WIP Wednesday and finishes

Here is a little reminder of where I was last week with the Vakje per week. This week I continued with the trend of small squares - very happily so as the pattern this week was a darning pattern and I have found that I'm not such a fan of doing them.

The pattern in question was one taken from an old embroidery that had an error in it - and the error was kept which made it difficult to get into the swing of things as I had to constantly keep an eye on things. I have to say though that I am glad I grit my teeth and did it as it does look nice. I used Tentakulum - Klimt as the thread for the week.

Dear Rien did see some progress but not very much - I found myself in the mood to do something smaller so I set this aside and got on with that.

I think I need to get a move on and catch up with this and then I'd be keener to do this. You can see above that I did the edge of the blue and started filling in the centre.

What I did do is work on these over the weekend. The bunny (CrossStitcher 303) jumped out of the cupboard where I keep my magazine freebies which was a bit of an indicator that it wanted to be done (and that I have way too many unstitched freebies!). It was supposed to be a brooch but I used a bit of the leftover thread to make a hanging loop for on my Easter tree next year.

The swallow (CrossStitcher 292) followed as I had rather enjoyed stitching on wood. This too was supposed to be a brooch but I decided bunny would need a friend so I added a loop to this as well. I did make one change to this one - I replaced the heart button included in the kit with a metal envelope as that's more traditional.

The heart with the bird (Cross Stitch Crazy March 2017) was changed a LOT. First of all I used 3 strands instead of 2 for better coverage. It was supposed to be a blue bird on a yellow background with pink roses. I didn't like the blues for the bird so I used leftover threads from bunny to make the bird. I used a single thread of the darkest brown from bunny to go over the X of the eye to make it stand out more. I made the roses yellow as I dislike pink. I used the blue for the background to be more sky like. I didn't use the included pink waxed cord to hang it with as there was no pink in the embroidery so it looked out of place (and yes, the dislike pink bit played a role here too hehe)

One would think that this would be enough stitching but no... I did more! I started and mostly finished the first side of the hedgehog pincushion from CrossStitcher 291 when I discovered that I'd miscounted the starting place and would end up with just one bunch of threads  (= one stitch) away from the edge, which is not enough seam allowance. I have for the time being set it aside in disgust and will probably solve it by stitching it on my own fabric at a later point. I may end up finishing the side I have done and cutting it that close to the stitching on all sides and making a card out of it.

The last thing on my list of things I have done this week is the new project: Journey. Since I blogged about it earlier today and yesterday I shall link you to the relevant posts so you can read all about it if you haven't already. The posts are:  Journey: A New Project and Journey: Day 1.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post! I shall be back tomorrow with another journey post, and on Friday with this week's freebie.