SAL – Precious dreams #14

This is the scheduled three-weekly post for the SAL that I’m doing with several other crafty blogs and I’ve finished Precious Dreams. It’s happy dance time!

This is where it was up to before. I had 6 columns left to do, which is 3780 stitches. This is the finished piece. I know it’s a little wonky, but once I press it and stretch it onto a frame of some sort, it’ll be fine.

It’s about 8″ x 5.5″ (21cm x 14cm) and consists of 35,190 teeny-tiny stitches.

It’s worked 2 threads over 1, in tent stitch, on 28ct denim Jobelan. I’m pretty sure I’ll never do that again! LOL

I have no idea what I’m going to stitch next. Something colourful, I think. I’ll have to have a rummage and see what calls to me 🙂

For the stitch-a-long I’m linking up to these lovely blogs.

Avis, Claire, Gun, Sue, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Cindy, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Hayley, Megan, Deborah, Mary Margaret, Renee, Carmela, Sharon, Daisy, Anne, Connie, AJ, Jenny, Laura, Cathie, Linda, Helen

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.

SAL – Precious dreams #13

This is the scheduled three-weekly post for the SAL that I’m doing with several other crafty blogs and I’ve made good progress on Precious Dreams.

This is where it was up to last time. I had 12 columns to go and having just done four columns for that update, my plan was to try to keep up that rate and finish after three more updates.

I did not do four columns this time though. I did six! That’s 3780 stitches. This is how it looks now. So, now I’m thinking that if I can do that again, I can have a finish for next time. No promises, but I’m hopeful.

I can’t wait to see this finally finished.

For the stitch-a-long I’m linking up to these lovely blogs.

Avis, Claire, Gun, Sue, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Cindy, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Hayley, Megan, Deborah, Mary Margaret, Renee, Carmela, Sharon, Daisy, Anne, Connie, AJ, Jenny, Laura, Cathie, Linda, Helen

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.

SAL – Precious dreams #12

This is the scheduled three-weekly post for the SAL that I’m doing with several other crafty blogs and I’m now halfway through page six of Precious Dreams.

This is where it was up to last time at the end of page five.

I’ve done four columns, which is 2520 stitches and now it looks like this. Kitty has a face!  With 12 columns to go, if I can carry on at this rate, I should be done in three more updates. I’m determined to finish this before working on anything else now as the end is in sight.

For the stitch-a-long I’m linking up to these lovely blogs.

Avis, Claire, Gun, Sue, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Cindy, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Hayley, Megan, Deborah, Mary Margaret, Renee, Carmela, Sharon, Daisy, Anne, Connie, AJ, Jenny, Laura, Cathie, Linda, Helen

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.

SAL – Precious dreams #11

This is the scheduled three-weekly post for the SAL that I’m doing with several other crafty blogs and I’ve finished page five of Precious Dreams.

This is where it was up to last time.
I’ve done three more columns which is 1890 stitches. Kitty now has the start of her face.

I’m hoping to get half of page six done for the next update but it’s getting very confetti-heavy in this section. It looks like there’s a lot of white, but there are three shades of almost identical white in there as well as several shades of very pale grey that are very close to white. I have to really concentrate on which shade I have in my needle as if I forget, I struggle to identify it.

For the stitch-a-long I’m linking up to these lovely blogs.

Avis, Claire, Gun, Sue, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Cindy, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Hayley, Megan, Deborah, Mary Margaret, Renee, Carmela, Sharon, Daisy, Anne, Connie, AJ, Jenny, Laura, Cathie, Linda, Helen

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.

SAL – Precious dreams #10

This is the scheduled three-weekly post for the SAL that I’m doing with several other crafty blogs and Precious Dreams has come back out of the box.

This is where it was up to when it was put away, with the top four pages completed.
I’m quite happy with how much I’ve got done this time. Ok, there was a lot of background, which stitches up a lot faster, but I’ve done four columns which is 2520 stitches.

Look, there’s another ear! I’m quite excited to be coming up to Kitty’s face. I have three columns left of page five, and I’m hoping to get them done for the next update, although they are a mass of confetti.

If anyone hasn’t seen an in progress pic of this before, it’s not as chaotic as it looks. Honest 😉

For the stitch-a-long I’m linking up to these lovely blogs (and apologies for missing some of the links off last time. No idea how I managed that)

Avis, Claire, Gun, Sue, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Cindy, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Hayley, Megan, Deborah, Mary Margaret, Renee, Carmela, Sharon, Daisy, Anne, Connie, AJ, Jenny, Laura, Cathie, Linda, Helen

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.

SAL – Precious dreams #09

This is the scheduled three-weekly post for the SAL that I’m doing with several other crafty blogs and I’ve got a little bit more done on Precious Dreams.

This is where it was up to last time.
And this is it with page four finished. I took out all the orange thread that I’d used for gridding. That was fun! I’d worried that it would split as I stitched round it as it was only normal sewing thread. I was right. In hindsight, I should have waited until I had the proper stuff to grid with but it was several years ago that I started this project and I didn’t know about the proper stuff then. It’s all out now though and I’ve replaced it on the lower pages so I won’t have the same problem.

