January WIPocalypse

So for this month's WIPcalypse theme: Introduce yourself, your projects and any goals you have for the year!

A Little Introduction
My favourite stitching style is small and cute, and am especially enchanted by the Japanese kawaii aesthetic. This shows itself a lot in my favourite stitching motifs of cute food. I especially love the Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery for their multiple cute food patterns. I am however, finding myself more and more interested in the French style of cross stitching, especially artists such as Veronique Enginger, Helene le Berre and the like. I do also enjoy many Lizzie Kate designs.

My current stash has mainly Cosmo and DMC threads.

Introducing my new start projects

1. Lizzie Kate's Sweet Tooth Boxer Jrs

Like I said above, I highly enjoy cute food patterns, so this project has been something I've wanted to do! I would like to make them into one larger piece which can be framed and hung in a kitchen.

2. Ink Circles' Here Comes Treble; First Bass; Alto Gether Now
I want to make these as a gift for a friend to hang in a music corner! Instead of three different pieces, I want to stitch them onto a single stave; starting with treble, followed by bass and then alto. This will also fit in nicely with the October theme, but I hope I finish it before then?! Ha, we will see.

3. Songbird (from CrossStitcher magazine June 2012)
I love the gorgeous colours and look of this piece. I had even kitted it with 14ct Aida, but later chickened out because the size was too big for me. (I have really really really low motivation to finish pieces.) I think now that I have a little more confidence, I will attempt it in 2013. Still deciding if I will use 14ct or 28ct.

4. Nora Corbett's Trick or Treat Fairy
Halloween is my favourite "holiday" season (Christmas is a close second!) and I was sad I was too busy to do any Halloween related stitching for 2012. This year I am determined to do something for Halloween! I've chosen Nora Corbett's Trick or Treat Fairy! Good for April's theme of Mirabilia too!

5. Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery's Woodland 2013 sampler
I sat out on desserts, fruits, and the winter wonderland. I will NOT sit out on the Woodland sampler!

6. Helene le Berre's Gourmandises Printanieres from Mango Agenda 2012
I love macarons, and this beautiful piece has been tempting me since last year! I finally managed to get the pattern for this piece and will try to start and finish it this year.

7. A pattern from Soda Stitch
I am waiting for SO-3165, a Little Red Riding Hood and a Wolf. However, if I'm not able to get that pattern, I will do SR-B71, Full of Sunshine and Love instead! I can wait for the pattern, no rush at all... I will just start on the others first...

8. Lizzie Kate's Living with Charms
Ahhhhh I don't know if I can do this!! I want to!

9. Flying Owl from OOE Designs
Owls! This is going to take me a long while, but I would like to start on it, at least!

10. "Sweet Hearts" from Good Natured Girls' Young at Heart

Again, in keeping with the birdie theme! The two birds are so cute and snuggly. I want to finish this pattern this year, for sure!

10 projects! I'm not sure I can even start on them all, but I will try my hardest! It may seem like I have very small goals for 2013, but I have school and other things to worry about too, so this has to be a start. I think I will also end up stitching some things in between for gifts and such like.


January WIPocalypse progress
So for the first quarter of the year, I've decided to concentrate on a few pieces so that I can finish them first... (hahaha.)

I've started up on the Ink Circles piece on 32ct Stormy Belfast. I'm not sure on the colour right now, but I think it'll be okay... I hope.

I've also picked up the necessary threads and fabric for the Sweet Tooth Boxers and the Woodland Sampler. I actually did start the Woodland Sampler on one over 25ct Dublin, decided that I was being ridiculous about 20 stitches in and managed to get in the recommended 28ct Monaco. It's almost time to see the February pattern but I haven't had time to even start again on the frames ahhhhh.

Fortunately I did start in on the Sweet Tooth Boxers, which some of you may recall from the IHSW post early this week. I've made a little bit of progress on Cupcake since... Here's a pic of it as of last night. Finished up most of the red scallops (leaving the little bit at the bottom for when I will cut more red thread again) and the green border. Stitching using the recommended Week Dye Works threads and on 28ct Annabelle.

Hopefully next month we will see much more progress on these pieces! I can't wait to blog hop and see how everyone is doing with their WIPocalypse works!

Alanna x

Tweet

IHSW January 2013

Well International Hermit and Stitch Weekend for January 2013 just went by... but for me, it was more like International Hermit and Sleep weekend... sigh.

I did get on with a LITTLE bit more stitching-related stuff over the weekend and since the last time I blogged, but not as much as I'd like, for sure!

Made a teensy bit of progress on the Lizzie Kate pattern I had started sometime last week. The bottom corner is still not finished. More on this in the near future, when I can get some more progress on it. Very easy pattern to stitch, really.

Got a huge stash of stitching fabric from eBay for a steal! Very very happy, this will keep me stitching and happy for yonks. In a variety of good sizes for me too! Sorted out some material for my WIPocalypse pieces.

