SFS Month #4 - A Special Easter Egg!

Although Easter has come and gone and this post is a bit late, I wanted to share my second project for this month. I was working on it feverishly to get it posted up for the Holiday weekend, but this design is one of those that ended up going off in an entirely different direction to what I was imagining. Thankfully, despite all the twists and turns it took and the merry chase it led me on, I do like it and hope you will too!

(This story is a little long, so if you'd just like to see the SFS info, it's right at the end).

When I first signed up for SFS, I decided that my personal goal would be aimed not towards reducing spending as such but towards actually *stitching* from my stash. That hasn't worked out so far (for happy reasons!), but this project fits that goal :)

From the 2011 Christmas Ornament issue of Just Cross Stitch magazine, this egg is "Christmas My Way", by Keslyn's Designs. You can see a version of the original stitched up at this blog. It's full of pretty Specialty Stitches that the designer calls "Sym-Stitches", based on Symmography, or "String Art" (like this lovely example).

Way back when the issue first came out, I bought it just for this little egg pattern, thinking it would look beautiful in soft pastel colours for Easter :) So I set about putting together such a colour palette, and choose these pretty colours:

From top to bottom on the stack, and left to right on the ring: 3824 (peach), 776 (pink), 744 (yellow), 955 (green), 157 (blue) and 210 (purple). Then I remembered that I had used those pink and yellow shades in my Chicken Scratch Heart, so I added in the pretty DMC Colour Variations in 4095 from that project:

I thought it would pull all the different coloured bands together, and it did look really nice up close. But it completely faded away even at arm's length, and I was hoping for this to be a wall ornament for seasonal display. So after much deliberation, I came to the unfortunate conclusion that they were all too light.

So I went back to my floss boxes and played around with combinations. It took me days to decide! Sounds ridiculous, I know. Usually playing with colours and pulling flosses is great fun for me, but I was getting really frustrated. I tried other variegated threads, with complimentary colours. Darker versions of the pastels. Even metallics!

Finally, I kept coming back to this beautiful bright turquoise, and this happened:

Easter Brights! From top to bottom on the stack, and left to right on the ring: 209 (purple), 956 (pink), 703 (green), 743 (yellow) and 3846 (turquoise). And when these colours finally came together, I actually wondered why, exactly, I was thinking of Easter as pastels? New grass green, crocus purple, fluffly chick yellow...it fits!

Special Easter Variation of of "Christmas My Way" by Keslyn's Designs

Here's my finished Egg! Now, this is the first time I've stitched over one on 28 count Evenweave (by M.C.G. Textiles). I really missed the easy counting of Aida blocks, and I had some trouble with the stitch spacing initially, especially the big diamonds on the center line. I ended up taking out almost as many stitches as I put in ;) But by then I was really enjoying the colours and the different stitches, so I kept going.

Here is the Easter Egg before and after beading:

Of course, I did change a few things along the way :) I replaced the second row from the top with Diamond Eyelets, to echo the Half Eyelets on the center band border. The original stitch was very heavy and took away from the Rhodes Hearts directly below it. I also added some more rays on the topmost element to make it fuller, and made some minor adjustments to the Stand at the bottom to fit in all the colours!

But my favourite bit of Spontaneous Stitching is the little polka dots in the center band of the Egg, and the one in the center of the Stand. These are Rhodes Octagons, but at the time I was just fiddling around with thread and liked the shape!

After I added the polka dots, I almost left the beads off altogether! The original calls for Mill Hill Petites in Red, so I had pulled my trusty favourite Mill Hill metallic golds instead to work with this palette. I was thinking of using a regular Seed Bead in each center of the Diamonds, and the Petites everywhere else. I actually stitched a few on, but it really drew the attention away from the Specialty Stitches, so that was out.

Finally, I remembered some pretty little crystals I had left from another project and discovered that they fit the spaces in the centers of the Diamonds perfectly! Happily serendipitous :) They are 4mm faceted Rounds, in AB (Aurora Borealis) finish - that pretty rainbow shine look - from Jolee's Jewels, which is now Create Your Style with Swarovski Elements. The Mill Hills are regular size, #00161, in clear AB.

Since they are mostly translucent, it's hard to see where I added them all!

The beading ended up being my favourite element of my Easter Egg, and it is SO hard to capture all the sparkle! Nothing shines like Swarovski, and in full sun the three center crystals transform into tiny prisms, letting off rainbow flashes in the light :)

My SFS for April, Month #4: Finishing Supplies

As I mentioned, my plan is to turn this little Egg into a padded wall ornament to hang up and enjoy every Easter Season :) After my first project this month, my Chicken Scratch Easter Egg, this the only other thing I've stitched for Easter.

