Needlework Projects

I finally got this butterfly project done.  I will never do 18 ct. black Aida again.  I went a little rogue on it.  For one thing, there is supposed to be another circle around the main design, done in dark brown.  I was tired of dark floss against the black background so I blew it off.  I was also supposed to do a bunch of couching.  I get the concept of how to do it, but as the kids say these days, 'ain't nobody got time for that'.  So I blew that off and fudged it by using backstitch.  Not terribly crazy about the results but whatever.  The instructions also said 4 strands of floss for the French knots. Yeah right.  I did some and they looked awful so I cut them out and used 2 strands. The border around the circle was supposed to be just purple floss and the inside circle border was to be yellow floss mixed with thin, shiny gold strands.  I decided not to do the inner circle border at all, and mixed the gold strands with purple floss for the outer circle.  I'm just glad it's done!

This needlepoint kit was among the ones my mom's friend sent me, otherwise it's really not my cup of tea (see what I did there?), design-wise.  It's been quite awhile since I did needlepoint and I forgot how fast the design works up.  Despite all the different colours, this was easily done in about 2 weeks' time, and not working on it day and night.  One of my friends bought it!

I picked up that embroidery kit & those other bits and bobs at the church thrift shop in Bourne. I am thinking about doing this kit with a combo of beads and stitching...'beadpoint'.  Someone already started it but I'm planning to snip out all the stitches.

Cannot remember where I got this next cross stitch kit from....probably a catalog, but possibly online.  It looks soooooo easy, doesn't it?  Just white floss on a small piece of Aida.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy.  I got this quite awhile ago, at least 6 or 7 years ago.  I remember bringing it to work to do during my lunch hour.  That's when I started encountering trouble with it.  There are an awful lot of quarter stitches which are kinda hard to make come out good.  Then there are also an inordinate amount of French knots, which I have hated since my very first needlepoint kit in high school.  I struggled to find the center and a few false starts were due to being off by a row or two.  I've ripped this out & started over more times than I can count and the Aida lost all structural integrity. The pattern is hand drawn and I don't think they did a very good job with it at all. So it ended up sitting in my drawer at work for a long time.  Over time, lunch hour stitching projects came and went, and this bookmark just sat there till I started packing up all my personal effects to move.  It sat in my 'needlework' box in my craft room since 2011 till I finally started ferreting out projects I really want to finish.  I put it in the project queue, but kept passing over it to work on new kits.  Finally, I started this again and guess what?  I screwed it up!!!! Could. Not. Believe it. I was so careful, but I fudged it badly.  It's like there's some awful anti-stitching forcefield around it!!!!!

I like the idea of a bookmark and it came with the tassle and the felt backing, so I wanted to somehow salvage it.  I started to look through my various pattern books to find something small enough to fit.  These little celestial patterns were perfect.  I am a total math failure but somehow I managed to calculate correctly. This is absolutely the last time I will use black.  This one was 14 ct so easier to see than the butterfly, but still, it's not easy to work on black.

I will be starting a new Doctor Who-themed project shortly for one of my bffs.  Stay tuned.