Friday, December 28, 2007

Island Home Complete


It's taken me a couple of months, but I did finish the Island Home project I set up for the test meeting of the ANG online chapter in formation. Overall, I think it came out pretty well. The best part is the house itself. I nailed that down perfectly with the look and stitch selection. With the fields, I made some poor selections on stitches.
What would I do differently if I restitched it? I'd not use the medallion stitch on the top field. The coverage wasn't that good and it just looks flat. Same with, I'm sorry to say, the water stitch. I had great hopes for it before I did it, from the write up it was given in stitch of the month. It has too much of a regular vertical flow for me. I'd also change the color of the alternating scotch stitch hill, though I like the nubby texture it gives.

One Side Done

Finally, one of the sides of part three is done! It's taken a while - I think because there are so many partial stitches and very few blocks of color. I still have quite a few specialty stitches to put in, but I'll be doing that after I get all four sides stitched. The fabric color is really making things pop and it takes the order and adds a bit of flair. Now on to side two.

Over the Halfway Mark


This week I got over the halfway mark on part five. I feel really good about the progress and still love the overall design. I think this is the biggest part to do, overall, since it's for corners of a -lot- of stitching. Once I'm done with all the corners, I get to start the houses. I'm looning forward to that.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Blue Upright


It looks like I made a lot of progress this week because I got this long blue area done, and it stands out quite a bit. Things are progressing pretty well, I think. The blue does look good, doesn't it?

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Milanese Field


The Milanese stitch I've been using here is showing the effect I wanted - especially at a distance over a foot. It looks like a field of mostly ripe grain with bits of less than ripe mixed in. It's two strands of Splendor and one strand of Gloriana variegated perle. Only three more sections after this to go! I finished this section after the picture was taken on Friday. Hopefully I'll have the next one started before the next picture on this Friday. I'm planning on finishing this off during the first half of January.

Squaring It Off


The squares I'm doing on this are the outer part of the design, which means I'm really close to done! I like how the light makes the one color look like two because of the difference in the angles of the thread. There will be Fyreworks over the top of each of of the squares, so they're not done yet. I will -definitely- have this done by the end of January.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Another Start

This is another piece with a deadline - crewel, and it needs to be done by the beginning of February. Crewel goes very quickly for me, so I should be able to get it done by then. The hardest part is starting - transferring the design to the fabric. I use a big picture window in my kitchen, so it has to be done during daylight. It's an EGA group correspondence course, so I need to get it done to get graded. The piece is called Crewel Choices and it's by Judy Jeroy.