WIPocalypse - January, new finishes and more

 

I am (of course) running late with this, but then it's still January so it's not *that* late hehe. I'm going to try and do this properly this year, so not just a list of what I've done but also answering the question/doing the topic of the month. This month's topic is: "Introduce yourself, your projects, and any goals you have for the year!"

I go as either Magical or Magical525 online. I am a 45 (yikes) mother of 2 boys, one of which is, at 13, now taller than I am by more than a head with the appetite to match which means I have effectively given up trying to cook enough to have leftovers as, cue to his appetite, there are rarely any leftovers. My youngest son is still 11 and despairs at ever being taller than I am - ha!

I tend to have phases of when I do crafts, currently it's cross stitch and crochet but, as you can tell from my blog name, it is also on occasion quilting, though I do that a lot less at the moment. No matter which craft I do I tend to not only follow patterns but also go my own way and create my own, some patterns you can find on this blog (along with a bunch of recipes) and my latest series of patterns are being hosted over on Nerd Central Command International Headquarters These patterns are part of a SAL and have also led to my first two finishes of the year!

Allow me to take a moment from the WIPocalypse to introduce my SAL: Ornament of the Month Which is a year long stitch along that gives you the pattern of a new ornament every month so that by next Christmas you will have 12 new ornaments for your tree - or a garland, or a wall hanging as I have given a pattern to combine all 12 ornaments into a single wall hanging if you don't want ornaments.

The ornament is made with the border from the wall hanging to make it a little bit different and larger, it's 3" on each side and was made with 3 colours of DMC and craft thread for the hanging loop and tassel.

The garland section you see below was made using the pattern for the ornament, the loops to the side will be used to join the sections together much like how you would loop a thread onto a needle to stop the thread slipping when using metallics. The finished size of the ornament is 2 1/4 "

Both were made on 16ct antique white Aida, the colour difference is due to the top ornament being photographed in artificial light and the bottom one in daylight.

Back to WIPocalypse stuff...

In my last post I wrote a quick list of things I want to work on this year:

• Mike's Mushrooms - it's in dire need of a bit more love and some more being stitched on it.
• TW's Castle Ridge - a new start for the year and I want to finish it this year too.
• My ornament SAL - I want to stitch them up myself too and make examples of how to finish them.
• More TW - not sure what but it will happen.
• The Christmas tree tea cosy - will need to buy thread for that though.
• The cutlery WIP needs finishing.

Now I will take a while to show where they are now and explain more as needed.

Mike's Mushrooms:

I have not worked on this at all since my last post with a photo of it in, which was may 20th of last year. It really needs a bit more work done to it, so my goal for this year is to at least finish the 400 x 400 stitches bit of marked fabric to make this section square. I would however like to get a bit more than just that done.

Teresa Wentzler's Castle Ridge

This was my Christmas present to myself which I started just after midnight on January 1st I did some stitching on it before setting it aside to work on the Ornament of the Month ornaments I made. I bought a kit as I wanted to do this the way Teresa planned. It's 18 ct Antique Aida, 90 x 126 stitches and will be 5" x 7" / 12,7 cm x 17,8 cm when complete. There are only 24 colours of DMC in the kit but Teresa has, as she always does, made that stretch to create 32 colours.

Last night I picked it up again and went from having about 50 stitches done to who knows how many (I'm not a stitch counter - sorry) that you can see in the photo to the left. I had a go at thread gridding - it didn't go entirely to plan as you can tell by the fact that only the bottom left hand corner is marked, but it's even and that's more important.

I have decided to work on the rocks at the bottom first, then move onto the castle.

I hope to complete this embroidery this year.

My ornament SAL

You will have read about my SAL above so I won't repeat myself hehe. My plan is to complete one hanging ornament and one garland ornament a month around the time I post the next pattern. They will all be done on the same fabric using 3 colours of DMC.

The Christmas tree tea cosy

This is a project that I've been wanting to do since I saw it in a magazine in the 80's - this year I WILL make it happen! I have the fabric for it at last (it was discontinued) and all I need to do now is buy thread for the project and make it.

