HAED Bridge of Wings, has some progress!

Hey all, I have finally managed to get a post up about my HAED project Bridge of Wings and guess what, I finished the first row! Head on over to Pull the Other Thread for the full post.
Here is a sneak peek photo wet your appetite:

Very First HAED Finish!

Hey everyone, I'm super excited to share todays post with you all, it's QS Clara all finished and ready for framing. Go check out the post here!! Also a little preview picture of her in all her glory.

Never Posted this HAED Stitching Milestone!!

Every so often on lunch in work, I have a look at the WIP pictures from my blog. When I'm having an especially difficult or stressful day, I find it helps me to rebalance a bit. So while doing just that, I discovered, to my horror and shame, that my progress on QS Clara hadn't been updated! Not only that, but it was a page finish that I had neglected to share with anyone. If you're interested the last post on this project can be found HERE

HAED - QS Clara - Hannah Lynn Disney

While I was away from the blog world I did occasionally pick up a project or two, hence the new start on Fizzy Moon. During one of these creative bouts I worked a bit on Clara and I'm really surprised that I didn't immediately hope back on my blog just to shout out loud that I had finished the last of the full pages!!

That's right folks, I have only three partial pages, two large and one small, left to fill in and she will finally be done. After finishing the last full page, I was a little tired of hair confetti so I moved to her glove, which had some larger blocks of stitching. Once the block colours were in, I filled in the rest of the glove to the black outline, which had some confetti but wasn't too taxing. Also I love filling around colour blocks, it feels like a little mini completion.

HAED - QS Clara by Hannah Lynn Disney WIP

This project is a bit too large to fit into my small Q Snaps so I had to stop a little short of the bottom. In order to have the frame over the stitching for as short a time as possible, I plan to stitch as much as I can then fill in the last lines across the bottom.  I will continue with this page before I move across to the next rather than hoping around all over the place.

I'm not too sure when you will see Clara again as I am really eager to try and finish Elegance, so she is a focus for the moment, but who knows, maybe I will take a bit of time to put in a few more stitches if I can't stand to do anymore back stitching.

Thanks to everyone for your amazing comments and thoughts on the colour error in Elegance. Everyone said the same thing, leave it alone so that is exactly what I have decided to do. Once I have put in the backstitching I can see how it looks, if it is completely off then I may have to rethink but for now that's the plan.

Bye for Now!

HAED - QS Clara Progress

Well it's Monday, so time for an update. I have been working on HAED - QS Clara for the last few days and I am very close to finishing filling the last of the full pages. I had hoped that I would get it done before this post but didn't manage it. Check out my post The Mini Project Has Evolved - HAED QS Clara Progress to see how far I have come since my last post.

HAED - QS Clara as at 15th June 2015

The label on the bottle was so confetti heavy and took an abnormally long amount of time. It was so bad in fact that I was glad to get back to the hair which was easier going on the confetti. Once I have finished page 4, I will just have the last 3 partial pages left to fill. This might just end up a 2015 finish.

HAED - QS Clara close up

I am going to stick with this atleast until the page I am working on is finished. I might move down to page 7 after that or maybe work on Elegance and finally get some back stitching done on that.

HAP SAL - Bridge of Wings Progress June

Firstly I would like to apologise for not posting last week, things have been busy and I didn't get a chance to take some pictures of Bridge. The good news is, I have some progress.

Last time I was working on this piece I was having trouble with finding the best way to stitch on this, read about it here: HAP SAL and YOTA Update - HAED Bridge of Wings & Dimensions Gold Elegance of the Orient. I decided I would try stitching this in hand and see how I got on. The short answer to this experiment is, it was a disaster. I couldn't manage stitching this in hand at all. This led me to set up my floor stand again and it turned out to be the best solution. It is a bit awkward having to take it apart and put it together again but as the progress shows, it works!

Here is where I was last month:

HAED - Bridge of Wings from May

And this month:

HAED - Bridge of Wings June

So I manage to nearly complete page 3 and also made a small start on page 8. I am really happy with my progress this month and I should be able to get page 3 completed by next month.

