Heathwitch’s Stitchcraft

[finish] Lughnasadh

Ta-da — here it is! One completed square for the sabbats wallhanging, taken from charts in Willow Polson’s book Sabbat Entertaining.

This is the Lughnasadh square, for the festival next week (it’s celebrated 31/7 – 2/8). It took me around twenty hours, so I think I will allow at least thirty for other squares on the wallhanging, just in case.

Next up is a short break from the sabbats wallhanging, while I work on a few other WIPs. Then I’ll be moving onto the square for Mabon (Autumn Equinox) which is represented by a basket of harvest vegetables.

[wip] Lughnasadh #3

Last night I managed to do some more on the Lughnasadh square, bringing it up to the fourteen hour mark. And at the end of said fourteen hours, I have a loaf of bread and some blobs :p

The blobs are actually ears of wheat; the backstitching (which is where I’m up to now) will bring those out fully.

I’m really pleased with how the wheat ears have turned out; there’s actually two different colours of thread in there, one of which I had to substitute because the original colour requested by the chart had been discontinued. But I don’t think I’ve done badly in finding a suitable alternative :)

[finish] Solo & [wip] Lughnasadh #2

Remember the cat I was cross stitching, Solo? Well, I finally finished him back-end of last week. He’s since been framed and mailed down as a surprise gift to a dear friend, to cheer her up some. :)

Here’s a finished shot of Solo, complete with frame:

[wip] Lughnasadh #1

My new current WIP is a wallhanging depicting the sabbats, taken from charts in Willow Polson’s book Sabbat Entertaining. I have deviated a little from the original for some of the fabric — I’ll be using combinations of black, pewter, celadon (sage), antique white and cream fabrics for the sabbats, so that everything appears a little more balanced… I hope!

I’m stitching this for my coven, and working at it in order relating to the time of year in which I’m stitching — so I’m currently working on the Lughnasadh square, which is the bottom left corner. It will eventually depict a loaf of bread with some corn. At four hours in, I’m up to here:

It’s worked on 18ct aida, which is the smallest I’ve worked so far — very much a case of being careful, as it’s easy to part threads and make your own holes. But I’m getting there. The only real problem was that some of the floss colours have been discontinued by DMC, so I’ve had to colour-match to the closest available equivalents. Here’s hoping it works…

[wip] Solo #5

Here we go… After a little more stitching tonight, I’ve moved on to this:

Just got to do the backstitching now (and the French knots for his face, ergh) and then Solo will be complete :-)