So I didn't have any Easter or Springy prints to use as backing fabric. Honestly, although I was secretly hoping for a small eggy print, I was resigned to settling for plain coordinating cotton at the most. And that eggy print I was trying hard not to want would have to be REALLY small - the Easter Egg turned out very little indeed:

The stitched motif is only roughly 1 1/2 inches wide and 3 inches tall! So imagine my surprise and utter delight when The Great Stitchy Karma Gods smiled upon me and granted me this most wonderful gift:

Eggy fabric! With Springy Flowers!! And Little Chicks!!! And Bunnies!!!! WITH FLUFFLY, FLOOMFY TAILS!!!!! *Ahem* I may still be a little bit excited :)

Can you blame me? Easter Joy! Every time I pull this fabric out to peek at it, I can't help but smile. And there was lovely turquoise Grosgrain ribbon to match too!

My SFS Total: I bought the smallest cut off the bolt, .02 of a meter, for $2.99, and paid $2.20 for 2 meters of ribbon. With tax, my spending totaled $6.57 CA. That leaves me with $18.43 from this month's $25 allowance, and $58.52 in the Bank.

Truly, my family and I had a wonderfully blessed Easter Holiday, and I hope you and yours did as well :) Even though I was disappointed that I didn't Final Finish this little ornament in time, I do intend to try to get it done now so we can enjoy it next year!

The Stitch For Stash (SFS) SAL 2014 is hosted by Mel @ Epic Stitching

ES Featured on DMC Threads!!!

I'm SO EXCITED to share some absolutely awesome news: Emma Broidery at the wonderful DMC Threads blog has written a feature on my Floral Heart project!!! 

The post is called "The Creative Process" and is well worth reading! Emma contacted me a few days ago by e-mail and asked if she could share three pictures from my Floral Heart set on Flickr for an article. Naturally, I was thrilled, and said yes! She sent me a link when the post went live this morning, and I clicked to read it with delight and, yes, a little  apprehension - because I had no idea what she would say. 

I was floored, FLOORED, in the BEST WAY POSSIBLE when I read her marvelous, thoughtful, very kind words about yours truly and my stitching! I was curious as to why she had wanted to use my floss toss photo and the one of my two test pieces, rather than close-ups of Floral Heart, and the post provided an insightful answer.

When I started this blog in 2011, my aim was to share my stitching progress with other stitchy bloggers because I found that reading about the ups and downs of their projects was very inspiring. Over the last few years of reading and writing about stitchy things, I have found that blogging has provided helpful information about what does and does not work, which has made me a better stitcher! 

But until I read Emma's article, I had never thought about sharing my progress on my projects as being a "window" to how I work and how I think - what Emma calls "The Creative Process" - but it is so very true! It is astounding and humbling to imagine that sharing a photo of a simple floss toss might be relevant to someone else!

This is one of my favourite parts of the profile:

I love that she took the time to photograph the threads she used in her project – this is an extra step that can tell us so much when preparing for a new project, or pinpointing what works and doesn’t work in a piece. For example, she mentions that she didn’t end up using one of the threads pictured, and notes the ones she did use. I like that she took the time to test her threads first, to find the shades she really wanted…

The really amazing thing is the I almost didn't post that picture at all! I forgot to take a photo with the skein of white when it was unopened, and was embarrassed that it didn't line up with the others. And then when I was working the project, I decided not to use the dark green - but I couldn't take a new picture because all my skeins of pearl cotton were opened out and used! But I put it up anyway, and now I am so glad :)

What Emma's post has brought home to me is the importance for ALL STITCHERS to share our "Creative Processes"! Talking about and sharing photos of our Works In Progress (WIPs) is just as useful - if not more so! - than posting only about the Grand Finishes. This is easy to forget, especially as there is increasing pressure on bloggers to "stage" their photos  to look "perfect", which in reality is an impossible goal.

Stitching is not always smooth sailing. There can be tangled and fraying threads, knots and snags, messy stitches, broken needles...and the back will never, no matter how hard we might try, look as good as the front! But part of the JOY of stitching is finding a way around these things, of working through the many small obstacles, and making each work MEAN something to us that is far more than the sum of fabric and thread. With every work we do, we LEARN, and that is something to celebrate!!!

So take time to share your thoughts as you're stitching! It is so fun to follow a project from start to finish, to see how intentions manifest and change in the process :) I will be making it a point to take and post more WIP photos in future, and am working on a detailed account of how Floral Heart came to be - it was really a Happy Accident and those are the very best kind of Mistakes ;) - that I hope to post up soon :)

DMC Threads is currently writing an informal series of stitcher profile articles, of which mine is the latest. I hope you'll take time to scroll down through Emma's archives to read some of them. I particularly enjoyed the features on glow-in-the-dark thread, creative projects and colourful stitches!  And I'm very interested in hearing your thoughts on your own Creative Process! Feel free to write below :)