UFO #7: The last fish complete!

The last fish is complete at last! It's not nearly as rainbow-ish as the photo in the magazine suggested however I'm happy with the result and am glad this project is *finally* finished.

Below is the result of all these weeks/years of work - perhaps not quite the way the designer intended but it's the way I wanted it and I'm happy with the result.

I've not yet decided how to frame it - that's a decision for another day.

UFO #7: The last fish

I was tempted to crop this image so you could see the stitching more easily and then I realised that you would then not see how small it is compared to the other fish so I left it uncropped. Progress isn't going as fast as it was with the red fish but I'm getting there! Some days I get lots done - some days I don't however having to remember that I'm working in mirror image is slowing me down a little, especially when I need to start the next colour. The black bit is in the face of the fish. I have completed most of the darker green and white, all  of the lighter green and have started to do the black.

UFO #7: "red" fish completed

I'm not really sure how I managed to complete this yesterday, though staying up far too late certainly helped... but I was close to the finish of this fish and really wanted it finished As you can see it's not so red as it seemed in the magazine image so I'm extra pleased I swapped out the 760 pink for the 350 coral colour when I started this fish - I now just wish I'd chosen a replacement for the 351 (coral) as well now as it's still more pink than I'd like.

The whole embroidery now looks like this:

And this was the moment I also realised that I'd done some thing wrong with the placement of the top two fish... If you look at the bottom fish and then go back to the magazine image you will perhaps notice that the orange fish especially is much closer to the green border - this was because I'd added some space all around the embroidery when i started doing it. Of course between 1996 when I started this and now, 16 years later, I'd completely forgotten it.. till I saw how far away everything looked from where it should be compared to the two large fish at the top. I have decided that I'll leave it as is as the placement doesn't detract from the overall look of the embroidery.

This of course then makes the placement of the last fish complicated as that depends on the 3 large fish that surround it. My solution will be to find the exact middle between the fish, find the middle of  the pattern of the last fish I need to do (after flipping it to point the same way as the rest of the fish) and then embroider it from the middle. This last fish will not be the easiest to do as I'll have to remember to mentally mirror all the symbols when doing the colours.

UFO #7: "red" fish

I'm not really sure I can call this fish red - it's more coral (that's a shade of pink for the men reading this :P ) however it's seeing quite a bit of progress since the last image I showed here. I've got quite a bit of the lightest "red"  (DMC 351 - Coral) to do still then a whole load of grey, bit of white and some pale purple (3042) to do to complete this fish.

I can feel the end of this project getting closer.. and I will be so glad when it's done!

UFO #7: Progress report

The next big fish is now complete and despite it looking as if it's mostly blue and yellow there is quite a lot of pale green in it too. There is now just one large fish left to do and a medium sized one. Not much to tell this time really so I'll move on and show you what it looks like now...

You may notice a few lines to the top right - that's the big red fish I've started embroidering already.

Just the start of the tail fin here but it will soon grow into the large red fish it is.

UFO #7: The next big fish grows

This is how far I managed to get this before I started stitching yesterday as you can see I got a bit done since the last time. Wednesday I didn't do much as I'd done another round of dead mouse clean-up and it was not very pleasant (I'll spare you the details) and once I'd done that I was not feeling well. Yesterday and today I got quite a bit more done as you can see below:

The body of the fish is completed - just need to complete the fins and tail now. It's really close to the edge of the green edging and it's supposed to be - the fish starts just 2 stitches below the edging. Can't wait to finish this one!

UFO #7 - the next big fish

I've been busy hunting down mice in my house - silly things that thought that a cat free house would make a good winter home but are finding out that I don't like furry animals in the house at all and I had forgotten to update with my progress made on the embroidery. As you can see a goodly amount of the fish is now visible. You can see about 2/3 of the length of the fish and most of the height. I've still got a fair amount of yellow to do before I can do the misc blues that go between the yellow but first I'm doing the blue lower edge to help have enough framework to the fish.

I have not been working on UFO #8 so have no update for that.

UFO #7: Big fish.. Little fish

The big fish that I hadn't completed due to the lack of the yellow is finally finished now. I thought it was the biggest one but apparently there are two this size with a similar colouring.

The little happy fish is all done - it doesn't look as orangey as it did in the photo in the magazine but it does look bright and cheerful. I finished this last night and am very happy with the result.

The whole embroidery is starting to look really nice - just 3 fish left now - a blue/yellow one, a rainbow one and a pinky/red one. I'm going to do the other large blue/yellow fish now.

UFO #7 - yellow fish update.

So far it looks anything but yellow but that will change soon. All I need to do now is a little white in the tail and along the back and then I can settle down and do the yellow. I had expected this to not take so long but I hadn't bargained on how much time the student gardener I have here today and yesterday needs from me to get stuff done. He's a good lad and works really hard but he also needs almost constant supervision, however I have discovered how to keep him going for longer: send the kids out with him. *huge evil grin* He just doesn't like working alone.

