Heathwitch’s Stitchcraft

Bloom

The other finish of the weekend (started on Saturday night and finished on Sunday morning) was another Lizzie*Kate design (are you sensing a theme here, yet?) — one the freebies, “Bloom”.

This time, for a change from stitching on evenweave, I worked this piece on 16ct aida, in a lovely celadon colour. While I did use some of the thread colours as suggested by the chart, I did some other substitution — like adding DMC Colour Variations 4110 for the border, and experimenting with DMC’s Light Effects thread (colour E316) for the text.

Excusing the wonkiness of the scan — I couldn’t get it straight for some reason — here’s how it came out, after 6 hours of stitching:

While I liked working with the Light Effects, and think it came out pretty well, I do have one thing to say about it. Thread Heaven. Seriously. I would not have coped with the metallic thread without it — I had a lot less tangles and problems when I remembered to use used Thread Heaven. :-)

…And for those who’ve wondered what the back of my work looks like, here you go. As you can tell, I like to keep things as tidy as possible:

I’ve since started another Lizzie*Kate chart, and hopefully should have a scan of it as a WIP soon. Other than that, a package of some black 28ct evenweave arrived, so that’s another project to start… ;-)

Wear a Smile

I finished Lizzie*Kate’s “Wear a Smile” on Saturday — it turned out to be a smooth 8-hour piece, and that’s on 28ct evenweave (so it’ll probably be finished in shorter time if stitched on aida). Here’s how it looks now:

I replaced all the colours on this piece, too — not by much, just opting for a different shade of red and green (for instance, in terms of the red, choosing DMC 3685 instead of 3777), and also choosing a blue-based Colour Vatiations thread (DMC 4240) instead of a plain blue.

Some folks over on my personal journal have said — after seeing the WIPs of this recently — that they couldn’t make out the variations of hue in this thread from the scans, so hopefully a close-up of the “m” in “Smile” will help…

… But that wasn’t the only piece I finished this weekend, oh no… ;-)

[WIP] Wear a Smile

Lizzie*Kate’s “Wear a Smile” has taken me two and a half hours so far. I think it’s really showing the varigated thread (DMC’s Colour Variations 4240) to great effect.

I am under the weather today, so am taking a day in bed with some fruit, plenty of water, and my cross stitch. Who knows how many stitches may get done inbetween boughts of sleep? :-)

Live, Laugh, Love…

My first finish of 2009 is one of Lizzie*Kate‘s Snippet designs, which I love. :-) I did some thread substitution on this — opting to use some plain DMC colours for the text and some of their Colour Variations for the decorations. I think it has worked out rather nicely — what say you?

This piece, “Live, Laugh, Love”, took seven hours to stitch (on 28ct evenweave) and will most likely end up as one of a series of thank you presents that I’m hoping to gift some people with this summer. I enjoyed stitching it that much that, once done, I immediately picked up another Snippet chart and made a start on that one last night, again on 28ct evenweave:

This will be “Wear a Smile”, and I’m doing something similar here — the main text is in Colour Variations, with the remaining text in plain colours. So far I’m about 1hr 40mins into this one, so it’s coming along nicely. I just wish I spend more time stitching at the moment as I’m really in the mood for it! LOL …

More updates coming soon! :-)