here we are: another lot of 4 cards, also designed by Maria Diaz, only this time the theme is not `new home` but `birthday blooms`. And yet another strange coincidence: the photographer arranged them almost identically to how I took my picture before returning them - weird or what? *question fades into Twilight Zone theme music*

new home cards - Cross Stitch Card Shop 95

Basically, the title says it all: the latest issue of Card Shop (95) hits the UK shops today and in it there are the 4 new home cards, by Maria Diaz (naturally!), that I stitched sometime before Christmas. They were a quick and easy stitch and I took a couple of quick and easy photos of them:

The first one I finished, my favourite, with the little birds :)

All 4 done, ready to be ironed and sent back...

And how they`re cleverly turned into cards (excuse the fold line) :)

La Scapigliata - finished!

I had to rummage through some pretty old posts to find when I started this - apparently, on 17 May 2012. As with all my own stitching, I enjoyed the luxury of not having to keep count of the hours and minutes I spent working on it - therefore, I have no idea how long it took but I`d guess I spent about 2 or 3 weeks in total stitching this. Now I wonder how long it`ll take me to find a suitable frame for it...

George, the handsome hippo

Do you remember Gloria, my glorious diva of a hippo? Well, I put her up for sale in my Etsy shop, and a couple of weeks ago someone saw her and - as expected - fell in love with her. Only problem was that this lady wanted a boy version for her (yet) unborn nephew, and preferably in grey. So I slightly amended the original Alan Dart pattern and came up with this:

I think he`s just as gorgeous as his big sister - pity the lady who`d ordered him never contacted me since! I hope she still wants him... then again, I wouldn`t mind keeping him at all! I`ll keep y`all posted.

Elsewhere, in my little dreamworld of freedom (=I haven`t had any commissioned stitching for over a week now), I stitched this freebie from the latest Crazy and made it up for my MIL for Mothers` Day - I hope she`ll like it, I wanted something cheerful (she had a heart operation a few weeks ago and she`s still not 100% but she`s getting there). So here are some colourful birds to cheer her up:

And as there`s still no sign of any model stitching in the pipeline for the noo, you won`t believe what I`ve unearthed from the bowels of my cupboard: La Scapigliata! Yes, I started working on it last night and I hope to finish it before the next commission arrives - again, I`ll keep y`all posted of my progress. Happy stitching!

Cross Stitch Gold 109

I might as well come clean: I have no idea how it`s already the middle of February. All I remember is, it was Christmas, my parents were here, then they flew back to Hungary on 12 January and I started to work like crazy on my latest commission for Collection (a massive, 180x180 picture by Maria Diaz with stunning detail, partly thanks to the miles of backstitch and 320 French knots, eek!), for which my deadline was 3 February. Eventually, I was a few days late with this one, due to a cold `epidemic` that swept through the whole family (Gregory brought some bug home from school and I got it from him, then DH from us), so in my capacity as a patient-and-nurse, I lost a week or so of precious stitchy time. Luckily, I managed to more or less make up for it by stitching solid 10 hours per day for the past couple of weeks. Now I`m working on a Durene Jones gorgeousness for Gold - and this reminded me that the current issue of Gold has my bunny wabbit in it so here I am to share.

Another confession: I didn`t take progress piccies for this piece, only one photo of the finished piece, front and back. Now before you accuse me of `stitchers` snobbery`, I couldn`t care less what the back of anybody`s work looks like - I know it`s a hotly debated topic in many stitchy circles but I, personally, don`t care how others work, I just try to make mine as mess-free as possible (couldn`t do it any other way with my slight OCD, lol). Anyway, thanks to Amanda Gregory`s clever design, it was almost impossible to make a mess of this rabbit`s back (until I started the backstitch, that is), and I liked the mirror-effect so much I took a photo of it.

   

It`s such a cute little bunny, isn`t it? I stitched it just before the run-up to Christmas, around the time when the shops started to put their festive CDs on, together with their fake-tree decorations, and in the middle of all this, I was stitching for Easter. Never mind, in return I`ll be working on Santas and snowmen in June.

Talking about Christmas, I did some knitting while my parents were here - remember that big entrelac rectangle? My Mum claimed it for herself, and despite all my efforts to persuade her that I can`t turn a rectangle into a garment with arm and neck holes, she insisted that it`d make an excellent vest (=sleeveless jumper) for her. So with plain blue, I knitted a back for it, i.e. another rectangle, then started to sew up the two halves but got so frustrated that we packed up the whole thing into her suitcase, in the firm belief that if anybody can turn this into something wearable, it`s my Gran.

And for her, my Granny, I knitted a Fair Isle tam, similar in colours to the one that`s been her favourite for these past 15-20 years, and which hat is about to leave her after this rather lengthy partnership. Here are some pictures of my colour combo, a variation on this pattern, proudly donned by my lovely Gran who, you won`t believe this, is 80 years old - she hasn`t changed in looks for the past 20 years and no, it`s not just because she`s `always wearing the same hat`, lol! I hope to be as wrinkle-free as she is when I`m 50, let alone 80!

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:

the perfect sunset by Maria Diaz in Cross Stitch Collection 231

Uncharacteristically, for this picture in the latest issue of Collection I do not have too many progress piccies - only one, to be precise. However, I do have an interesting (?) story to go with it.

Have you ever wondered what happens if a model stitcher finds out halfway through a project that she can`t finish it before the deadline? I`m not thinking about running out of time and asking the editor for a few extra days, but rather of something serious that will prevent the stitcher from finishing a work completely. The latter happened to the stitcher who started working on this (I don`t know her, not even her name, all I know is that she had to go to hospital for some reason) and she couldn`t finish this landscape. So this is how I got the project - the first time ever I had to continue a work that someone else had started and I quite enjoyed the experience (mostly, because she did such a neat job that almost put mine to shame, lol!). I hope that whoever she is, she`s feeling better now and if she picks up this issue, she`ll like the fruit of our joint effort.

crocheted Despicable Me minion

I`m happy to report that in between stitching tasks, I managed to finish a crochet project as well in the past couple of weeks: I`ve made a strange hybrid of a minion, a weird cross between utter cuteness (with his goggles on) and a possessed jelly bean (without his accessories). You`ll see in a minute what I mean but first let me give credit to the designer of the pattern, which I found here. Truth be told, though, it was only a starting point for me - as always with crochet -, because I`m so hopeless at it: as I don`t see clearly what`s a chain and what`s not, I keep miscounting (even with a stitch marker!), plus I used different yarns from hers with different sized hooks... so as usual with my crochet attempts, this one belongs to the `Played By Ear` category too. And while the jury is still out on whether it was worth all the effort (although Gregory usually loves and appreciates everything I make, but maybe in this instance he would`ve been happier with the battery-operated model that makes all those cute sounds...?), but the main thing is that I finished something that I set out to do, and now I can`t wait to see his little face when he opens it at Christmas! :)

Mr. Cute! :) I deviated from the pattern (again!) and put wires in his arms
so they`re bendy. Unfortunately, I was concentrating on this so hard
that I didn`t pay attention and sew the fingers on the same way on both hands,
so now he has a thumb on the one and a pinky on the other, lol!

Alternative mouth, with slightly big and scary teeth. In the end,
I decided against it and sew a plain line for a smile :)

And without all his accessories... Unfortunately, his legs come off with his trousers,
and without the goggles he has this slightly demented look in his eyes
(I didn`t have brown felt so I ended up crocheting the eyes as well,
hence the fish-like, lifeless stare... oooh, quick, put those goggles back on!)