Celtic Band Sampler

One would assume that a sampler project would probably be the first a budding needle artist would attempt. That would make sense. However, I never seem to do anything the way I'm suppose to in the crafty world, so I've started my first sampler now.

The beautiful pattern was made by Homespun Sampler and I love it. I did take some artistic license with the colors and changed the various olive tones to more golden hues left over from my Hogwarts Crest. It was a choice that helped me save money (granted, about $0.65)...and I'm just not really big on olive. The colors seemed to mesh well with the other original choices, so I'm happy with my decision so far.

This part would have been a lot easier had I not jumped in and overlooked the instructions to stitch "2x2." For those of you who (like me) prefer to ignore any directions you don't understand, stitching 2x2 means to use two threads of floss (which I did) over two threads of fabric (which I did not do). Which meant my first attempt was half the size it should have been...Oops. Thank you, internet, for helping me figure out my mistake.

 
Also, an interesting face about old, or old-styled, samplers. They often do not include "J" or "U" because those letters weren't really used in English yet. I didn't realize this when I bought the pattern and the OCD part of me really wanted all the letters to be included. After a little finagling, I was able to scoot the "I" onto the first line, turn the original "I" into my "J," and shoved a "U" into the third line of letters. Yay!

 
This has been my first venture into any stitches other than the basic cross stitch. I'm in love with the more detailed areas. I will admit I completely failed on the French knots that are supposed to be in the "strawberries" in diamond one above. I just turned them into cross stitches instead.

 

 
Much clearer pictures. I apologize for the blurriness of my camera/relative inexperience.

 
More detail work. I'm loving the darker burgandy color in this section.

And here is where I currently sit. I need to keep working on it, but I've gotten distracted with more Christmas crafting.

What are your long-term projects? Starting anything new this holiday season?

Personalized Stockings

Our poor Christmas stockings. For years, I've been promising my mother I would find some way to attach our family's names to our stockings. Something better than the paper tags I made about six years ago...

I promise the looked better at the time of the original installation.

So the last couple of years, I've been toying with the idea of embroidering our names onto the stockings. But how to do that on the extremely fuzzy tops of the stockings without having fuzz poking through all of my stitches?

My first thought was to stitch our names onto some ribbon and wrap the ribbon around the top of the stockings. The bad blogger in me didn't take pictures of the disaster before I threw it away. You can use your imagination. Just imagine lots of embroidery floss holding together the tattered threads of some white ribbon.

It really did feel about that bad.

So I took some left over cloth I had from another project and began stitching on tried and true Aida.

Font from: http://www.freepatternsonline.com/xscharts/page/abc13.htm

Much better. And I really liked the font and colors I picked out. Perfect.

But they turned out so small. They definitely wouldn't as replacements for my paper tags. So then I thought maybe I could turn them into tags attached to the loops they hang from.

I added some evenly spaced stitches to pull back the uneven edges...but I think I left too little room between names to make the best borders. I label this one as a work in progress...but it's still a giant step in the right direction away from torn construction paper and shredded ribbons. Updates soon!

Any Christmas improvements you've been meaning to do?



Hogwarts, A History

Hogwarts truly presents a brief history of me. Harry Potter was my obsession growing up. I began reading the first book when I was 11...the same age Harry was when he found out he was a wizard. I read the books repeated, watched the movies constantly, and still have long conversations with one of my best friends about the various inner workings hidden in Hogwarts.

It only seemed appropriate that my first major cross stitching venture should be into the world of Harry Potter. I took on the Hogwarts Crest.


Thinking back, I probably should have started with a bookmark or something. I had practiced a little on an old stamped kit from my aunt, but decided counted cross stitching was the place to be after my kitten wasn't turning out so hot.

I began in the center with the "H" and realized this was probably going to be a lot bigger than I ever imagined.

But I kept going...



And going...

 

Until I realized that the top of the pattern from little mojo was not going to fit on my Aida cloth. By about...10 rows. Not much in the grand scheme of things. But I'd come too far to stop now.

I actually like it better this way. It took about a year.

But I feel like it was worth it.



So what projects have you been working on? Have there been any "mistakes" that turned out for the best?