Digits Progress #2

I have been trying to work on Digits at least a couple times a week.  It gets tedious, changing colors all the time and trying to keep my tension loose enough!  But it is coming along, it is almost half finished now. 

ANG Stitch of the Month

A couple of days ago, I received an inquiry about ANG's Stitch of the Month.  My emails to the sender have all bounced, so I am going to post an answer here and hope she sees it!

Every year, ANG does a Stitch of the Month project.  They are often “mystery” projects, in that you don‘t know what the finished piece is going to look like till the end!  If you go to the ANG website and click on “Educational Opportunities”, there will be a drop down menu.  Click on “Stitch of the Month”.  You will find years’ worth there!  This year’s started in January & so is just about half done.  I think if you click on December for any given year, you will see the finished piece.  It looks to me like only the last few years have been mystery projects.

Have fun!

SOTM 2011, May

ANGs stitch of the month for May is the Chilly Hollow stitch, worked in 2 colors.  It works up quite quickly once you get the rhythm going.  I used Wildflowers 173 and Pebbly Pearl P65.

Digits Fractal by Kerry Mitchell

As some of you know, I absolutely love fractals.  And I am particularly fond of those designed by Kerry Mitchell.  I have adapted several of his designs to needlepoint, one of which, "Sunset", won a ribbon at the Tucson ANG Seminar several years ago.  The picture on the left is Kerry's design, the picture on the right is my needlepoint version.

 About Christmastime 2010, I adapted another of Kerry's fractals. 
It is called Digits (shown on the left) and I am making it into a Kindle cover.  I got the prefinished Kindle cover and have a good start on it.  I am using DMC floss and a bit of #12 Kreinik braid here & there.  It is mostly tent stitches and I reverse direction frequently to try to keep it straight.  I occasionally throw in some Scotch, Cashmere or Mosaic stitches, just to keep from getting too boring!  The prefinished cover is 14-count and interlock canvas.  I'm not fond of that, but oh well.  It requires all 6 strands of floss, and a pretty loose tension to cover well. 
Here is my progress so far:

Fractal 276 Bookmark

Now that I have finished several WIPs, I get to start new stuff!  Always so much fun!

First up is Fractal 276 Bookmark.  Sorry, that's what it is called.  I think this was one of the daily freebies from Cross Stitch Collectibles that I downloaded last summer.  I thought I would do it on 18-count canvas, in needlepoint.  It will be a little big for a bookmark, but a reasonable size for an experiment!  Finished size on 18 will be about 4.25" x 11".  These pictures show the original pattern.

Well it was designed with 79 colors of floss.  I decided it would be "fun" to try to cut this down.  The chart was only in symbols, no color.  So, being crazy, I copied it, one square at a time, into my charting program.  This took a couple of weeks.  Then I pulled all 79 colors of floss.  The charting program tells me how many stitches there are of each color.  So my first task was to delete any color with less than 20 stitches.  Right away that cuts it down quite a bit.  I would pull the to-be-deleted-color, find another color in the pattern that was almost the same and substitute.  Next I matched up colors that, when stitched, would show little, if any, difference, like black & dark navy.  I kept on like this till I was down to about 50 colors.  Then by using an overdye to substitute for several colors in the background, I ended up with a total of 46 colors.  The picture below is my revised chart.

Now I get to stitch this baby!  I am going to substitue #12 Kreinik Braid for quite a few of the colors in the light swirly part, I think.  We'll see how it goes.  I'm not sure how I will tackle this, I guess I'll just start in the upper right corner & go.  I'll keep you posted!

Scarlet Thread Kits

I'm sorry, but I just have to blow my own horn a little bit.  I am so proud that Scarlet Thread is offering several of my patterns as full kits.  Please see the write up on the Stitchything blog.  So if you want one of these patterns, all kitted up, we got it covered.  In the past, I have purchased kits from Scarlet Thread and they do a terrific job and the prices are great!

Seasons FINISHED!

Oh Boy!  Another finish!  Hurray!  Happy Dance! 

I decided to use both options for the corners and I think I'm happy with it.  Thanks to all of you who commented on this issue.  Your comments were truly helpful and I considered them all carefully. 

I have decided to have it finished as a pillow.  It will go nicely with the other pillows I have in my living room here in Vegas.

Whopee!  New projects coming up....