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Tuesday, March 31, 2015

March Achievements and April Goals

Goals for March:
1. Finish a Mill Hill ornie. I finished French Horn and even cut it out.
2. Finish the castle and trees in Cinderella. I ended up frogging the metallic backstitch (and then frogging and stitching all the surrounding DMC since it got fluffy and shredded) so that I could couch it. Despite all that work it was probably faster than struggling to backstitch with the Kreinik. I'm never doing that again!
3. Put 20 hours into Autumn Winds. I put in exactly 20 hours.

Unexpectedly This Month:
1. Stitched a lunch bag.

Goals for April:
1. Finish a Mill Hill ornie.
2. Finish-finish a small from the Drawer Where Things Go To Wait (Forever).
3. 20 hours of Autumn Winds.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Carry Lunch In Style

I made a lunchbag! I followed this tutorial from Pink Penguin. This was a request but I'm really tempted to keep it for myself!
It looks huge in this picture but it's only about 12x12x6 and that 12 inches is with the handles included. It's not insulated, but it is lined with the same fabric as the brim. There's also a cover that pulls together as a drawstring. It's the first time I've done anything like that, so I didn't fiddle with the pattern but followed it exactly.

A terrible shot of the inside, but it gives you an idea of what it looks like.
I was initially going to add the recipients initials but I decided to just go with a detachable flower instead. It's a kanzashi style flower based on this tutorial. It took me a lot longer than necessary because I kept missing the folded in bits when I stitched it together. But now that I have the hang of it I can see myself making them when I need a pretty embellishment. The flower is just tackled on for the photo. I need to find a pin of some kind for it.
Because I wouldn't be me if something didn't go wrong: I ran out of black thread and I have no orange, so I had to do all the stitching in white. The topstitching was a nerve-wracking job since mistakes were going to be incredibly obvious. I cut the outside in the wrong size, but was able to repurpose it for the cover which is an inch smaller. I forgot to change my needle position from my last project so the seams were 3/8 instead of 1/4 inch. And I already mentioned the flower issues.

But all in all, it was an evening well spent and I'm very pleased with myself!

And in case anyone is thinking of making this themselves, the tutorial is very easy to follow, except that her instructions on boxing corners aren't very clear.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Third Instrument

I still haven't figured out how to take good pictures with my phone, so it's a truly terrible picture of French Horn for the Smalls SAL.
TitleFrench Horn
DesignerMill Hill
Start dateMarch 2, 2015
Finish dateMarch 25, 2015
Total time3.75 hours
Fabric14 ct white perforated paper
FlossAs charted
BeadsMH 252, 2011, 2055, 3043

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Stitch From Stash - March

Month: March
Spent: 3.32

Carryover: 35.80

I picked up some DMC that I ran out of, and some fabric and interfacing for finishing (which thankfully doesn't count for SFS because it would've put me way over budget!).

In frustrating news, I'm unable to use my camera for the foreseeable future. I'm going to have to use my phone, which as nice as it is, is very annoying to take pictures with.

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Onto The Dress

I took a brief break from struggling with the Kreinik to stitch a bit of the skirt. I'm loving it so far.

Cinderella
32 ct Charcoal Lugana

I also got a new sewing machine and have been playing around with it. I keep forgetting to take a picture of it. This weekend, I promise.

Friday, March 13, 2015

Starting Over

When I last posted about Autumn Winds she looked like this:

Autumn Winds
28ct antique white Lugana

Since then I've managed to lose my original working copy, been unable to work backwards to figure out which parts I've stitched, kept it hidden, and finally restarted it.

I'm going with a block by block method, and now she looks like this:

Autumn Winds
25ct white Lugana

Saturday, March 7, 2015

Castle And Shrubbery

I'm almost done the non-dress bits of Cinderella. I just have the metallic parts of the castle left since I'm not going to stitch the frame. Unfortunately the metallic I have is a bit thick so it's not much fun to stitch with. I'm really really looking forward to getting back to the dress!

Cinderella
32 ct Charcoal Lugana