Cross stitch update

Yep, after a break of over 1 year, I've picked up cross stitch again. But hey, it's my hobby, so I can do it and stop it and pick it up whenever I like! This blog is mainly for logging my progress.

DMC photo of my wedding converted into cross stitch:

And an autumn wall hanger :

Cross stitch update

So this is what I have been doing (ahem, cross stitch-wise) in the last 2 weeks.

Firstly, here is the new starter, UB Design (a German Designer), an autumn picture with rose hips.

It is a bit tricky to stitch on the linen, and I have to say I really do prefer Aida. however, on a picture like this (is is going to be a wall hanging), with lots of fabric showing, you really need finer fabric. But it does stitch up surprisingly quickly. Not too many colours. Only problem - I don't really like to stitch pictures which are 'out of season' so to speak. Being spring in the UK at the moment, don't really fancy autumn-like stuff. But I don't think it will take me too long to finish.

And here is an update on the wedding picture.

Honestly, I did a lot of work on it, but nothing shows :( Still, I guess about 1/4 done now.

Updates on my work - cross stitch

I worked on this whilst in Pakistan and on the plane - in Pakistan whenever I could sneak a few minutes to myself LOL. It's one of the 'Tiddles' cartoon cat designs from Peter Underhill of Heritage. While I usually do not like any stitching to do with cartoon and/or cute, I like these - they make me smile. Not that easy to stitch though surprinsingly, as they have tons of thos 'squashed stitches' so typical in Heritage designs

Now I finally start to get a bit enthusiastic about the wedding picture. You can really see Nafees' face emerging!

Well, I'm going to be forever and a year on the backstitch for the Lilliput Lane, it just doesn't move. Need to put in the hours on this me thinks.

Wedding Picture

I have been working quite a bit on the wedding picture last week, but because of the massive Confetti stitches, there isn't much to see. I like the way DH's face emerges though. One thing... I'm not too happy with the coverage, especially on the black parts its showing,  through quite badly, well, I notice it anyway, but I can't fact to start again.

Confetti Stitching

So, here is an update on my wedding picture (Stitch-a-photo). I have never really worked confetti stitching like this before - literally 2/3 stitches in one colour and than change thread again. Despite working on it the whole weekend, there is hardly any progress to see. But I finally managed to get into it a bit more, and a bit further down the picture there are actually large areas of black.

Anyone any tips on confetti stitching? What I did so far is go with one colour as much as I can do, jumping a bit more than just my ususal 3-4 threads, and securing the thread in the back under other stitches already in place. But of course, there is only so much I can go with one colour, so it's on and off with the thread/needle.

So tired this week...

There is almost no point showing my work from last week, I think I must have stitched about 2 or 3 lenghts of thread on the wedding picture. I still find it hard to work on the 'full' confetti' stitching. But the main problem was that I was travelling this week to work by bus (didn't have enough cash for the so much more expensive train ticket....). The problem with the bus is that it takes me about 3 hours one way to commute (instead of 1.5 hours on the train. Otherwise, I quite like riding on London Buses, and I only have to take 2 buses actually to get from my place to Central London. But on both buses I ride on for over 1 hour, almost from start point to finish point for each of them. And the traffic is just diabolical. It was nice though to sit on the top deck of the bus and just let the world go by and let your thoughts ponder. I quite like enjoy this, lots of interesting characters to observe.. if it wasn't for the time it takes. By the time I got home I was just completely shattered, and went straight to bed. What I found surprising is that there were many travellers on the bus like me who literally went from the first to the last stop on both buses - so there are obviously people who do this every day. Today, finally, I got my train ticket again, and how nice was that to travel. Gosh, I enjoyed it! I would have never said before I enjoy travelling on the train. But sitting on the train for 40 mins instead of 2.5 hours on the bus was bliss, I couldn't believe how quick my journey finished LOL.

Cross stitch up-date and a finish !!!

Happy Dance  - the giraffe is finished. It will take a while before I can frame it, as it will need a special frame because of the size - but never mind. I really enjoyed stitching the giraffe.

Here is my progress from NH afghan from last week. Not a lot done, it doesn't show anyway. The flowers contain so many different colours - it's unbelievable.

And here is the new project which will go into the rotation instead of the giraffe. It's my wedding picture - the one where I had all the problems earlier when I had it charted by DMC and they did it in black and white. However, thumbs up to DMC - they've changed for me to full colour without problems. So here we go. This is proper confetti stitching, the first time actually that I'm doing proper confetti like this.