The cutlery sampler

This is a Lanarte kit I got for myself last November
It will be 6 x 7 3/4"/ 15 cm x 20 cm and is made on a 27 ct (according to the packet) cotton evenweave. So far I have done 2 of 6 pieces of cutlerry and then there is a border - it should have "Forks and Spoons" backstitched at the top and bottom but I don't see me doing that - I am probably going to use the side borders at the top and bottom instead.
 
 I hope to complete this embroidery this year.

The jasmine spray

 For some reason I thought I had a lot more to do on this but it appears that "all" I have to do is rip out the backstitching I don't like because it doesn't show at all, which means that the petal lines do not show and it all merges into one, and redo it.

This is also an embroidery I wish to complete this year - this month even if I can make myself do it, as for some reason thought I love the colours and love the photo in the magazine I got this from, I have grown to really dislike this piece.

 

The border of the week sampler

In The Netherlands "randje per week"  has become a bit of a thing. It's a SAL where you are given 2 or more borders a week to add to a long strip of fabric - or a length of edging fabric. It started last year and really took off with a fb group being made and even meets. Last years patterns will be made into a book but for another couple of months you can download the weekly patterns from the blog. They are continuing this SAL this year.

The interesting thing about this SAL is that ALL the borders are taken from old samplers made by people, often school girls, to learn the patterns. I love that they not only give the pattern but, on a second blog, they give all the information of where the pattern came from.

I will be making my version on a larger piece of light brown Jobelan, probably using my Cosmo variegated threads. My plan is to attempt to keep up but I will see how it goes as I am still at the hemming the fabric stage.

Celtic Wolf

The dA group Stitching Pirates is hosting a competition:  TRIBAL AND TOTEMIC CONTEST. For my entry I will be making a Celtic style wolf. This will need to be finished before the end of march so I need to hurry up and decide what fabric to make it on.

More TW

I'm not entirely sure which of the many smaller TW patterns I will do but my plan is to slowly work my way through them.

This is my list for now, hopefully my list will not grow by too much.

A new year - and perhaps a new beginning

It's that time of year when everyone posts about their hopes and dreams and plans for the year to come, I'm no different as I want to make an overview of which SAL's I want to join in with - and also post a bit about the SAL I'm running myself.

A SAL? I hear you ask..

Yes indeed! This year I'm going to host a SAL over on NCC International Headquarters where I will post a new ornament pattern every month - the first one is up already!

 

TUSAL

Although I've not been too good at posting pictures of my jars I've been good and made a new jar every month, some fuller than others but I have kept them all and will continue to do this.

IHSW

Another SAL I've not posted as much about as I should have last year but I certainly made a point of stitching every time and joining in with a hangout chat with some friends so we can chat, stitch, show stuff off and generally behaving as if we are at a stitching bee.

WIPocalypse

I've been kinda doing this for a long time - just not answering the questions asked every month. I hope to be a bit better about joining in with this as well for the coming year.


This SAL needs a bit more space as I want to make a list of things I want to work on the coming year.

• Mikes Mushrooms - it's in dire need of a bit more love and some more being stitched on it.
• TW's Castle Ridge - a new start for the year and I want to finish it this year too.
• My ornament SAL - I want to stitch them up myself too and make examples of how to finish them.
• More TW - not sure what but it will happen.
• The Christmas tree tea cosy - will need to buy thread for that though.
• The cutlery WIP needs finishing.

The Magnificent Year of Teresa Wentzler

Last year I had a blast doing this and this year I have already started on Castle Ridge, in fact it was this project that had the honour of the first stitch of the year! Carla is a great enabler and is keen to egg people on, so I have no doubt that I will finish Castle Ridge and more by the end of the year!

Tons of Tiny

This is another new SAL that I will be joining in with, and it has the added bonus that it fits in nicely with my own SAL as they too are tiny patterns! I shall be sending on some patterns of things I have made in the deep past and still have the patterns for.

D.E.S.I.G.N.

This great little project is meant to help showcase designers all over the world - anyone can jump in and post about a designer they love - and even designers themselves are allowed to write about themselves and their work and share it with the world to see!

