Morecambe

A Long Winter's Nap progress

You can just about make out a bit of the picture frame and a few twinkles and ornaments in the tree. Thousands of stitches just for this tiny amount of progress. My Daughter's comment - "well doesn't that look a mess".

 

A Long Winter's Nap

Heaven and Earth Designs patterns are available as a download or via snail mail. I bought my first few from a needlework supplier and as they are printed on both sides of A4 paper you don't get a real sense of just how big the pattern is. I recently re-started this (for the third time) as I wasn't happy with the coverage the first two times. I had settled on 22 count 2 over 1 full crosses. When I made my working copies I decided to lay them out just to frighten myself. I have decided that I'd better tent stitch rather than cross stitch and maybe knock a year off the working time.

A Long Winter's Nap

I restarted A Long Winter's Nap for the third time, on 22 count 2 over 1.

This teeny tiny corner is approximately 700 stitches!

Which, circled in yellow, shows there's a long long way to go! And that's probably a generous circle. By the way, the tiny little isolated straight looking stitches are how I fasten off. I make a pinhead stitch a few stitches away, the thread on the back is further secured by subsequent stitches and the little dot of the pinhead stitch is covered by a cross stitch.

I've ordered an add on lense for my magnifier to hopefully speed up my stitching a little because sometimes I feel as if I am guessing where to complete each stitch.

I shall alternate this piece with Christmas Flourishes. The stitches on Christmas Flourishes seem huge after working the teeny tiny ones on A Long Winter's Nap and is a nice change for the eyes.

Experiments on 18 count fabric

The above potting shed window is an experiment with 28 count stitched 1 over 1 as a test for "A Long Winter's Nap" which I started on 25 count lugana, 2 over 1. I soon found 2 over 1 to be too crowded and unpleasant to stitch so then I tried 1 over 1 - not enough coverage. I bundled it away into the attic and re-started on 18 count, 2 over 1, Still not enough coverage so I tried 3 strands. I like the coverage at that, but I can't say as I like stitching with 3 strands so I investigated the possibility of just tent stitching it. Thus began an experimentation in the top left corner, after which I have decided to order a 28 count to try 1 over 1 and a 22 count to try 2 over 1. I will certainly have plenty of fabric kicking about afterwards. Maybe this year would be a good year to make all my own stitched christmas cards!

The clickable thumbnail is my experiment on A Long Winter's Nap. The stitches circled in red are full crosses, 2 strands. The stitches circled in green are full crosses, 3 strands. Yellow circle is half cross stitch, various strands, 6 gave the best coverage but wasn't very nice to stitch, and finally, the pink is back to full crosses, 2 strands but I deliberately tried to alter my tension.

Of course, in reality you view a picture from a few feet away and so I am probably obsessing about tiny specks of fabric showing through when there's no need, but this is such a big undertaking I want to enjoy every stitch of it and so need to get the fabric and count right. I must have put over a thousand stitches in already, on the two tests but as the finished article will contain 124,800 stitches that's less than 1% of "wasted" effort.