January Biscornu and Christmas Ornament finished

Another couple of finishes, my biscornu and Christmas ornament for January. As I mentioned before the ornament will not be finished ‘finished’ for a few months, I plan on having a finishing day once I have a few more stitched up.

The biscornu is a Faby Reilly freebie design. I stitched it on some of the 16-count zweigart cream gold flecked aida I got for the wedding project, I’m amazed I still have some left although there isn’t much now. For floss I used two different DMC colour variations, and a blue Madeira silk. I also used some Gütermann Beads (9/0-9904) at the end of the flakes and around the edge. It took an awful long time to bead the edge, but it think it was worth it. Predicable I’ll be doing a Valentine’s themed biscornu for February, just have to decide on a design now. I have done one, but it’s for an exchange.

My Christmas ornament was a freebie by The Sampler Girl, it’s called Christmas Eve Flight and can be found on her blog. I stitched it on 32-count flax Belfast linen, using Weeks Dye Works – Chestnut for the reindeer, Dragonfloss – Blood Ruby for the text and 2 DMC Colour Variations for the snowflakes.

The Wedding by Lavender and Lace – Completed and Framed

While browsing another blog I can upon another finish of this and realised I’d forgotten to post the framed picture. So sorry, but I promise you will not have to wait any longer

The full view, have to say taking pictures without getting a reflection in the glass was hard

And a bit of a closer look at the frame, just love this

The Wedding by Lavender and Lace – Take 2

I promised you wouldn’t have to wait too long. And one day is really no time at all.

I must admit I wasn’t as good at taking pictures once I got to this stage, it was too much fun to just keep stitching.

So here is our first picture. Only a little bit more done since the last update.

A closer look at the area that I worked on.

And then, suddenly so much more work done.

This is my favorite part of the dress, I just love the shading on the dress.

And then I decided we need to add some color to the mix. Look at the pretty flowers

Still not made a decision on the ribbons though, at this point the contenders were antique mauve and antique violet.

Some more of the off-white filled on, almost complete now and yet no decision on the ribbons

And finally, dress completely cross stitched, including ribbon. The winner was [drumroll] Antique Violet.

Pretty, pretty ribbons.

Bouquet still needs a bit of backstitch

Elsewhere the bride’s hair was finally finished as well, after many changes I finally went with shades of brown. And you can see a little of the veil here.

Then it was on to the dreaded DMC Light Effects, first up is the border.

It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and it looks great on the fabric

From the border it was straight on to the letters, isn’t the ‘U’ amazing?

Sorry did you want to see all the letters? Here you go then.

And the more personal information, the alphabet is from another wedding sampler which was in Cross Stitch Collection (I think).

The bouquet finally got it’s backstitch

Finishing touches have now been added, backstitching on the bride and groom and the beads.

OMG, the beads. All 420 of them

I actually loved putting them in

Here it is, completely stitched

And for your viewing pleasure, the backside. I’d rather proud of how neat it is.

Now there aren’t many pictures left, just of the piece framed in fact. However my mean streak is shining through again and you’ll get to see these some other time. Don’t worry it won’t be too long.

The Wedding by Lavender and Lace

Finally it’s time for the unveiling of my secret wedding project. I managed to finish and frame it in time for the wedding, and Tom and Helena seemed very happy with it. I had a few ups and down while stitching it, mostly because of the various changes I’d made with the colors, so really I can only blame myself for this one.

Now as you all know I can be cruel, and today is no exception. So yes, you will get to see the whole project, but you’ll be following it every step of the way as well.

As you have by now figure out I stitched The Wedding by Lavender and Lace. Here is a picture of the original, using the charted colors and recommended fabric (sorry for the poor quality, this is the picture from the Lavender and Lace website).

As you will see I made a lot of changes to the original, the main one being the color of the dress. The original is white, but Helena’s wedding colors were off-white, gold and brown, so I started with off-white as the base color for for the dress and used the DMC color family list to help me choose the matching shades. The DMC shade card would no doubt have been better as an aide, but since I had all the shades myself the colour family list worked just as well. Other changes included the hair colors, ribbon colors and completely dropping the bride’s maid. I should also mention that it was stitched on 16-count Zweigart Lurex aida, cream with. gold flecks. Ok, here we go.

Most of my cross stitch projects to date have been started from the middle of the chart, but with ‘The Wedding’ I decided to start from a corner since I had gridded the fabric anyway.
This was the first picture I took of my progress. Because I was stitching in a hoop I tried to complete sections, color by color.

Here a few of the other shades are done

Depending on the light it was quite golden looking, especially when the off white was filled in.

Once the top part of the dress was done I started on the bottom part, some procedure as before, color by color.

I love the way it just adds on the texture, showing the folds on the dress.

I thought filling in the off-white would be a real chore, but because everything else was filled in I could just stitch without counting, at least until I got to the bottom.

Some more filled in

Most of that bottom section done

I will leave you now with a full picture of the progress up till then. Don’t worry, you shouldn’t have to wait for the next section for very long.

Cross Stitching Projects: Wedding Sampler

I have finally decided on a wedding sampler to stitch for my BIL and future SIL, with a little help from my MIL of course. I can’t post it here though as I have no idea if my SIL ever looks on this page so you’ll all just have to wait till it’s done, I will tell you though that it’s from Lavender and Lace. I ordered the chart, fabric and some beads yesterday and should be able to start in the next two weeks. I’m a little worried though, the wedding is mid-October and other people who have stitched the design have taken anywhere between 9 months and 18 months to complete it. Hopefully these people also work and have other things to do with their time, I don’t really have any demands on my time apart from writing so I should have plenty of time. I couldn’t quite decided between this design and a Janlynn design called ‘From This Day Forward’, but the L&L design won out in the end because it’s very easy to peronalize (apparently). My job now is to find out the wedding colours (hope she’d decided) and match threads for haircolour to match the couple 🙂 Should be fun.
As this will be my biggest project yet, I’m really looking forward to it, I ordered some Zweigart Lurex Aida, 16 ct cream speckled with gold to stitch it on. There is some gold metallic threads used in the design so I figured it would look good together. I was thinking about buying some Polstitches hand-dyed evenweave, but I don’t think a project which is supposed to be a gift to someone else is the best time to start trying evenweave. I’ll leave that for when I do Joan Elliott’s fairies instead, they will after all be for me.
The largeness of the Wedding Sampler is sort of pushing my other projects on the back burner, I’ll have to see how I get on with it, how quick I can stitch before I continue on the other ones. So the next two weeks are going to be spent finishing mother’s day cards and birthday cards and hopefully get a little more done on the HUG cushion, which I will post an update picture on during the next week.

Wish Me Luck