Random thoughts about cross-stitch

[watervole]

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).

Comments

[frostfox.livejournal.com]

My mum (76 years young) has got into cross stitch in a big way.

She did me a smashing cat lying on a branch which was quite difficult for her first one and she's just done me a pair of amerindians which I had bought for me about 10 years ago and never did (they are utterly splendid, very art deco in shades of red and black, long & narrow and I can't wait to get them up on the wall).

She's currently doing a floral one for her self but thinks it's boring.

The main problem is, she's so darn fast!
I got her into cross stitch as there are just limits on wooly jumpers in my wardrobe and wool isn't cheap and she knits so bloody quick, I've been known to give jumpers away almost as soon as she's knitted them (so if anyone has a hankering for well knitted jumpers/baby clothes/coats etc, you know who to contact)
I then got her into knitting for Oxfam and she's happily been knitting little jumpers for refugee kids, and now she spends every news report from Africa looking to see if any of the kids are wearing her jumpers. But that bored her in the end as they are very simple and all the same design.

So I thought that cross stitch would keep her occupied for days, weeks, months, years.

But Mum doesn't do anything other that cross stitch. All day. So they grow really quite fast.

I'm tempted to buy her the Teresa Wentzler dragon for xmas. That should slow her down a bit.

FF

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Wow! She is way faster than me! But then I only do half an hour or an hour a day.

If she gets through them that quickly, there are some fantastic patterns you could get her. The dragon sounds great.

How about Xmas cards? There are often great designs in magazines. I sewed some Xmas gift tags last year with odd bits of left over thread.

[sharikkamur.livejournal.com]

Any TW it should slow her down! :) But it'll be worth it in the end.

[gair.livejournal.com]

How do you stitch the grids? Is it just tacking every 10 squares in a contrasting colour? And do you unpick it after the x-stitch is done, or is it just sewn over? I ask because (as you say) it would be incredibly helpful in counted x-stitch, but the patterns I'm currently working on are all using very tiny stitches (which would make it difficult to unpick a grid once I'd sewn over it), and also don't have backgrounds, so parts of the grid would remain visible once the pattern was finished.

It's my mum's 60th birthday soon and I'm going to make her an embroidery pattern based on this picture, or rather a section of it. Actually I'd better start working on that soon, as I think it might end up taking a while...

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I just sew straight lines (usually making a stitch two stitches long, if you see what I mean). I used machine sewing thread as I do not want any tiny bits of colour left when I remove it. I use red at present as that stands out sharply.

I tend to unpick it when the sewing gets very close to it. I check the design is in the right place and them unpick a few stitches from the grid.

sniffle. The link to the picture didnt work.

[sharikkamur.livejournal.com]

I normally do just a single horizontal and a single vertical to mark the centre as I don't have the patience to do a proper grid. Way back when I used to do a grid every 50 rather than 10, but I find that I make more mistakes doing the grid than doing the design itself.

I just select a different colour thread - not necessarily machine thread but that is nice and easy to remove - and then stitch over it. Once I've completed the design I cut the guide threads on the back and just pull them out.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

On a small design, I can get away with just marking the centre lines, but on a big pattern, particularly one that has a non-geometric design, I find I really need the grid.