I know that this is also YOTA time, however I have been working away on Bridge when I have had anytime that I didn't get even a stitch into Elegance again this month. I am feeling very guilty about all the other great YOTA progress going on and mine has remained the same for the last three months. I won't post another picture of the same thing, but if you want to see it check out the link above.

HAP and YOTA SAL May and an Ornament Finish

It is the start of a new month and therefore time for an update on how my HAP and YOTA SAL projects are coming along. Unfortunately this month saw no stitching on either project so I have nothing new to show. Check out last months post HAP SAL and YOTA Update - HAED Bridge of Wings & Dimensions Gold Elegance of the Orient to see where I am on both projects to date.

I have done some stitching, and finished a couple of small projects. As I normally finish mini pieces as cushion ornaments, I decided I would try a new finishing technique, similar to the pin keep finish. I used some foam core and batting to mount the cross stitch and the same for the cotton backing. Then I joined to two together.

Floral Cross Stitch Ornament - Bright Blooms - The World of Cross Stitching 179

Back of Floral Cross Stitch Ornament

There are a couple of mistakes I made on this piece, the cross stitch is not centred on the board. The corners are not as tidy as I would like and I would love to put some trim around the outside to cover the join but am unsure how to manage that with the hanging ribbon in place. These are all things I will be experimenting with fixing in the future and hope to share with you.

However I am quite happy with how this piece turned out. The pin cushion in the background is another project that I completed recently and made many mistake on, but that is a post for another day.

I am still working on trying to improve my blog experience for my readers. My biggest issue at the moment is definitely trying to get the pictures just right. I don't have much of a problem with content, there are lots of things I want to write about, but getting the photos to work out for me is proving to be a big challenge.

If you have any tips or trick for these types of finishes please let us know in the comments below.

HAP SAL and YOTA Update - HAED Bridge of Wings & Dimensions Gold Elegance of the Orient

HAP SAL update time, visit here for details. Progress on Heaven and Earth Design's Bridge of Wings has been scarce the last few months, which is a bit disappointing to be honest. This is the second month I have failed to complete my current page.

Bridge of Wings looking surprisingly similar to last month.

Recently most of my stitching is taking place on my couch. When stitching Bridge of Wings I have been using my large Q-snaps but I find it quite difficult to hold due to it's size. I also tried using a scroll frame but the larger ones are too awkward to use in hand, leading to a circus like performance as I have one leg raised by being on tip toes or using my lap stand, having to contort my arms to try and reach around the back of the piece.

I do have a floor stand but find that frustrating to keep assembling and disassembling all the time. The option of just leaving it assembled is always a possibility, if I don't mind having it take up space and tripping over it all the time. I don't want to use a smaller frame and have the clamps over the stitching, experience from other projects shows it can damage or distort the stitches. There is too much bulk in this piece to be able to put some felt between the frame clamp and the project, I tried the clamps kept popping off.

This is also my late Year of the Acronym check in,  for details on this click here.  I did start the backstitching on my Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient piece this month, however there is a lot of detail in this. Several hours of laborious stitching later and I only managed to get some of the upper section of the kimono outlined.

Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient

I believe I may have discovered the cause of my frequent grudge match with backstitching. Once I finish all the cross stitching, my mind starts to convince itself that I am close to completion. However the backstitching still remains, taunting me with how close I am to the finish but still not quite there. I begin to feel that it is being obtuse on purpose, preventing me from crossing another piece off my ever lengthening WIP list.

This is another piece that I have been finding a bit difficult to work with lately. I have been using my scroll frame but I keep hitting my hands off the wing nuts at the back as I bring my hands around. The time I experimented with having the wing nuts to the front, my thread kept getting wrapped around them. I suppose this should encourage me to get the hang of two handed stitching but when my progress slows down I get annoyed and switch back to my usual method.

While fighting with the backstitching, I worked with Elegance of the Orient in hand for a while. It actually helped and perhaps it would be worth trying this method with Bridge of Wings. The thought of trying to manage all that extra fabric as well as the hanging threads has always detered me from trying this. If I ever want to make progress on it and maybe get the illusive HAED finish I might have to experiment a little.

I will post on any solutions I manage to find to these cross stitching annoyances. Please leave a comment on any techniques you have found helpful in the comments below.

