Painted Flowers is finally finished!

 Hooray!

The stitching that is, is finished. It is something of an odd size, and I am still not sure how it should be finished, framed or made into a pillow. 

Here is the photo:

Painted Flowers - Shakespeare's Peddler
Stitched on 20ct black Aida using DMC threads

This was not an easy stitch for me on the black fabric. It took me much longer than it should have. I am glad to be moving on to my next project! 

Slow but steady progress

 Last night I officially passed the halfway point of Painted Flowers! 

Yay!

Here's the photo:

I am a little concerned with the amount of fabric remaining. I sure hope there is enough to finish!

I am very ready to finish this one!

Hope all of you are enjoying your summer! Looks to be a long hot one!

Still here plugging away!

This is such a slow stitch! I would estimate that I am a little more than 3/8's of the way through this design.

This is where I am:

I am currently working on the flower in the upper left corner.

As you can see from the leaflet, I have miles to go!

I never dreamed this stitch would take me so long! There are a lot of color changes, every few stitches, plus the difficulty of stitching on black. I will keep plugging away at it for now. I may take a break to do some finishing though.

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer. Seems quite hot even in these early days.

Hope to show some more progress next time.

I'm making very, very slow progress!

I think I have frogged as much as I have stitched on this project!

This has to be the slowest I have ever stitched.

I had been waiting to have more progress before I posted, but I realized that it had been a long while since my last post, so here it is:

progress on Painted Flowers, using DMC on 20ct Black Aida

Painfully slow going! I have been looking forward to starting my next project, but I'm afraid if I don't finish this one now, it won't ever get done.

This is one of those stitches that needs to be done vertically rather than horizontally. There is a lot of counting, and a lot of color changes with similar colors!

It is a very pretty design, but if you ever decide to stitch it, I strongly suggest that unless you have very good eyesight, to stitch it on a larger count fabric. 20ct aida or 40ct black linen is just too tough for me, anyway. 14 count aida or 28ct linen would be better, even though the design would be bigger.

Hope to be back soon with more progress!

Seraphina is Stitched!

 Yay!

I still have to turn her into an ornament. She came out a little on the large size for an ornament. I may turn her into a little pillow.

I love her little upturned nose!

It turns out there are two versions of this little pattern. One is slightly smaller than the other. I think this is what confused me initially with the fabric size.

I think I will probably stitch the smaller version also. One of the differences is in her skates. In one version they are much smaller

I made a little progress on Painted Flowers, though I am finding it very difficult to stitch on the 20 ct black aida. I am skipping over some areas that called for some DMC colors I don't have. I really thought I had all the DMC by now, but there are some new colors out there, and this chart calls for 3 of them.

This is what I have so far:

Not very much, I'm afraid.

Well, I do have some big framing news, but I will save that for a separate post.

Hope all of you are having a very pleasant, peaceful Sunday!

I'll Start with the Good News. . .

I stitched Easter Basket, and finished it without any issues! This was from the Easter Parade chart from Blackbird Designs. I stitched the rabbit some years ago.

Here is how it came out:

Easter Basket by Blackbird Designs
Stitched on 36 ct linen using GAST threads

Of course I still need to find a frame for it. I think if I stitched it again, I might change the colors a bit.

Well, after that, my thinking was that I would fit in a little Christmas ornament before I started a larger project. That is where my troubles began!

I chose Seraphina. This is an oldie that I have had in my stash for a while. The actual chart I had was for a Christmas card.

I have thought about this one for some time. I decided to swop out the aida for 32 ct linen, and the color of her coat from green to red.

Somehow I stupidly miscalculated the size of the linen needed. I didn't realize it until I had half of it stitched! I don't know what I was thinking! Then I realized that the white on her muff and eventually her hat, really didn't show up against the white linen. So I decided to stitch the fuzzy parts with Wisper (Rainbow Gallery). This isn't the easiest to use. You have to keep the lengths short because it frays a lot. I finished the muff, but it doesn't look the way I thought it would. It seems rather worn, rather than the fluffy look I was going for. I don't know whether to frog it or not. Maybe I should just quit, and start again on another color linen. Maybe the third time is the charm! LOL! 

What do you think?

I have stitched some very large, complicated projects that didn't cause me anywhere near the frustration that this little one has!

Okay, concurrently while I was stitching Seraphina, I was also trying to frame a large project that I finished years ago. Finally decided on a frame, even though it was really too big for it. That meant getting a mat. OMG that took me hours to select, and I only pray that I got the dimensions right! I bought it online, and it was expensive!

This is my year of finishing, and stitching from stash, but I did cave into temptation on one chart I have had my eye on.

This came in the mail today.

It is Painted Flowers from Shakespeare's Peddler. I procrastinated as long as I did because it calls for 40 count black linen. For some reason this is not available anywhere! Also, I don't think my poor eyes could handle it! I have ordered some 20ct black aida. I hope this will have a similar enough look to the linen, but I am worried about it. The other choice would be to try to find 20ct black linen, and stitch one over one. I didn't know if the linen would hold up to that.

I will pop back in a few days to let you know my progress.