Stitch From Stash

It's always easy to go out and buy whatever you want or think you need but it's far better to first go stash shopping instead. There will always be things one really needs to be able to complete a project but if one is careful with money this is more than doable. So with that in mind, along with my stash enhancement activities late last year *gulp* I have decided to curb myself a bit more and try and stick to the 25 dollar budget , though hopefully I will spend far less.

TW: Peacock Tapestry

As with the ECS I wanted to have a look and see what the fabric would look like with the colours needed for the PT to make sure that all the colours would be properly visible and look nice and I'm glad to say they do so I appear to have made a good choice when I bought that fabric 2 weeks ago before even deciding to do this. I won't be starting this one yet, I need to properly collect the threads I need first as quite a few of the colours you can see are already being used in other projects and I don't yet have the speciality threads I need either, however by the time I have completed the tile floor, ECS and Mike's Mushrooms I most definitively will. I have already decided that the 504 I have, which was discontinued by DMC, will be saved for this project so I have set it aside, along with some other skeins I had in my stash box, so a start has been made with collecting these threads. I have 8 colours of 73 and need 95 skeins in total + the Kreinick threads. I suddenly realise why the kits were always so expensive lol.

TW: English Cottage Sampler

My dear friend Carla  has bravely started doing Teresa Wentzler's English Cottage Sampler and after a long search, a plea for help and some more searching she managed to get her hands on what appears to be the last piece of  Dublin Linen "Driftwood" that is the correct size. When I mentioned that I may be doing this embroidery myself too she ran off and started searching for some for me, so I too could do the embroidery on the fabric that Teresa intended. Unfortunately none could be found however…

A couple of weekends ago I got this mystery Zweigart fabric - it's 25ct and burn tests showed that it's not got any synthetic material in it - which I was planning on using for the embroidery. To show what the threads look like on the fabric I dug in my stash, got them all out and laid them on the fabric on my desk (over the stuff I have on it, hence the lumps and bumps in the image lol).

This is a close-up of the fabric using the macro setting on my camera - please ignore the blurry edges - it always does that. As you can see it's a nice neutral colour that's not white and it has some interesting speckles of brown in it here and there.

While I was digging out the threads I wondered how people coped with the colour changes that happened after many of Teresa's patterns had been created. The 504 for example which has been "replaced" with the 3813. I happen to have both in my stash so I compared the two and the 3813 is a slightly different shade to the 504 - different enough that I wonder why DMC chose to remove the 504 as they have so many other colours that are even closer in colour than these two are.

TW arrivals...

So today my patterns arrived in the post - properly taped up so it was hard to open the envelope but that meant that they couldn't fall out in transit so all is good. I had a look at them and got the old rabbit in headlights feeling after seeing the massive lists of blended colours needed for the projects - I don't think I could face working on all 3 at the same time lol.

One thing I noticed was that all 3 are the original patterns - hand drawn that is, not computer generated, so I will need to take great care in reading Teresa's site to make sure I see any pattern edits I need to make etc. and just to be safe I'm going to check out the Teresa Wentzler bulletin board before I start too!

Most importantly I think I shall make the Peacock Tapestry Ornament and English Cottage Sampler Ornament  first so I can see what it would look like on the fabric I have and am thinking of using for it/them and try out the speciality stitches before it *really* matters.

2014: The Year of the Magnificent Teresa Wentzler

My dear friend Carla is holding her own SAL:  "2014: The Year of the Magnificent Teresa Wentzler" and she inspired me to also make something of TW - something I've never done before and completely out of my comfort zone.

I decided to do Futurecast as that pattern gave me the most scope to choose colours that I liked and avoid the dreaded pinks and purples. I didn't have that many variegated threads that had more than one colour in them and decided in the end to use DMC 4010 for it as I liked the pale blues, greys. beiges and umm yeah there was a bluish purple in there too lol.

It took me 2 days to choose all the colours I wanted to use, though I would have preferred to avoid the purples, I soon realised that the greys were going to be too similar to the other colours to show up much so I decided on using the pale blue as my colour group 1 starting colour, pale beige as my colour group #2 colour and the purple as the third group. I ended up using silver as the metallic and pearlescent white as the other colour even though I was originally planning it the other way round.