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.

Stitch From Stash and The Budget Experiment Part 2

Month: March
Spent: $5.25
Earn: $8.00

This month I unfortunately didn't manage a zero spend. A very good friend of mine expressed an interest in learning to cross stitch, so I offered to teach her. I decided to pick up one to two supplies I didn't have in my stash to suit the chosen project.

However I did manage to earn some funds for a couple of finishes from my stash that I made. I have only taken earned funds for two of the three finishes, as the Lickle Ted project was one I had started before January and as it is small I decided to just leave it out.

Here are my projects for March:

Sweet Treats - Cupcake of the Month - The World of Cross Stitching Issue 192

Swirly Sheep - Christy Schmitz - http://www.just-crossstitch.com/featured_pattern.php

Lickle Ted - Christmas Stitch Kit - The World of Cross Stitching

HAED - Bridge of Wings

I also started a new mini project, a free Somebunny to Love design from DMC. I just thought it was so cute. The chart can be found here: DMC Somebunny to Love Free Chart

Somebunny to Love - DMC Free Chart -
 http://www.dmccreative.co.uk/Inspiration/Projects/Cross-Stitch-Inspiration/Dmc-SBTL.aspx?technique=cross+stitched

My attempts at controlling my spending are on going and I am continuing to try new techniques. I am still using the reward system, if you missed that post you can read it here: Stitch from stash and the Experiment to Spend Less. This is continuing to assist me in cutting much of my unnecessary spending. The last few weeks haven't seen much added to the reward jar, as I have needed to purchase some supplies for a craft class I am taking.

The new technique I have added this month is a food budget. I know that probably sounds incredibly obvious to many of you but I have never really paid much attention to a food budget. In the past I often used my credit card to buy groceries and as such would often overspend. Now I have allowed myself a certain amount, which I withdraw in cash on payday. This amount must be sufficient to cover grocery costs for the week. Any money left over at the end of the week goes toward the budget limit for the following one.

I have forbidden myself from using the credit card for grocery shops. This is working well for me so far and has led to smaller grocery bills and less food waste.

I would love to hear any thoughts you have on my new attempt to curtail my spending in the comments section.

HAED Bridge of Wings Progress - HAP SAL

It's HAP SAL check in time again. This stitch along is to encourage us stitcher's to work on those very large projects that we have lying around. I decided I would stitch on HAED Bridge of Wings for this SAL as it fit all the criteria and is a project I would like to see finished.

The plan was to try and finish off page 3 and while I didn't manage that, I did do quite well and am creeping closer to completing the page.

Last Month:

HAED - Bridge of Wings as at 1st Feb 2015

This Month:

HAED - Bridge of Wings as at 1st March 2015

With luck, I will finish off page 3 this month and move onto finishing page 4.

Stitch From Stash and The Experiment to Spend Less

Month: February
Spent: $0.00
Earned: $0.00

Most of my stitching progress this month is from late January and early February. However my budget is going well, with my second no spend month. This year I have started a budget plan and will be trying various techniques to curb my spending in all areas of my life.

Lickle Ted - Christmas Stitch Kit - The World of Cross Stitching

Somebunny to Love - The World of Cross Stitching Issue 179

Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient

HAED - Bridge of Wings

Lavender & Lace - Celtic Spring

The first technique I have tested is a reward system. Each week that I manage to make no unnecessary purchases I add a small amount to a fund jar. This will go towards a large treat at the end of the year.  I had to ensure that the reward was neither too big nor too small. Too big and I would find it difficult to find it in my regular budget, too small and it wouldn't feel worth it.

The first lesson I have learned with this technique is never reward yourself in advance. If you decided to give yourself a reward of €5/$5/£5, whatever your currency is, but you reach the end of the week and find that you only have a 10, don't use that for this and next week's goal. Little compromises with myself, like this, is how these attempts at change have collapsed in the past. As soon as I compromise once, it makes it difficult not to do so again.

