Erised, Page 7
It has been so long since I last updated about Erised that the platforms I’m primarily on now didn’t even exist at the time of the last update. So I’ll start from the beginning.
Waaaaay back in 2005, in the age of B.K. (Before Kids), I embarked on what is in retrospect an utterly insane cross-stitch project. I had a deck of Harry Potter Uno cards, but instead of stills from the movie, they had beautifully drawn images of various scenes from the book. One of my favorites was of Harry looking into the Mirror of Erised and seeing his family looking back at him.
And as people who don’t have kids do, I looked at that picture and thought to myself, “Self, Imma gonna cross-stitch that.”
I scanned the picture into my computer, fed it through a cross-stitch converter program, and after much tweaking, spit out a pattern that I thought would take maybe two years to complete. (We will not discuss how optimistic that estimate was.) Since I was living overseas in a place cross-stitch wasn’t common, I canvassed a couple of State-side friends to get fabric and floss for me, and then I began.
Now, I know scanned Erised into my computer… but I can’t figure out where that scan resides, so I no longer have a picture of the final product. Internet searches haven’t turned much up, either - something with better Google-fu than me will have to find it. Nor do I know the name of the original artist, although I’m fairly sure it’s not Mary LePre, who did the original cover art for the books. A friend tried to contact Mattel (who made the cards) in an effort to find out the name of the artist… but Mattel didn’t know either. Which is pretty sad, if you ask me. If anyone DOES know the artist’s name, however, I would love to credit them.
But the nitty gritty: Erised is being worked on 28-count Monaco fabric. It is 2-over-1 - which means two strands of floss over one square. If you know cross-stich, you’ll know that results in a very, very tight weave pattern. The stitched areas of Erised look and feel almost exactly like thick tapestry. I’m using size 28 needles, which are super thin and break fairly often, when they’re not puncturing straight through my skin. There are about 70 different colors in Erised; at this point, I’ve memorized most of the symbols and corresponding numbers on the chart. There are a total of 16 pages; I’m not even halfway done yet.
(Two years. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.)
I began Erised on 13 April 2005. Here is the first square of Erised, which I think was finished the following day. At the time, I was doing 10x10 squares, because I just didn’t know any better. Look how widdle and cute it is!
Here is Erised, with Page One complete, taken in October 2005. Clearly, I was moving along at a brisk pace:
A couple of notes about that picture. You can already see how the fabric is beginning to warp along the left-hand side. And while I’d already started parking my threads, for some reason, I had decided not to carry down into the page below (something which I’m doing now.)
I worked on Erised fairly steadily for the next ten years, sometimes putting it down for brief periods to work on other projects, but always picking it back up again. I was a member of a cross-stitch community on LJ during this period, and I’d make updates every year on the anniversary of beginning Erised, as well as whenever I finished a page. Once Andrew was born, I started including him in the anniversary pictures, too. Because I could.
This picture is from when I finished Page Six, July 2010, when Erised is five years old and Andrew is seven months old. The floss you see handing loose is for Page 7. When stitching, I go line by line, square by square. I don’t jump all around if I can help it, because that warps the fabric. So, in order to cut down on using up a ton of floss, I use a method called “parking” - basically, when I finish using a color, I find the next place where I’m going to use that same color, and I “park” my thread in that spot. Then I continue along my line, and when I get to that thread, it’s already there, waiting for me. This saves both time and floss, and as a result, I’m moving a lot faster and with less warping. The back, however, looks miserable, but hey, who cares about the back?
You can see bundles of floss below sections of Erised; these are parked threads from the previous page, waiting for me to begin that next page. I use hairclips to gather them up neatly, and then I tack the clips to the fabric so they don’t bounce around.
Now, readers, let me point one last thing out: in the five years before Andrew was born, I worked six pages of this sucker. So ask yourself, right now: in the ten years since this picture was taken, how many more pages have I completed?
Here’s some clues. The following three pictures are from Erised’s anniversaries, with bonus Andrew:
2011:
2012:
2013:
Astute readers will realize that while Andrew grew, Erised did not.
And in fact, it wasn’t long after this that I put Erised away for a much longer time, because….
Enter Charlie, who was born in 2015, and then proceeded to get into EVERY. LITTLE. THING. Suddenly, leaving massive cross-stitch projects lying around was too dangerous, and it was such a pain to pull it out for less than half an hour of work, I didn’t even bother.
Until we moved to Warsaw, and Charlie began full-day preschool, and suddenly… I had time. And a safe place to put my cross-stitch where Charlie, who was now older and didn’t want to immediately get into everything (just most things), wasn’t likely to bother it.
Plus, there’s a stitch-and-bitch here every week, which gives me motivation to keep working on it. So I started up again. When I picked up Erised back in November, I was halfway through Page Seven.
Yesterday… I finished Page Seven. Ten years after I began it. Here it is:
(Note that the boys were fighting ten seconds after this picture was taken, which is just par for the course.)
A few close ups:
Obviously, a lot has changed since those first pics. I started off using a winding wooden frame; currently I’m using Q-snaps, which are basically lightweight PVC pipe. I like them better because I can keep an even tension even on the sides of the project, and they’re expandable so when I eventually get further down the fabric, I’ll be able to have a larger frame, too, without having to bend the stitching (which would be nearly impossible, as it’s super thick and not very flexible).
I do have to fix the fabric on the edges, though. The fabric should be just large enough for the project - but only just, and there’s not a lot of space on any of the sides, so I added those cloth strips to help me get it on the frame. But as you can see, for some reason, I didn’t run the strips on the entire piece of fabric, and I need to fix that soon, because it’s really starting to fray - which isn’t a good thing, since I don’t have a lot of room to spare.
People! Frame decoration! Some weird green background glow! Woo-hoo!
And check out the back! Funny how much of the detail comes though, isn’t it?
Anyway, that’s the current status of Erised. I’ll be starting on Page 8 in the next day or two (I did some prepwork on it today, marking out lines and such, but no actual stitching). When I was working on this back in the day, I’d post on Erised’s anniversary (in mid-April) and whenever I finished a page. I wonder which will come first this time? Cross-posted from Dreamwidth. Comment in either location.