SAL – Cappuccino #01

June 9, 2019 by Carole 26 Comments

This is the scheduled three-weekly post for the SAL that I’m doing with several other crafty blogs and I’ve started a new project. Apologies for the length of this post, Apparently I had a lot to say LOL.

I said at the start of the year that I wanted to complete five cross stitch projects this year, and I specified which ones they would be. So far I’m doing quite well. I made a spreadsheet to work out how many updates I’d need for each piece and I’m actually a bit ahead of schedule. So, instead of taking it easier, I thought I’d add another project to the list. Of course I did 🙄

You see one night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I had a brainwave. As I’m prone to forgetting things, especially night-time ideas, I made a quick sketch before going to sleep. The next day, I rummaged in my To Be Finished box to see if the idea was feasible.

Would you like to see my To Be Finished box? (Frodo did.)It has a lid, to keep all the stitched projects clean (in case anyone was worried), and it lives on the Cross Stitch bookshelf. It has inside it all the projects that are stitched but need to be framed or finished off in some way. As you can see, I’m much better at getting the stitching done than I am the framing.

The box has some lovely projects in it, such as these. And all of these. And these, which are what prompted my night-time sketching session. I’d remembered that I have one left to do in the Coffee Trio. They’re gorgeous little projects, that come complete with silk threads which are lovely to stitch with. They’re by one of my favourite designers, Little House Needleworks. They’re fairly small and after the success of framing Snowflake Serenade with that pretty fabric, it occurred to me that I could quite easily do these all in one frame, one below the other, which is what I sketched. *I may regret saying ‘easily’*

And, in order to do that, I need to stitch the third one – Cappuccino. (It is on the same fabric as the other two, but the lighting clearly wasn’t the same for both pics.) So, that’s why a sixth project was added to my To Do List and I’m hoping, really hoping that it doesn’t stop me from finishing the others as the last one is the largest one of the six.

The fabric is a lovely permin linen. It’s 32 count, so finer than my usual 28 count, and is quite slubby and uneven. I can cope with slubby and I can even still cope with 32 count (although it’s maybe best to use up all of my finer fabric before my eyes get any older), but 32 count AND slubby is a bit too likely to cause mistakes. So, I’ve used some stuff that’s a bit like fishing line and marked out the grid. The grid lines were checked for accuracy about a dozen times so now it’s much easier to make sure everything is stitched in the right place. It’s really speeded up my stitching actually so I’m thinking it was definitely worth the time it took.

This is how far I’ve got with it. That’s almost half way, so a bit more than I’d hoped for. The silks are lovely to use. Much nicer than the ones used on Aconites. They don’t snag or fray and just glide through the fabric. I love the overdyed effect too! Aren’t the purples pretty?! The only thing that I don’t love is working with one strand of thread. No loop starts, so more ends to sew in.

For the stitch-a-long I’m linking up to these lovely blogs:
Avis, Claire, Gun, Sue, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, Margaret,
Cindy, Helen, Linda, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Hayley, Megan, Catherine,
Deborah, Clare, Mary Margaret, Renee, Jenny, Carmela, Jocelyn, Sharon

Do allow for people being in different time zones, so not posting all at the same time, but it’s well worth doing a bit of blog hopping to see all the lovely projects that are being worked on.