I am finding this a useful way to keep myself on track. I do have to be very clear about what is an unnecessary spend, for this exercise it is anything I do not need to survive. Here is an example of an unnecessary spend I made recently is, my phone has been crashing apps and become intolerably slow. I decided I would replace it as I use it regularly. Although my old phone was not able to perform the functions I needed to an acceptable standard, it still functioned. Therefore I considered the purchase of the new one as unnecessary and missed out on my reward. As a new phone is a large expense, I debated whether I would forgo my reward for a few weeks, however I decided against such a harsh measure, as it was only a matter of time before my old handset needed replacing.

Do you have any tips or tricks you use to help you stop spending? Please let me know in the comments below. I would be interested in trying them out.

Help Prevent Cross Stitch Miscounts: Gridding Tutorial

Today I want to talk a bit about fabric gridding. This is a tutorial I have been planning on doing for a long time. In my opinion, gridding is a must for stitching complex patterns and is also extremely useful if you use the parking technique.

You can find my parking tutorial here


What is Gridding?

Gridding is the process of dividing a piece of fabric into 10x10 stitch blocks corresponding to the divisions on a cross stitch pattern, which helps prevent counting errors. In patterns where there are a large number of colour changes and very compact stitches, counting errors happen often and are difficult to fix due to the size and density of the stitching.

Gridding is one of the techniques that I saw referred to a lot when I first started stitching Heaven and Earth Design (HAED) patterns. HAED patterns are large, complex charts which have high detail but are often stitched on a small count fabric, such as over 1 on 25ct or 28ct. My first attempt progressed at a snail's pace because I frequently missed stitches, requiring a lot of backtracking. When I began gridding, all that changed.


What to use to grid your fabric:

Some stitcher's sew the grid onto the fabric but I found it aggravating to try to avoid catching the gridding threads under my stitching . Instead I use a washable fabric marker, which I find quicker and easier. For this method you need; fabric cut to size, a washable fabric marker, a ruler (below is a seam gauge, but an ordinary ruler or tape measure will work) and a pin.

Griding Supplies

If you are  nervous about using a marker on fabric, here are 3 tips.

First: Make sure the marker you choose is washable. Fade over time markers generally vanish too quickly, which would lead to re-gridding your fabric multiple times. When you start gridding, please make sure the pen you are using is your WASHABLE marker.

Second: Test your chosen marker on a piece of scrap fabric and try washing it out. Some need a bit of a warm wash to remove them. If cold water doesn't work, try heating the water slightly.

Third: Do not use the fabric marker on hand dyed fabrics unless you are certain they are colour fast. Also it is difficult to know how the marker might react with the fabric dyes.

The Method:

I usually grid fabric by pattern page rather than doing the whole piece at once. I have found that over time and with repeated handling the washable marker will start to fade slightly.

Start by laying the fabric on a flat surface and make sure that you are comfortable. After a while it can be difficult count the holes in the fabric, so I often I use a pin to help me.

Step 1: Measure your fabric border. For large pieces I plan to frame, I leave 3 inches excess on all sides. Measure in 3 inches from the upper left and the same from the top and mark these points on your fabric.

Measure in three inches from the left

Mark this on your fabric

Measure 3 inches from the top

Mark this on your fabric

Step 2: Mark where the two measurements intersect.

Mark where the two measurements meet

Step 3: Count across 10 strands of fabric and draw a line on the 10th strand, marking the last column in the first 10x10 block. Just estimate how long the page is and draw this line to there, it can be made longer later if necessary. When I grid a piece I like to mark the border for the first page but this isn't necessary.

Count across 10 strands from where you marked your fabric

Draw in your page edge line and your first grid line

Step 4: Count across the next ten strands and draw the line on the 10th as above.

Count across your next 10 strands for your second grid line

Draw in your second grid line the same as the first

Step 5: Repeat this for the number of columns on the page. 

Step 6: Add an additional 1 or 2 columns to make subsequent pages easier to grid.

Continue on until you have marked in all your grid lines plus a couple extra for the next page

Step 7: Count the first 10 strands down marking the 10th as before. Carry on the line past the last of the vertical columns. Here I have inserted the line indicating the top of the page.

Count down ten strands and mark in your first horizontal grid line, mark the border at the top of the page if you wish

Draw your lines a little past the last vertical grid line to make continuing the grid for the next page easier

Step 8: Continue in the same fashion for the number of rows on the page

Here shows that my vertical lines where a bit short so I simply drew them a bit longer to finish gridding the page

Step 9: Add an additional 1 or 2 rows to make subsequent pages easier to grid.