UFO #7 - The next fish...

This little fish is the next one I'm doing - he's bright, cheerful and has a nice smiley face - you can see the full length of his body here (well excluding fins) and is right now only a little bigger than the tail of the last fish.

This one only uses 10 colours - I know I said 9 before but I forgot to count the colour I ran out of lol.

For the curious (and especially Kate *wink* ) Here is what the whole embroidery looks like as seen in the magazine I found the pattern in:

The magazine is the Burda special with maritime patterns, E 317 printed in 1995. I'm doing the central area within the green border without the shell border as I really can't cope with all that pink. I'm going to be embroidering the fish that's looking the "wrong" way (middle top row) in mirror image as my inner OCD person doesn't like that one fish is looking the "wrong" way and I do like keeping my inner OCD person happy when it comes to crafts.

UFO #7 extra update

I finished all I can do on the biggest fish of the project - just need to wait for tomorrow when I can go get the yellow I need so I can finish the empty spaces and finish the black back stitching that I can't do till the yellow is completed.

On to the next fish which is tiny compared to this one and "only" has 9 colours, one of which is ironically enough the yellow I need for this fish as well.

UFO #7 Update

This weekend I got a lot of embroidery done in between everything else I did - it seemed like when I was embroidering time did a wobbly and I suddenly got more time because the needle was flying! Everything you see done below that wasn't in the last blog update was done this weekend. I did as much of the body of the fish as I could but I ran out of the pale yellow (3078) 5 minutes before the shop closed for the weekend on Saturday and since I live 15 minutes away there was no chance of getting more till tomorrow as the nearest shop doesn't open on Monday either.

I did as much of the backstitching as I could till the thread ran out near the bit with the missing yellow so that when I have bought the yellow I don't have much left to do of the hated backstitch. Now that this photo is made I'm going to move the hoop to a more useful place so I can go and do the tail, then this fish will go on hold till I've got more of the yellow.

The next fish in this project is a bright happy smiley yellow fish :)

UFO updates, TUSAL and IHSW October.

UFO #7 is coming along slowly mostly because I haven't been stitching at my computer the past week. That isn't to say that I'm not stitching but I've not been well and have had to rest a lot which means spending time in bed to avoid me wandering off and doing other stuff instead of resting. Since the pattern for this UFO is scanned and in use on my computer as it's too small to read easily and I'm out of printer ink I couldn't take this upstairs with me to stitch on. Enter UFO #8 the Sagittarius star sign by Lanarte which has a nice easy to read pattern. (I'd link to it but it's not possible to link directly to their page for it)

When I started UFO #8 on Thursday it looked like this ^  and now it looked like this before my last session of embroidery:

The Centaur is completely finished now except for the backstitching on the head and bow/arrow and I've started the single thread (the rest is done with 2 threads) background in a slightly darker shade of blue. What bothers me about this pattern is the gold splodge on both places where technically genitals *could* be.. what were they trying to do with these badly placed gold patches?

TUSAL: my jar is almost completely full this month it was started with the shells snippets and the leftovers from it, my First biscornu, then the 8 colour challenge, the fish UFO and last of all the star sign I mentioned above. If you look carefully you may spot the gold thread at the top and the silver and glow in the dark just under the greens.

IHSW October is this coming weekend - don't miss out and make time to stitch! If all goes I'll be able to find a bit of time to stitch during the weekend.

UFO #6 and #7 update

UFO #6: I wanted to test how to do a single piece frame around an embroidery as I'd never done it before so I grabbed the shells embroidery and used that - things didn't go exactly to plan so I had to get creative however I'm glad it happened with this instead of the 8 Colour Challenge piece I want to make the frame on as I would have had a panic "attack" (a mental one without the nasty physical side effects) if things had gone wrong on that instead so it was a good idea I tested first.

I hand sewed it all - not really a strength of mine but it's a skill I want to improve so I'm doing it more often.

UFO #7: I've been quietly working away at this in between everything else - it's not been going super fast but speed has picked up since I scanned the pattern and enlarged it on my computer - it was just too small for me to easily read the many symbols on it. I've done about 1/3 of the pattern for this fish so far. I decided that in order to avoid too many miscounted stitches due to not using Aida I'd do one thread of each colour at a time unless there is a larger area I can safely do with more before doing the next colour.

Right now my priorities are:

1. Finish the 8 colour challenge embroidery so it's a completed item.
2. Finish the awning I'm supposed to make for the neighbours (but got side tracked from due to ill health)
3. Make a wall hanging out of the shells embroidery
4. Finish UFO #7