Tuesday, September 24, 2013

so much for no new starts...

Haha, I lied.  I started Mermaid Azure pretty much the moment I got her in the mail yesterday.  I did a bit of her fin last night and the rest of what you see is from today.


The fabric is showing darker and more purple than it actually is. :/  It's Uplifting Currents by Under the Sea Fabrics.  My piece does have a lot of purple in it, unlike the sample picture, but it's not quite as dark as pictured here.  Hmm.

Anyway, can't wait to do more on Pickles tomorrow.  Haha, what?  Someone on FB said her body reminded them of a pickle and I keep thinking about that as I stitch her nice pickle-y green tail... so now she's Pickles. :p

Sunday, September 22, 2013

showing some skin!

I LOVE this design!  There's lots of color changes, but the colors are so rich and they go so well together that I'm not bothered at all by switching colors often.  Parking the threads when working in an area helps too... learned that from my HAEDs. :)

I got a TON of her skin done today, I'm super pleased with my progress!  I borrowed a trick I saw some people doing in a FB group... I stitched the outline of the area with a monofiliment thread so I can just fill in what's needed.  The monofiliment is great because it doesn't split when you try stitching close to it.


I'm filling the skin with basketweave stitch, which gets its name from how the reverse of the work looks.  I took a closeup, isn't it cool?  Just ignore all the barfy stuff around it, ahahaha.  I don't care too much about the back of my stitching.  As long as there's no knots or loose threads hanging around, we cool. ;)


I thought the skin would be a nightmare but it's been fun so far.  I started a bit of her tail below her hair but I think I'll stick with skin for now.  Super pleased with how this is coming along. :D

Saturday, September 21, 2013

disembodied hair

Bluebeard's Princess is all haired up... but with no skin in sight.  Probably because 10:30 at night is NOT the time to be starting over one skin on 32 count fabric. ;)


Colors aren't so good this time, the last post was more accurate.

Expect progress to slow to a crawl thanks to the mountain of over one stitching in my future!

Friday, September 20, 2013

mermaid princess comes out to play

Now that I'm done with An Important Flower, my Bluebeard's Princess will be my focus piece.  She's going faster than I expected now that I've gotten to the more solid chunks of her hair.


The colors in this picture are pretty accurate.  Yay for Photoshop. :)

I plan to finish at least her hair this weekend.  Then I'll decide if I want to do her skin over one... eep!  I love the way it looks but it takes SO LONG.  If I do go with over one, I'll be doing it in basketweave stitch for speed and to avoid distorting the fabric too much.

Whatever I decide, I'll do Gypsy Mermaid's skin the same way as they are sisters. :)

Monday, September 16, 2013

all done! :)

Just put the last stitches into my An Important Flower.  Yay!


I'll be good and save the new start for next month... I'll work on a WIP next.  It'll probably be Bluebeard's Princess... :3

Sunday, September 15, 2013

flowers, mermaids, and framing!

I should probably take pictures more often, but I get lazy about that when I'm on a roll!  All that's left on An Important Flower is a bit of pink and the second light green motif on the right side.


It's too big to fit the entire thing on the qsnap at this point, but there's more on the left that you can't see. :)

I'm anticipating a finish this week and I thought I'd reward myself by starting Red by Mirabilia... but maybe I should continue on with a WIP and go for another finish.  Plus I got super distracted by one of the new Mira releases from today, Mermaid Azure:


So then I started thinking about fabrics, since I just finished taking pictures to update my fabric gallery.  First up, a total joke but kind of amusing... I call this "shark infested waters" ... hehehe. XD


Okay, probably not the best idea but you have to admit that's pretty funny.  Here are six serious selections.  It's going to be hard to choose just one!

 

Sigh.  I love mermaids. :)

Finally, framing in progress.  Still a lot more to do...


Saturday, September 07, 2013

An Important Flower, framed Octopus, and goals

I haven't done goals in ages!  This should be interesting...

First, progress on my AAN project, An Important Flower.  I'm hoping to finish the fairy-ish looking part of the greenery on the bottom this weekend.  It feels good to finally, for realz, be over half done with this.  I feel like it's gone on forever!  It's not tedious, though, just BIG!


Oh, I was going to post my colors... I'm using all Dinky Dyes silks, and the colors are Peach, Taylor's Sweet Pea, Spearmint, and Christmas Pines.  Most of my skeins are from a junk/misdye pack but the flaws are so minor they don't affect anything, just some tiny dye spots here and there that are easily avoided.  So the floss actually ended up being pretty cheap for this project!

And we finally framed my Octopus Treasure Cave.  The picture is awful but you get the idea... it's supposed to look like a porthole!  It doesn't quite get there but I can reframe it later... can you believe this frame was actually a $15 plastic clock from Ross?  Haha!  We took out the clock parts and stuck the octopus in there right on top of the clock face!


Finally, my goals for the rest of September:

- finish An Important Flower
- no new starts unless it's a small that I can complete in a couple of days (floss samples!)
- no shopping unless it's with money earned from online sales (no touching the bank account)

Seems reasonable!

Thursday, September 05, 2013

a pear apPEARs!

Okay, that was lame. :p

Here we are, my first project stitched with my own hand dyed thread!  The fabric is a little piece of SMF Cashel and the color is Tricks and Treats.  The colors are pretty accurate but the thread is actually much brighter in person.

JBW Designs - Pear
(from an issue of JCS magazine)


I should really go back to one of my large WIPs but I kind of want to do another sample!  We'll see which wins out in the end... :)

Monday, September 02, 2013

to dye for :)

Did something a little different this weekend, hoping I can save and even earn some money in the long run... by learning to hand dye!  Here are some of the results of my first experiments.  There's some fabric too, but I haven't washed it out yet.  Got tired of washing!

My first threads!
These all started out as plain white DMC. :)

And one of two yarns I dyed.
The other is in the dryer right now. :)

So I think my next project will be a monochrome small to see how the threads look!  I'm really surprised that they stayed so bright even after drying off.  The colors did lighten up a little but they are still pretty intense even after a lot of washing.  Yay!

Sunday, September 01, 2013

TW freebie finish

I haven't stitched in a while (yup, games!) but I picked up a little TW freebie last night and finished it in one sitting.  This is Father Winter Ornament by Teresa Wentzler, stitched on opal Cashel:


I finally got the threads I need to finish my AAN An Important Flower, so I'll probably work on that next.  Then again, you never know what I'll find to distract me... :)