Needles on FIYAH!

And since I had to use a beading needle the plural (s) applies.

As part of IHSW (which I have been participating in for ages but not promoting. oops) I finished The Sweetheart Tree's Spring Blossoms Biscornu late last night.


I initially put it away because the backstitch was annoying but when I picked it up I was in the zone and just raced through it!


And in what may become a trend, I made changes. The flowers are supposed to be outlined in grey but my attempts came out revolting so no outlining. And the provided beads are tiny. Now I'm all for the 40000 series for anything that has blocks of beads (I'm looking at you, certain Mira charts) but for isolated beads they were just too tiny and disappeared completely. So out came the bead stash and I replaced everything.


And then I couldn't find three of the paillettes so I had to improvise. And finally (whew) instead of using all three colours in the beaded border I used two.


Both sides are the same except the flowers are pink vs white. I actually prefer the white side. I also interfaced the stitching to see if it make a difference during assembly. I don't think it made much of a difference until I was stuffing the biscornu and I couldn't really tell how full it was. I think I may have overstuffed.

Title	Spring Blossoms Biscornu
Designer	The Sweetheart Tree
Start date	July 31, 2011
Finish date	September 17, 2011
Total time	16.75
Fabric	32 ct White Belfast & 32 ct Angel Blush Belfast
Floss	Floss as charted
	MH 2004, 2022, 40479, 42010, 60479

Out of Season

My Tree of Stitches is growing rather slowly, so I thought I'd share a picture of my newest biscornu:

This is The Sweetheart Tree's Spring Blossoms Biscornu. Yes, I started a spring stitch in the middle of summer when everyone is gearing up for fall & Halloween.


I decided to stitch both the top and the bottom at the same time. However I'm finding the leaves annoying. See how I have two colours extruding? Counting just the green cross stitch is impossible and I have to backstitch as I go. I am not a fan of having two colours going at the same time. I suppose I could end and restart everytime but that seems excessive.

In fun news, I received an absolutely wonderful letter from my secret penpal (organized by the ever impressive Parsley).

Is 3 a collection?

I finally finished Baby Shamrock biscornu, which brings my total biscornu count to 3.

Side 1

Side 2

Before assembly:


Start date October 10, 2009
Finish date January 22, 2010
Total hours 18
Fabric 28ct antique white lugana

I made quite a few little changes to this one:
Since I didn't have the requested overdyed green I did all that part with a blend of 2 DMCs.
Subbed the requested beads with ones I had. The result is that the green are seed and the white are petite.
The original had the shamrocks alternate colours. Since the lack of symmetry made me twitchy, I made them mirror images.
Couldn't find any buttons I liked, so I just used green beads.

This was my first time doing a beaded edge of any kind, and it was much easier than I thought it would be. The problem I had (same as my other biscornus) was stuffing it. I'm always convinced that it's about to explode as I'm stitching up the final bits, but once the polyfill gets evenly distributed it always ends up being just a bit short. It looks fine, but one touch will tell. One day I will master the ability to stuff the perfect biscornu. (But that day was not today...)

It's very cute and I adore it. There is a fob as well and I'm trying to decide if I want to stitch it.
I only have two scissors and they have fobs already.

To wrap up, a picture of my little collection:

Biggest to smallest: Baby Shamrock, Kissy Cross, Bulgarian Motif

Off topic: I have 50 followers as of yesterday! I'm stunned and flattered and still smiling like a loon. I was planning a mini giveaway to celebrate 100 posts (this is 91), since I figured that would be my first milestone, but apparently not! Since I haven't still gotten everything together I'll just have a double celebration. Probably in 9 posts.

It's not easy stitching green...

It feels like miles and miles of green. And most of it's backstitch too.

I got about 10 hours into Baby Shamrock Biscornu and realized that I hadn't taken a picture. I'm not working in any particular order. I do as much backstitch as I can handle and then switch for a short while and then slough through more back stitch.



The Celtic Knots in the corner are over one. And I kept on frogging the backstitch. There are parts where a faint green line is still visible... I haven't figured out to get the thread fuzz out yet...