Valentine's Day and a New Start



Happy Valentine's Day to everyone!
May "Love Brighten Your Life!" and many good things come your way!

I also have a new start to share with you! It's not far along, but here is my new work in progress, Twilight Angel, my first Petite Dimensions Gold kit:

This photo unfortunately doesn't capture the delicacy of the colours very much, but it is very hard to capture the right tones. The background is 16 count Aida, in an unusual colour called "dove grey" that is really more of a smoky blue-grey.

These few stitches are my progress for the last two days, and form part of the angel's overskirt (for reference, please see the kit image in my sidebar under WIP). The lightest blue closely matches the colour of the background, and the floss has an unexpected but lovely sheen to it, like a cross between cotton and rayon. It is also more 'springy' than DMC. That's the only way I can think of to describe it.

I have worked a Dimensions Gold Collection design before, a wonderful piece that I completely fell in love with, and that inspired me to pick up cross-stitching again a few years ago. At the time, it was called Elegant Roses, but is now called Rose Cuttings, and appears to have become part of the regular line. I do not have a photograph of my work at the moment, but here is the kit image to give you an idea:

(I have yet to find the right frame for my piece, but am envisioning something much more elegant than the suggested frame, with scrollwork, perhaps in gold)

The kits have improved a great deal since that time. They now come in resuable hard plastic folders instead of plastic-bagged, which is very useful to keep the materials that you are not currently using together and clean, and with pre-sorted threads attached to a colour card.

When I worked on Elegant Roses, the floss was very reminiscent of DMC, a cotton whose only discernable difference was a lesser incidence of pilling or 'thread fluff' when stitching. So I suspect that the floss has been revamped along with the kit design, and it took a few stitches for me to get used to it. It has a bit more fullness, and its slight slipperiness makes firm darning of the starting and end threads more important, as the ends have a bit of a tendancy to slip out if not darned tightly. But the consistency is in no way as difficult to work with as rayon, and I am enjoying the way the floss lies smoothly against the Aida, and the extra little bit of shine!

I will post a review of my stitching experience and my impressions about the kit when I finish. For now, I am quite happy to be starting a new design, and greatly look forward to attaching all the pretty charms and beads and sequins when it comes time to finish. I've got a long way to go before I get there, though. :)