Got out an old WIP to investigate, and realised I had stitched parts of it wrong. Ended up having to frog them... I actually lost progress on a work this weekend, lol. This is one of The Floss Box's biscornu patterns with mermaids. I don't actually want to turn it into a biscornu, I just like mermaids, haha.

I also got a new, crafty but unstitchy toy... A Cuttlebug! Excited to see what I can do with this! I did get scalloped oval dies, but I'm so excited to try out more now!

Tweet

TUSAL 2013: January

The Totally Useless Stitch Along (TUSAL) is back for 2013, and I am ready to be a part of this!

I've prepared a nice little jar for my orts...

Ha! This is Orton, my little ort jar for 2013. Love his little robot face! He's plastic because I'm really careless and am sure to break something glass, but I'm going to have tons of fun seeing him change colours!

I've been stitching a little since the start of the new year, so Orton has some little threads inside...

Happy stitching!

Tweet

Book review: Two-hour Cross-Stitch: Flowers

Got a new book recently but had no time to review it till now!

I picked up Two-Hour Cross-Stitch: Flowers from Amazon recently because it was at a rather good price. 300 lovely designs that seem very easy to stitch, and will look lovely as little motifs on hairbands and the like. I also enjoyed the layout of the book - no nonsense, gridded in coloured squares and a stitched example right beside. Threads colours used are DMC.

The 300 designs come in several chapters: Deco, Fantasy, Formal, Traditional and Monograms & Messages. It's not all flowers per se too, there are some little fans, fruits, baskets, portraits and etc.

Overall, I am rather pleased with the book. 300 designs that seem very easy and gratifying to stitch, and easily completed in a few hours per motif, tops. The only bugbear is that there aren't any finishing ideas in the book, so you probably need to have some ideas in mind! 

To test the two-hour claim, I stitched design 94 from it, a stylised flower with a little blue background. I didn't have the colours recommended in the colour code in my stash, so I just used the most visually similar colours.

At the end of two hours, this is what I had...

About 85% done with the design!

And finished:

For some reason, the last 15% took me another hour by itself. I think it was because I had to deal with confetti stitches and I'm picky enough that I change my threads if the jump is more than around three stitches away. I also had some strange issues with the fabric, as I decided not to use the hoop for this particular motif.

Some time ago, I commented that messy stitches on the back annoy me, and someone asked me how neat mine are. Here's the back of this flower.

Yeah, it's not the neatest stitching on earth, but you can probably see that my confetti stitches are by themselves and most of the sections are pretty neat.

I finished this into a little pincushion thingum. Not too pleased with it, but it'll do.

Tweet

Happy new year!

Hoping that everyone has a very good new year ahead! I'm looking forward to a year of great stitches and fun.

I picked up this colour 8062 from the Seasons range of Cosmo threads by Lecien. The picture does it no justice, truly a beautiful mix. I'm dying to try it! 80 different colours in the range, but my LNS only carries 5, bah!

Tweet

Finish: Unicorn O fridge magnet

I got done with the perforated plastic ornament thingie I was working on some time ago, but I just didn't have time to post about it until now.

I did have a lot of problems with this piece. I was rushing it towards the end, so I miscounted threads on several sections - some of the stitches are done with 4ply instead of 3ply. Ugh. The backstitch was also a real pain to do, and it wasn't until I had packed it up that I realised I had missed two backstitches on the O. I have no idea how I even managed that. In any case... I hope my recipient doesn't notice, or at least can forgive me for it! My excuse (ha) is that I was trying to make deadline for the shipping, on top of finals and packing for coming home... and in the end I missed shipping deadline anyway. Sigh.

Anyway, I finished it as a magnet because I didn't know how to finish it as an ornament. I'm also unhappy with how I snipped it down to size, I will have to practice more on that. In any case, this was an interesting lesson on perforated plastic, I'll be sure to work on this more.

Pattern: Cross Stitch Crazy #167 (Modified from 'Q')

Tweet

WIPocalypse 2013

Well, I'm horrible generally with finishing large projects, but WIPocalypse 2013 MIGHT give me some motivation to do some finishes!

As you might have sensed, I am generally into smaller pieces, so my list for WIPocalypse won't be very much different in the sense that I probably will be choosing easier pieces to finish, as compared to some of the huge masterpieces that I've been seeing other stitching bloggers do for 2012.

Well, no matter! Here's my short (but probably growing) list for the year.

1. Lizzie Kate's Sweet Tooth Boxer Jrs
2. Lizzie Kate's Living with Charm Flip-Its
3. Something music related (Haven't quite decided... any suggestions?)
4. Songbird (from CrossStitcher magazine)
5. Something for Halloween!
6. Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery's Woodland 2013 sampler

I'm not really sure what else yet, but I'll probably add to this list as I go along!

Tweet