Yet another UCJC Finish!

I became a little obsessed about finishing my first ever hardanger piece. It's Clover I by Mabel Figworthy's Fancies, stitched on 25 ct lugana using Caron Collection Watercolours and Wildflowers in Emerald.

As I said in my previous post, I had trouble with the Queen's Stitch and had to adapt them a bit to make myself happier. I had the same issue with bead placement too, and so they don't quite follow the pattern. I do rather like how it turned out though.

Look at those pretty dove's eye filling stitches and all the blingy beads!

While I am very glad I tried hardanger and learned some new stitches, I can honestly say that I much prefer cross stitch. Think I'll stick with what I know best for the foreseeable future.

This is finish 6 of 31 in my Ultimate Crazy January Challenge. :)

Learning Hardanger

My Day 3 UCJC project was a hardanger design by Mabel Figworthy's Fancies. I had a great time learning how to do kloster blocks and motifs. I'd never worked with Caron Collection Watercolours and Wildflowers before and it was a brand new adventure for me.

I finally got around to picking up the project again yesterday. I finished all of the kloster blocks, then spent an hour trying to figure out the Queen's Stitch. It just would not lay properly for me. I must have frogged it 6 or 7 times before I gave up and altered the stitch to suit me better. It looks fine, but I don't love it.

Then I moved on to the scariest part -- cutting.  With my lovely and sharp Stork scissors, I made a few cuts, then some more, and started pulling out bits of fabric. Holy cow! I was doing it! But I couldn't figure out how to tuck in the cut ends nicely. They just would not tuck. :( So I moved on to the double wrapped bars, which I think turned out swimmingly.

Thank goodness for crossstitchforum.com and the help of several fantastic stitchers (including Mabel herself), who gave me a few more pointers and set me straight on how to tuck in my ends.

Voila!  Look at those pretty little kloster blocks with no ends showing!

I must say that hardanger is fun, quick, and beautiful, but fiddly too! Tucking in the ends will be the death of me, I'm sure.

Here's the whole piece to date:

IHSW (finally!)

For the first time in 2012, I managed to sign up for IHSW (International Hermit & Stitch Weekend) AND I did some stitching as well. :)

I worked on Tribal Butterfly (one of my UCJC pieces) and got a fair chunk completed. Mostly mindless monochrome stitching is about all I can handle lately.

I think I might be able to finish it the next time I pick it up.

April TUSAL

I know I'm a day late ... but here's my TUSAL update for April. I've added quite a bit since the last time. I'm not sure how, but I've managed to do a lot of stitching on a lot of projects.

Mostly you can see gold Kreinik from the kimono piece, white from Christmas Snow, and purple from the Tribal Butterfly.

I'm on a roll !!!

Seriously -- I don't remember a time when the finishes came so fast and furious! Just before I left for Vancouver last week, I finished another UCJC piece - Christmas Snow by My Big Toe Designs.

This piece is stitched 2 over 2 on 32 ct Siren's Ocean lugana by Enchanting Lair using Vicki Clayton's HDF silk in white.

It actually stitched up much faster than I had anticipated, for some reason I thought it'd be much larger. Anyway, I had put this in the "medium" size category for my UCJC, so it's the first of it's "size" to be completed.

I'm taking this piece and my Tree of Stitches over to my LNS tonight and will hopefully have some pics of them framed to show fairly soon.

Another finish already!!

I went on a bit of a stitching binge today, and managed to finally finish my Tree of Stitches by Abi Gurden of The Stitch Specialists Yahoo Group.

Stitched on 32 ct Siren's Ocean by Enchanting Lair with HDF silks and Mill Hill beads (though the beads are difficult to see in the photos).

Strike one off my WIPocalypse list!!

I still have SO MANY projects on the go that it is hard to decide what to work on next. I pulled 8 or 9 projects that I wouldn't mind working on out of my "drawer of starts," and sang "One Potato, Two Potato" to select the next piece to work on.

April WIPocalypse

I knew I'd done a fair bit of stitching in the last few weeks, but I didn't realize how much I'd done until I started writing this post. OMG -- 2 small finishes, and substantial progress on 4 other projects!!

Time for a quick recap ...

Two finishes from my UCJC list ... Carolyn's Garden Poppy and For Beauty Kimono. (I'm aiming to finish 12 smalls this year as part of WIPocalypse, and I have 4 done already.)

Progress on 3 medium to large sized UCJC projects ... Tribal Butterfly, Metamorphosis, and Oh Bugger Subversive Sampler.

And just in the last few days, I've managed to complete another stitch section on my Tree of Stitches (also on my WIPocalypse list). I will admit I enjoyed working on the Rhodes squares very much.

On this project, I think all of my favourite stitches have been the square ones ... cushion stitch, Norwich stitch, and the Rhodes squares.

UCJC Finish #4

I decided to put a little time into another small - For Beauty Kimono by Joan Elliot - and finished it!

To be honest, once I started adding the Kreinik border, I hated the whole thing. It didn't get any better as I added the backstitching. Bleh. I can't wait to put this one away in a drawer and never look at it again.