Well, I worked hard on my Mon Seul Desir this week, 28 hours (190.5 total). I finished the upper right corner, which took me most of the week because of confetti. I laid out the foundation of the rest of the tree. Although it is hard to see, there are five colors in there already. I am confident I can finish that up this week, which makes for a record three weeks for page 2.
I think I’ll have a goal of one row of pages a year (there are six rows, and I believe 8 pages per row.
I am really pleased with my progress this week. I was motivated from my page finish of last week. By using my new technique (follow a color for a long time, preferably at least half the page) and filling in I finished the top half of the tree on my second page (page 4). The needle organizer helped a lot too, especially with confetti. I think I spent the evenings during the week laying out the base of the tree (the dark parts) and the weekend filling it in with confetti. I try to work on the colors that occur the most so I have a good base for the confetti.
I worked 28.5 hours this week, for a total of 162.5 hours. I’ve set myself the ambitious goal of finishing page 4 in three weeks. This will make my projected total project time go down a considerable lot (from 12.5 years to about 6 years) which makes it a more realistic prospect that I will ever finish this monsterous thing. :D
Permin of Copenhagen has been in business since 1854 and are a Danish company. They sell a lot of designs as kits, but the designs that I love by Permin are their samplers. All the samplers they sell are reproductions of historical samplers in museum collections. The Vierlande sampler I bought a few weeks ago is by Permin, and is based on a sampler from 1826. The samplers they reproduce come from The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and other places. In Europe they are sold as kits with fabric and threads that match the originals (current) colors as good as possible. This makes for a great and classic end product. In the US I believe the patterns are sold as charts, but with a good example picture matching up the colors shouldn’t be too difficult. Also, when shopping around online, I found their prices for kits are not too bad. I have several of their samplers on my wishlist, including the one pictured in this post.
After my stitches were removed last monday I started stitching again. It is still a bit sore, but I’ll manage.
I stitched for 23,5 hours this week, for a total 134 hours. And the best thing? I finished my first full page! To finish that one page (page 3 of the chart) took me 128.5 hours in 8 working weeks (I started on December 6th, so it took me a little over three months real time). This page contained a little over 7300 stitches, and 54 blends of color. I think the rest of it will go faster, because I have started to stitch larger areas at once so I am not slowed down so much by confetti.
The green on the lower right is the beginning of the first tree, and I am really pleased with how beautiful the colors are turning out. Because the original is so large, a lot of detail (for example in the rabbit or the flowers) is lost, and in the tree it returns because of its large size. I can’t wait to finish the tree :D.
Besides stitching larger areas, I have also started using a Pako Needle Organizer to help me. This is a place to keep threaded needles. It originally holds 50 colors, so I bought 50 extra needles (I use Permin Gold 26 cross stitch needles without a point). I have more than 50 blends already though, so now I have two colors in each square, one in the upper right, the other in the lower left. It save me a lot of time I spent on threading and rethreading the needle, especially in the case of confetti where sometimes a color is used for only one cross…
The surgery on my wrist went fine, and I will soon be back stitching again. Today we went into Groningen for some shopping and I couldn’t resist the lovely craft shop (Sajet). They had several great sampler kits for sale (mostly Permin). I love the monotone samplers, and when I saw the one on the left for sale (almost 50% off) I couldn’t resist. It is Permin’s Vierlande 1826, an original old design from the collection of Museum Celle in Germany. I bought a full kit with brown linnen (I think it is 32 count) and blue and red DMC. The design features initials and a year (1826) but I think I will change them so they fit me (my and Henk’s initials and the year I will finish it). The lettering is from the alphabets and numbers featured elsewhere on the design, so changing it should be no problem. I am planning to start this when I finish “I love dogs” but I don’t know if I can wait that long… :D
This week just a couple of days stitching. I stitching in the evenings and one full day, filling up confetti between the big splotches of red I finished last week. Total stitching was 11,5 hours for a total of 110,5 hours…
After this week I am in for a stitching break. Thursday my wrist was operated on, and that will need some time to heal. I hope to be stitching again in a week or two, but we’ll see. I hate to not be able to stitch, especially so close to finishing page 1. As I said before, I decided to treat each page as a finish, since stitch-count-wise they are as big as small projects anyway…
After finishing the small celtic knot (see below) I picked up my tapestry again. I managed 13,5 hours of stitching (total is 99 hours now) in between cleaning the house and moving furniture.
I worked my way downwards in single colors that cover a lot of space. All those new stitches are only four colors, with most of it being only one color (the Libra symbol, and I am a Libra… coincidence? I think not!). The rest of it is mostly non-red (branches and flowers, they don’t call it mille-fleurs for nothing), so the rest should take me tons more time, but it is nice to see it going somewhere. The white area on the right is the start of the first tree!
As an in between stitch I made a small celtic knot this week. I wanted a finish (I love finishing something) and I also wanted to try out DMC color variations thread. So I took some left over aida and stitched this up in a couple of evenings.
I used two threads of DMC 4215 (blue/pink/purple) on ? count aida. The pattern is from Ink Circles and can be found here (it’s a freebie!). It is the september pattern.
I liked the color variations. I find that monochrome patterns stitched with color changing threads are gorgeous. I ordered some Vikki Clayton threads that I am dying to try out… maybe I will start on a bigger Ink Circles pattern someday… I have my eye on Cirque des Cercles in the color Dragon Blood (Third picture from the bottom).
Only a couple of hours evening stitching this week. I worked on it for 10,5 hours, for a total of 85,5 hours now. I tried to finish the top right corner of the page, while also filling in confetti spots in other places. I am real happy with the progress. I guess with such a large project each page feels like a finish, so now I am getting close to my first finish!
This weekend I hope to have more time for stitching, we are staying home so I should get in at least 7 hours each day, if not more.
On a side note, I started a small in between project, just to have a real finish. I also wanted to try out DMC color variations that I got cheaply at a local store. More about that later :D
I’d like to feature some cross stitch designers and designs that I have encountered in my browsing sessions looking for new things to make. The first one is Ink Circles. Ink Circles’ website sells the original designs of Tracy Horner (and also designs by several other designers).
Tracy designs great celtic knots, and also great monochrome designs. I especially love the design on the left, Cirque des Cercles (she also has a version with triangles and squares). They lend themselves very well to stitching with over dyed (multiple color) thread. They are quite big (but I am a sucker for big designs), and very beautiful! When you do visit the site, don’t forget to check out the gallery where her designs can be seen in many different colors.
There are also a fair few free patterns on the website (mostly celtic knots). She stages a stitch-along (SAL) last year with new free designs every month, leading to a big final piece in a month or so.
