Sunday, May 03, 2015

why was I hesitating?

Angel Procession is going SO FAST now that I'm actually working on it. Why on earth was I hesitating to pick it up again? Maybe I was remembering how intimidating it seemed *cough* 20 years ago *cough* but now it feels like a cakewalk. I guess the past five or so years of stitching really have made a difference in my skill level.

This is just three days of work, and I haven't been stitching a lot every day:

before... and after!


Getting my threads organized has made a HUGE difference in how fast I can stitch. Of course, this means my coffee table has been conquered by thread, but that's how it has to be for a while. Here's my VERY simple setup:


All the threads, in order, in some of the empty drawers from my "DMC cabinet" aka really cheap hardware store drawer units. I keep unused and barely used skeins in there. Once they get used enough, whatever enough is that day of the week, they get bobbined and put in a plastic storage box.

Anyway, back to the point...

And then there's a bag of all the blends. I put a length of each color on the bobbin, write the two color numbers AND the symbol on the bobbin, and treat it like a single color. No fumbling for two bobbins and getting just one strand off each every time. This is the #1 speed tip for Wentzlers, I bet.

We'll see how smug I am when I get to the wings. I hear those are nasty. (I haven't actually stitched any of the wings on this piece... thank you RR partners!) But honestly, they don't look any more scary than the rest, except for the addition of blending filament on top... :)

3 comments:

  1. Great progress! I've had the same feeling too when I have picked up some old WIPs ; what seemed scary then seems much easier now...:) I have some Teresa Wentzler charts but they scare the hell out of me! But who knows, maybe in 10 years time they might seem easy...ha ha ! I wish!
    Annie
    http://mylittlexstitchnook.blogspot.se/

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  2. Wow, you have made great progress! Apart from the blended threads I would say the border looks harder than the figures.
    Your organisation idea is a really good one. A little advance planning makes it so much easier.

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  3. Lovely stitching !! The border looks great!

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