I’ve tidied up the parked threads and grouped them by page but I haven’t de-fluffed yet. I’m quite worried about the amount of fluff on this. I’m not sure I’ll be able to get it all off as it’s stitched in. Hopefully when this makes it onto the wall, you won’t be able to see it, or maybe it’ll just look like authentic texture LOL

I was very tempted to carry on with this for another page, but I’m going to stick to the plan and do a small project first. I’ve just finished prepping it, which didn’t take long as it only uses two colours. I’m not going to bother gridding as it’s very simple. Don’t you just love that fabric? Hopefully I can finish it by next update and then carry on with Precious Dreams.

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

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.

SAL – Precious dreams #08

This is the scheduled three-weekly post for the SAL that I’m doing with several other crafty blogs and I’ve got a little bit more done on Precious Dreams.

This is where it was up to last time.And this is it now, with page three finished.
I was hoping to get page four done as well as it’s only two columns but just haven’t found the time to pick this up. At least page three is done though, and I’ve done the confetti on page four, what little there was. I only need to whizz down those last two columns with navy now and the top half is complete. I may do that before I put it away to play with something a bit less fiddly, so that I can show you a photo of all of the top half without the frame getting in the way.

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

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.

SAL – Precious dreams #07

This is the scheduled three-weekly post for the SAL that I’m doing with several other crafty blogs and I’ve been carrying on with Precious Dreams.

I’m getting more into it now and have picked up speed from the last update. What has helped is that three of the colours are quite distinctive compared to the ten shades of grey. The navy background, a bright blue and the green. I tend to use the blue and green to navigate by so have started doing those first, and using blue and green highlighter on the chart so I can see at a glance that the next stitch goes above a green one etc.

This is where it was up to last time.

This is where it’s up to now. I reckon that’s about 2700 stitches so I’m happy enough with that although I was hoping to finish page three. There’s slightly less than 900 stitches left of that page though and as there are only 1800 stitches in page four, I think I’ll carry on and do that before putting this one away for a bit. That’ll be the top half finished then and I can see if that sewing thread that I used for gridding will pull out. I suspect I’ve split it in a few places so I might have fun with that 😉
It’s absolutely covered with cat hair. It seems to attract it more than other projects that I’ve done. I’ll wait until it’s finished before trying to defluff, otherwise it’ll just get fluffed up again though.

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

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.

SAL – Precious dreams #06

This is the scheduled three-weekly post for the SAL that I’m doing with several other crafty blogs and I’ve been carrying on with an old project that got abandoned about four years ago, probably because I wanted to do some shiny new projects. It’s a lovely design though and I’d like to get it finished so my plan for next year is to stitch on this for a few weeks and then do a smaller project before coming back to it. Hopefully that’ll stop me getting bored of this one again and it’ll get finished.

It’s called Precious Dreams and I got the chart from Etsy. I’m sure I got it from Kimshobby but it’s not listed there now. I did spot a few others that Iiked while I was checking though 😉

This is where it was up to when I last worked on it back in September 2015. It’s very different to my usual stitches as it’s tent stitch and is over one. It’s very fiddly and there are a lot of stitches. It’s taken a lot of concentration to figure out what I’m doing as it’s been so long. I had a system going but it’s taken me a while to remember it LOL

I’ve made a tiny bit of progress. I started by doing a couple of squares of plain navy to get me back into the rhythm of doing tent stitch and then started filling in the bits from the next unfinished column. It was quite gappy where I’d gone a bit off piste and hard to see where I was putting the stitches until I got used to it.

Excuse the rubbish photo. I usually take the photos in natural light, but this one is at night so the colours are all off and I had to take the pic at an angle to avoid a shadow. Hopefully you can see the bit that I did.

I’m thinking that I might try to finish a page before doing something else, and then going back and doing another page. I’m on page 3 of 8 at the moment but pages 4 & 8 are only two columns wide and 5 – 8 have less rows than the top four. I guess that means that I’m pretty much halfway so it’s all downhill from now on.

The other projects that I have lined up are mostly charts purchased on Etsy, that I’ve kitted up ready to stitch.

The big bang theory by Wee little stitches
Buffy the vampire slayer by Wee little stitches
Timey wimey by Pixystitches
Hobbits by Pixystitches
I never finish by Nerdy little stitcher

I also have several Disney kits that are on the pile of possibles. I’m thinking that little lot should keep me busy for a while LOL

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

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.

Precious Dreams #5

After finishing the first fish for the last update, I was keen to do some more of the second fish, who had just started to appear. I haven’t had the time to do a great deal to him, but I have made definite progress.

This is where it was last time.
And this is what I’ve managed to do since.

I’ve tried to do one column at a time, but it seemed simpler to do certain colours in this fish across the next few columns as well, as they only have a few stitches here and there.

This is what it looks like now. I’ve taken the photo wide to show how I cope with all the parked stitches that will start the next lot of columns when I get to pages five onwards.

It looks messy, but the hair clips do a great job of keeping those threads from tangling. When I get to each column, I’ll just take out the threads for that bit and as they’re already in the right place to start stitching, it’ll save some time.

Back to the African Sampler now, as it’s nearly time for the SAL update again.