Random thoughts about cross-stitch
I've been doing a lot of stitching recently
Having almost finished one piece of work - a rather lovely piece based on a watercolour of a woodland - I've started several more...
All that's left to do on the woodland is some backstitch to outline the tree trunks, but I'm deliberately waiting until after the wisdom tooth has been extracted. When I do that, I want to sit back and look at it and feel good about completing it, and I'm too fuzzy to fully enjoy it at present.
I seem to have several pieces:
1. A bell pull of musical instruments. I started this when micavity was very small indeed. (He's now taller than I am...) It was abandoned for around 15 years while my neck and shoulder were in too much pain for sewing. Now, I've got better exercises and I can sew more, I've recently made good progress on this one. I'm well over half way through it and because it's a sequence of individual instruments, it's always nice to have intermediate targets of finishing partiular instruments. I recently finished an accordion and I'm well into a Spanish guitar.
2. A blue tit bookmark. This one is mainly for train journeys as it is handy to have something small to work on while travelling. I've done the frame round the edge and am now starting on the bottom twig and will work upwards.
3. A large piece (courtesy of dougs) that has a floral border and space to stitch some text. I haven't yet decided what the text will be - that would be tempting fate. ( Specific events can pass before I complete something) I've only just started stitching the grid on this one.
Grids are very borning to stitch and incredibly useful once done. Counted cross-stitch has no pattern printed on the fabric and it's very easy to make mistakes in counting your way across. Sewing a grid every ten stitches and marking the same grid on the pattern can reduce mistakes dramatically.
I've got several other patterns that I'm telling myself not to start yet (I got a bit carried away when visiting a very nice embroidery shop in the summer). I've got some small bird designs that will make coasters (the idea is to do those when I finish the bookmark) and a duck in the rain that I just fell in love with, and a small floral piece as well.
I like working on multiple patterns. It slows them all down, but it allows for different moods and levels of difficulty depending on how I'm feeling. Today, I'm feeling dizzy and fuzzy, so stitching grids, while boring, is unlikely to have any errors. Anything complicated would be very dangerous to attempt.
Some patterns are more forgiving of mistakes than others. The other day, I found I'd stitched a section of the bell-pull a half stitch out of position. Fortunatly, none of the rest of the pattern overlapped with that part (the background is plain fabric), so I was able to get away with it. On other designs, a slip like that would have resulted in large-scale unpicking.
I like reasonably complex designs. I do cross-stitch for relaxation and a complex pattern takes your mind of anything else that might be causing you worry or stress (quite apart from the pleasure of doing something challenging).
Having almost finished one piece of work - a rather lovely piece based on a watercolour of a woodland - I've started several more...
All that's left to do on the woodland is some backstitch to outline the tree trunks, but I'm deliberately waiting until after the wisdom tooth has been extracted. When I do that, I want to sit back and look at it and feel good about completing it, and I'm too fuzzy to fully enjoy it at present.
I seem to have several pieces:
1. A bell pull of musical instruments. I started this when micavity was very small indeed. (He's now taller than I am...) It was abandoned for around 15 years while my neck and shoulder were in too much pain for sewing. Now, I've got better exercises and I can sew more, I've recently made good progress on this one. I'm well over half way through it and because it's a sequence of individual instruments, it's always nice to have intermediate targets of finishing partiular instruments. I recently finished an accordion and I'm well into a Spanish guitar.
2. A blue tit bookmark. This one is mainly for train journeys as it is handy to have something small to work on while travelling. I've done the frame round the edge and am now starting on the bottom twig and will work upwards.
3. A large piece (courtesy of dougs) that has a floral border and space to stitch some text. I haven't yet decided what the text will be - that would be tempting fate. ( Specific events can pass before I complete something) I've only just started stitching the grid on this one.
Grids are very borning to stitch and incredibly useful once done. Counted cross-stitch has no pattern printed on the fabric and it's very easy to make mistakes in counting your way across. Sewing a grid every ten stitches and marking the same grid on the pattern can reduce mistakes dramatically.
I've got several other patterns that I'm telling myself not to start yet (I got a bit carried away when visiting a very nice embroidery shop in the summer). I've got some small bird designs that will make coasters (the idea is to do those when I finish the bookmark) and a duck in the rain that I just fell in love with, and a small floral piece as well.
I like working on multiple patterns. It slows them all down, but it allows for different moods and levels of difficulty depending on how I'm feeling. Today, I'm feeling dizzy and fuzzy, so stitching grids, while boring, is unlikely to have any errors. Anything complicated would be very dangerous to attempt.
Some patterns are more forgiving of mistakes than others. The other day, I found I'd stitched a section of the bell-pull a half stitch out of position. Fortunatly, none of the rest of the pattern overlapped with that part (the background is plain fabric), so I was able to get away with it. On other designs, a slip like that would have resulted in large-scale unpicking.
I like reasonably complex designs. I do cross-stitch for relaxation and a complex pattern takes your mind of anything else that might be causing you worry or stress (quite apart from the pleasure of doing something challenging).