These are the colours I ended up using: 

My main colour group was blue with the inspiration colour being 162 - I chose 813, 826, and 827 as the other 3 colours in the colour group.
My secondary colour was creamish - I chose 3866 as the colour and 3782 as the medium colour to go with it.
My tertiary colour was greyish purple, with 159 as the light and 160 as the darker shade to go with it.
My metallic is E168 (silver)
The crystal ball was done in pearlescent E5200
Back stitching around the silver was mostly done with silver thread except around the wings where I used 826, which is also the colour I used for the back stitching around the blue of the dragon. I used 3782 around all the secondary colour stitches and 160 around the third colour stitches.

Having picked the colours and carefully looked at the pattern I realised that using my usual 18ct Aida was not going to cut it due to the 1/2 cross stitches it had - though it's possible to do them on Aida it's no fun trying to guess the middle of a bunch of threads on such a small scale and then hoping that it looks ok. I decided to see what else I still had lurking in my drawer and box. I rediscovered the lovely pale green/blue splotched overdyed 28 ct Lugana that Carla had sent me as a prize many moons ago and after some careful auditioning decided that it would look lovely.

As I'm a fabric miser I carefully measured the amount of fabric needed for the project and realised that if I cut my piece in half I would have exactly enough for this project and still have some leftover for another project, which in my book is a perfect solution.

Although I was determined to wait until I'd finished the border of my 8th century floor tile before starting the dragon I just couldn't wait so I chucked it aside and started it on the second day of the IHSW. I got quite a bit done that day as, for the most part, the pattern wasn't as daunting as I'd feared.

I decided to take photos of the project every day and make a blog post but sadly I never got round to the blog posts as I was too busy with life and stitching. Fortunately I DID make a photo every day so there are progress shots of it. I decided to make them into a single .gif with the shots so you can see them all at high(ish) speed.

I had quite a bit of trouble with the pattern as it turned out - some of it was due to not being used to doing 1/2 cross stitches and I'd get confused where I was supposed to put them and where they were supposed to nest with each other and other stitches - some I spotted on time and fixed - some I only found out about later and if it didn't look off I left them as it was.

I also discovered about half way through that the back foot was a stitch short - as I’d worked down from the leg to the foot and then along the tail to the left and I didn't want to remove a good 50 stitches I decided that having the foot a stitch short was bearable, though it did make doing the foot a bit more difficult later on.

I then realised that I'd made an even bigger goof with the end of the tail - I'd managed to get it 1/2 a stitch off height wise and didn't noticed till I'd almost completed all the silver stitches along the back. Here again I didn't want to deal with so much frog stitching and decided to make it work - and as you can see I did!

The backstitching took a bit of thought as I worked but overall I'm happy with how I decided to highlight the colours I used.

For the beads I made a special trip to the lovely treasure hoard in Eindhoven which is so stuffed with crafty things that people can barely move. I found the perfect silver beads to use along his back and also found some blue that exactly matched DMC 826. I also picked up some white beads thinking that they too might look good.

While I was in the shop I had a look at the embroidery fabric and found a nice brownish linen that was almost finished - sadly the bolt did not admit to what it was but I later found out that it is a 25 ct linen.  End of bolt pieces are good to take to measure as we all know and after having a chat with the guy who owns the shop and telling him that I'd come all the way specially to go to his shop he was nice and gave me what was just 1 cm less than a meter for 75 cm's worth (a meter is 36 inches so I got 35,5 inches for the price of 27 inches) a great deal! I was also tempted by the threads as I had wished that I'd had more colour s to choose from so I completed my collection of the 40XX series and got myself all of the other colours. Fortunately I'd had to baby sit for my ex one night of his kid’s weekend and I had some extra cash burning a hole in my pocket so I was able to splurge for a change.

 

I ended up using the silver beads in the border as well as along his back as I found that the lovely blue ones were too big and the white ones were too small - a typical goldilocks situation.

The completed embroidery looks like this:

And I will be using it as the front of my diary cover for this year - as soon as I've decided which colour to use for the back, spine and inner side of the cover.