Work In Progress Wednesday - 5 Feb 2014

It's Wednesday and time for my regular long-term counted thread project update as part of Sharon's Work in Progress Wednesdays party over on Pintangle.  If you don't yet know her blog, where have you been??=)  It's one of the very longest running textiles blogs and has been going about 18 months longer than mine so, if you don't know it yet, check it out!

I took more or less daily progress shots on my Tudor Lady cross stitch piece, but some aren't very good quality and, frankly, it's not very interesting seeing a few stitches more over four or five photos, so I've just picked the two best, which also include the most up to date.  I've been working on it almost every day since the last update, so I've made a decent amount of progress.

It's hard to make any reasonable estimate of percentage complete on this picture as there are so many fancy things to add on top when all the cross stitches are complete.  Just look at the yellow wedge section for instance.  All those gaps need plugging with satin stitch, beading and cross stitch in metallic thread as well as some top stitching trims!  So, I'm estimating that I'm something like only 15-20% of the way through the whole project despite having made an impact on well over a third of the total working design area.

As anyone who looks closely can see, I'm smoothing off all the edges, whether they're outside ones or edges that butt onto other sections yet to be stitched.  I don't like the 'blocky', pixelated look that some cross stitch designs have, so I try to smooth as much as I reasonably can.  I'm really enjoying the project though and I usually stitch on it for an hour before settling down to sleep.

Mum's still making progress, but isn't able to eat much so isn't gaining a lot of strength.  I'm going to take her some juices and smoothies next visit to help boost nutrients and umph.=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014