The Mini Project Has Evolved - HAED QS Clara Progress

Many of you know that recently my enthusiasm for my current cross stitch projects was waned. In order to coax it back to life I worked on a few mini projects, which helped tremendously. In fact it was so successful I decided to move onto QS Clara.

Now I know that at over 50,000 stitches I can not claim that this piece is in any way 'mini', but compared to some of Heaven and Earth Designs new super sized charts Clara is positively tiny. When I began this chart I decided to stitch the black outline first and then fill in the colour. This has been the trick to how I have managed to work on this while staying in a mini mentality.

Each section of colour filled in feels like little finish, which builds on the piece as a whole. So when I sit down to work on this, instead of feeling overwhelmed with how much is left, I just concentrate on the little piece currently being stitched. It has worked really well and I am having a lot of fun with it.

HAED QS Clara - Hannah Lynn Disney

Anyone who has stitched a Hannah Lynn pattern knows that the hair is almost pure confetti, which makes it very time consuming. Working each section individually has made it much more manageable. I am still working on my Somebunny to love mini at lunch time and for those situations where Clara would be too unwieldy.

This piece is also a great example of a parking method I use, which I call parking by feature. It may have another name but I have never come across it. This is a technique I use to avoid lines appearing between columns and I find it also breaks down the chart into more manageable chunks.

Have no idea what I mean by parking? Check out my tutorial for the column method: Parking Tutorial

I will be posting a tutorial on my park by feature method in the near future, however if you have any questions or suggestions please leave a comment below.

Parking Tutorial

Ok so I realise I promised this ages ago, but I did finally manage to get around to doing it. This is a picture heavy post. Also this is the way I find it easiest to do parking other people may find other ways much more efficient.

Ok here we go. When I stitch HAED patterns I stitch in 10x10 blocks in vertical rows. This means I stitch all the stitches in a 10x10 block and then move down to the next block below it. As I stitch each colour I 'park' or leave the thread in the place where that colour is next in the block below.

First lets have a look at two blocks of chart

Chart

As the 0 symbol on this chart is metallic I am leaving it til the end so I have skipped those but normally I would start with whatever colour was first in the top left of the block. Therefore here I started with the second colour the ) symbol

Here I have underlined all of this symbol in this block for you to see.

The red mark in the next block down shows where I will park my thread. So I stitch all the stitches with that symbol in that bock.

My four stitches of that colour tent stitched

Then I park that colour in the bottom left of where it next occurs in the next block down. It doesn't really matter in which corner you decide to park your thread just so long as you are consistent or you will get very mixed up.

First Parked Thread

Then I move onto the next colour. The stitches I have just done are now coloured in green so I know which stitches I have stitched. I have underlined the next stitches to be done in this block.

I now stitch all these stitches and park the thread where that symbol occurs, I have marked in red, in the next block down.

Two colours, stitched and parked

I continue on as such, working my way through each of the colours until the entire block is done and I have all my threads parked in the next block.

Completed Block

 I will then start on the next block beginning with whatever thread is parked on the first row to the left of the block. This way if I have parked them correctly all I have to do is stitch whatever symbols corresponds to the symbol where the thread is parked. I do not need to check the colour number for any of that particular symbol in that block, unless I run out of the piece of thread. Once I have stitched all the parked threads I then add in any additional colours there may be in this block that were not in the proceeding block.

I really hope this makes sense and is helpful, if not please do let me know and I will change it. If you need any further help please do not hesitate to e-mail me: pulltheotherthread@gmail.com

Hmmmmm.....

Ok I know I said I would get a parking tutorial up on my blog about a week ago (she cringes) unfortunately life has had a nasty habit of butting in at the moment and I haven't had the time. However this weekend is the IHSW so I have some plans for that.

I want to get a number of things done, I want to finish off my current rotation goal and get the under skirt on Elegance of the Orient finished.

I have most of the outlining on the second page of HAED QS Oliana Otter done so I want to finish that and maybe get page 3 (which is a partial) done also.

I have most of page 7 of HAED Bridge of Wings done so I want to finish that as well and since what is left is fairly confetti heavy I am going to get my pics for the tutorial at the same time.

I would really like to get the second of my mini projects finished.

If all goes well and I manage to get all that done I will have the tutorial up online early next week. One problem, my OH comes off night shift this weekend and since we have barely seen each other for the last while I'm not sure how much stitching I will actually manage to get in.

Hope everyone has a good IHSW, LINK HERE for anyone who is unsure what I am talking about.

HAED Bridge of Wings - update

Well I worked a bit more on Bridge of Wings and have nearly finished page 7. I did start on page 6 also because I was really exhausted a couple of nights and didn't have the mental energy needed to concentrate on confetti.

On my last update a number of people.commented on the amount of parked threads I have. While this is partly because there is a lot of colour changes in this section it is also due to the way I deal with confetti.

After trying a number of different ways of stitching confetti I finally settled on stitching all of one colour in a 10x10 block and parking it in the next block down, then moving onto the next colour and so on. This means that I work in vertical rows and once I move onto the next row over I start new threads again so by the end of a page I then to have a large number of parked threads, though a number of them will be repeats of the same colour.

HAED - Bridge of Wings

So in this process pic I have worked in vertical rows to the end of page 7 the last 10x10 block continued onto page 12 so I worked all the stitches in each block instead of finishing at the bottom of 7.
When I first started HAED charts I spend ages trying to figure out what parking was so for all those new to this technique I will be doing a quick tutorial on it in the next couple of days.

'Falls like confetti'

I have been working on Fairy with Butterfly Mask the last few days. I have especially been concentrating on the wings. The confetti here is murder.

I have found that when working with areas of high confetti that the parking method works really well. When working like this I take it in 2 10x10 blocks across and 2 down. Unfortunately with this project I have been working the block colours on the bus and so my method is not working as well as it should however it is still making life easier.