Twilight Silhouette

It is done! Before and after backstitching:

There's a lot more fairy dust after the backstitching. There were a lot more French knots than I thought going into this. I didn't think there were quite that many French knot stars.

The French knots actually weren't that bad. It was the blending filament that was the worst. It was trying to curl up on itself, so it would knot easily when being drawn through the fabric, but it also needed three strands at once, which meant both that it was even more prone to knotting, and the three threads always wanted to sit in the needle at different points because of the curling. I ended up doing one strand at a time, and just doing all the backstitching thrice.

The black backstitching I did the same thing with, but for a different reason: most of the black was one strand, but there were a couple places where it used two strands (the sparkles) and four strands (the curls on the wing tips). I didn't want to have to come back and lock down a new set of threads, so since there were so few places with more strands and they were so close to where the single strand stitches were supposed to go, I just did those with the single strand as well, just going over the stitches multiple times to make up the weight.

The difference in colour in the black cross stitches worked itself out, so I'm pretty confident in saying that the thread faded from me handling it. Unfortunately - though the cross stitches now match - the black half stitches were done a lot later and weren't handled near as much... and they're a lot darker still. I'm hoping washing the piece evens everything out.

Also, I'm sure I've probably missed at least one blade of grass (it was hard to keep track as I went), but oh well. It's done. I'm not going back now. So there.

Twilight Silhouette

All the black's done now, we're down to the last four symbols, then the backstitching. I'm getting to the point now that I'm starting to think about what I'm going to do when this one's done. It's currently a toss up between doing the next section on Elegance of the Orient, and getting back into Hidden Harbour. I'm leaning towards Elegance, since I've got marker on that one, and I'm slightly worried about it not washing out if I leave it too long.

Twilight Silhouette and The Guardian

First off, Twilight Silhouette progress.

Couple more symbols are done, getting close to the end of this one!

So we moved this weekend, and in the process of unpacking stuff from storage, I found a couple things that I thought were lost!

I think this guy was my second ever cross stitch that I did. I'm almost positive that my first-one-ever is definitely lost, but I'm glad this guy was recovered. It's a Dimensions kit called Frederick the Literate.

This is Teresa Wentzler's The Guardian. I thought this was lost a while ago during a car cleaning, but it turns out it was just in storage!

There are a couple problems with this one, the larger of which is that it's FULL of partial stitches, and my pattern analyzer is currently hard coded with one stitch per grid-square. I'd have to switch up a chunk of the pattern-to-data logic to accommodate, park it, or continue cross country as I started.

The second issue, though smaller, is that apparently at some point in time I switched which direction my stitches go in, and this piece is backward to my normal direction. I just know I'm going to get at least some stitches wrong.

Also, it's quite dirty, and I'm not sure if I should clean it before finishing it, or clean it all at once after. It's not like the dirt's going to come off any easier if I do it now vs later (it's been probably at least 10 years since I touched this), and that way I can get started on it again faster!

Twilight Silhouette

Another symbol down. It's really filling in now. I doubt I'll get it done by the end of the weekend since we're moving on Saturday, but hopefully it'll be done by the weekend after that!

Twilight Silhouette

Yet another symbol done. All the rest now officially have less than 1000 stitches each.

I made a mistake with this last symbol. Can you tell? I missed a single stitch. I don't like single half stitches. I will just use a different colour in the area when I get there to fill it in.

Twilight Sillhouette

Should have gotten a lot more done this weekend, except that I totally miscounted on the thicker blue right from the top of the moon all the way down the entire arc and didn't notice until I tried to line up the stitches with the grass. So I had to tear out about half of those stitches too (good thing I didn't run out of thread!).

On the home stretch now though: the three symbols that are done so far are the biggest three, so it should be done soon! Assuming our house move next weekend doesn't take too much time :)

Twilight Sillhouette

Apparently I've been a bit lax in taking pictures of this one. I meant to grab one once the black was done, and totally forgot. Probably because I totally miscounted on the black and almost finished it before realizing, and had to pull out about a third of it, wasting about five hours.

Oh well.

All the full cross stitches are officially done now, just the half stitches left on this half, then the backstitching!

I kind of like the look of it at this stage, where the right fairy's extending off the background. It reminds me of the Bob Ross paintings where he adds trees at the end that extend off the sides of the painting. But of course I'm not going to leave it like that :)

Christmas Kittens #1

I have to say, I'm not really all that pleased with how this one turned out. Part of it is fractional stitches on aida I know, but it just feels... messy. This was the first of three free patterns in this month's World of Cross Stitching.

First without backstitching:

Looks like a reindeer without the backstitching. And here he is with:

It's hard to tell that it's a bird on his head. He's also supposed to be smiling and my mouth came out more like he's trying to be super serious. Also, apparently my French knots (switched to colonial knots halfway through, then switched back to French) just don't want to be consistent tonight.

Oh well, free kit. Good to practise with.

Cat Comfort

Cat Comfort is complete! Here he is both before and after backstitching. The backstitching on this one actually doesn't make as much of a difference as it does with some designs.

 

I really like this gridding pen. I started this piece about a month ago, and the pen washed out with no problem: I didn't even need to wash it, just let it touch the water and the lines disappeared.

I'm thinking next is going to be to try to finish Twilight Silhouette. It's half done, and it works up pretty quickly since it's mostly half stitches. Probably going to do all the full stitches first then finish with the half stitches, even though the half stitches are in the background and you'd think they should be done first. But my half stitches are looser than my full stitches, and it feels like they're more liable to get pulled out of shape from subsequent stitches.

Inspiration Dragon Slayer

It is done! Although I underestimated the time involved, I was still able to get it done in one 5 day sprint :)

Here is the original design this is based off of:

I'm not really feeling the bugle and seed beads I ended up using for the gems in the original, but given the size of the piece the backstitched gems I'd originally charted didn't look very good at all.
I'll need to figure out how I'm going to finish this. The gem by the dragon's tail is quite high off the fabric, so I might have to go for a shadow box so that it has enough space.