WIP Wednesday - The SALs and more!

The nice thing about the Vakje per week SAL is that it's easy enough to spot the difference between one week and the next just by looking at the pictures. This week's pattern was simple but finding the easy path to use as little thread as possible without having to start and stop for every bit was a bigger challenge - I can't say I was fully successful but I did my best.

I stayed in the same colour range as last week just like I have in the past with the blocks of same colour boxes. This week's colours are DMC Color Variations 4073 for the squares and GAST Gold Leaf (0420) for the little rectangles in between and the x in the squares. I'm thinking of doing much smaller squares next week - perhaps 4 in a row.

The April pattern for the Linen and Threads 2017 Mystery Band Sampler Stitch Along was released a little early which, as they are located in Australia, means that it was available for me on Friday lunchtime! I did get stitching fairly soon after it was released but I had a couple of things to finish stitching before then, which I'll tell you more about in a bit.

The one interesting bit about this month's pattern is that there is no line under the pattern like there have been for all the other months that splits the different bands up. This tells me that perhaps (unless the lack of a line was an April fools joke) next month's pattern will join up to this month's. As I like to adjust the colours of the lines between and along the side to what I'm doing I have decided that rather than go ahead and do them and have the loose ends of parked threads getting in my way I'd wait and see what next month brings.

The other thing I didn't do because of this working theory is the little flowers between the urns and the trees - I'm not sure if they are planned to be flowers or not and again I'd rather play it safe and wait than regret my colour choices and have to rip.

I stitched the rather feminine looking vases with DMC 964 and 597 starting with the former and going via a blended thread bit where I used a strand of both to the latter for the base. The flowers in the vases I did with DMC 3807 for the flowers and a combination of DMC 563 and 368 for the leaves and stems. The tree shapes I did with DMC 561 and 991.

I didn't get as much done on the The Never Ending Band Sampler Stitch-Along but I did finish this band using DMC Color Variations 4170 for the flowers and DMC 369 for the leaves. I also did a replacement band for the alphabet as I didn't want to deal with all the tiny backstitching on the 18ct Aida - I used the little pattern that is just behind the Z in the pattern given and stitched it across the whole width using DMC Coloris 4500.

I have set it aside to do a bit of other stitching - which I will tell you about now.

First of all I stitched the NFSAL pattern that I share over on DeviantArt. It uses quite a few colours but as they run into each other they can also be stitched with less and then blending the colours you do have. I will eventually make this into a pincushion or biscornu - not sure which shape yet. You can find the pattern here along with a pink version in case orange is a bit bright for you.

Then I stitched the Jasmine mucha princess fob pattern (and for the photo shoved it in the lid of a photo box, but it will become a fob soon). You can find the pattern here btw. There is an awful lot of backstitching on this one - and it seemed to take forever but I'm glad I did this one as the colours needed a few tweaks from the original pattern so I was able to adjust that before sharing.

And last of all I started the Anna fob, though on 14ct Rustico Aida so it's going to be a bit too big to be a fob. I have almost finished the backstitching of the darker blue, and have already completed all of the cross stitching and backstitching of the lighter blue. You can find the pattern here.

So that's what has been keeping me busy this week - I'll be back Friday with another mucha princess fob!