First page is now fully gridded with some extra rows and columns to make subsequent gridding easier

As can be seen in the image above, I have continued the lines past the grid for page one. This makes gridding subsequent pages straightforward. You simply continue the lines for rows or columns, which halves the amount of counting.

Now you are ready to start stitching

I hope this has been helpful. If anyone has any difficulty with the tutorial, suggestions or tips please leave me a comment at the bottom of the post.

Feburary HAP SAL Check In

Today is the 1st of February so it is HAP SAL time again. I am working on Bridge of Wings from HAED by Stephenie Pui-Mun Law for this SAL. I have had lots of fun working on this piece this month even if I did get a bit fed up with the other evening. Fortunately my temporary switch to Celtic Spring seems to have worked in getting back my enthusiasm for this piece.

I am fairly happy with how I progress on this, with finishing off what was left in two pages and adding them to the all done pile. I have moved onto page 3 which is now about 3/4 done. I have approximately 2,000 stitches left to finish it.

Here is where Bridge of Wings was last month:

HAED-Bridge of Wings before shot

Here is where I am now:

HAED-Bridge of Wings after shot

I have also posted some close up images of my favourite areas of detail so far. I'm sure I will have many more by the time this on is finished.

HAED-Bridge of Wings Detail

HAED-Bridge of Wings Detail

The following picture shows how page 3 is coming along.

HAED-Bridge of Wings Page 3

At the moment page 3 has few colour changes but they are not in blocks of colour, they are interspersed with each other so while it is not a slow as confetti stitching it is a good bit slower and takes more concentration than purely block stitching.

I have gone back to this piece today for some more work on page 3 but I have to admit it was difficult to tear myself away from Celtic Spring, I was having a lot of fun stitching her and I get to see progress very quickly which makes a big difference from HAED charts. However the short break from my usual pieces has given my the break I need to get excited about Bridge of Wings and Elegance of the Orient again.

Don't forget there will be a YOTA post next Saturday, so if you want to see how Elegance is coming along please do check out that post. Also in the YOTA tab at the top of the page there are links to the other wonderful bloggers involved.

Too Excited to not Show This

I managed to get a couple of days of sitting and stitching over the weekend. I decided to work on Bridge of Wings, as I was in the mood for just some block stitching. I know this is my HAP SAL piece and therefore I should really be waiting until the next HAP post date to show this off, but as that isn't until the 1st of Feb I thought I would show it now and hopefully have more done by the post day.

The strange thing is that while I was in the mood for block colour stitching I actually ended up doing a lot of confetti stitching instead. I had a few stitches to fill in on the partial page 5 so I finished that off and I then had about 1500 stitches on page 11 to finish that, so I did that too. I'm so happy to have added another two pages of this to the finished pile. I then moved onto page 3 but only got a little bit of that done.

So here it is:

So this now has 7 pages fully finished and 3 at least half finished. I am really happy to have gotten the last 1500 stitches of page 11 done, as it completes that section of the lion creature, now I just need to do the head.

September SFS

It's Stitch from Stash time again. I am really enjoying this SAL and it has helped a lot with my stash collection.

Here is my result for this month;

Amount Spent: $8.50

New Starts from Stash: Portal Block Dispenser - Pulltheotherthread, heart alphabet pattern DMC Freebie.

WIPs or UFOs worked on: Somebunny to Love - The World of Cross Stitching Issue 179, HAED Bridge of Wings, HAED Autumn & Boofle Christmas Card Chart - Freebie from The World of Cross Stitch 

Here are the pictures for this months progress. Enjoy :)

HAED - Autumn

Somebunny to Love - The World of Cross Stitching Issue 179

Boofle Christmas Card Chart - Freebie from The World of Cross Stitch

heart alphabet pattern DMC Freebie.

Portal Block Dispenser - Pulltheotherthread

My stash this month was the threads for Alphabet Heart and the remaining special threads for Boofle.

Don't forget to sign up for Mega Mini Month Madness in my last post.