OhSewCrafty Blog

August was a long crazy stitchy month, I did ~27 k stitches!  On a few occasions, lengthy sessions of speed stitching left my fingers a little tingly.  But that was towards the end of the month.  

I started with Save the Stitches.  I gave it 4 days, 2800 stitches, and did Parts 21 and 22, excluding metallics. It was kind of a slog, perhaps because these blocks are rather dense.  I’m hoping next month I’ll have the motivation to finish, which means Parts 23, metallic for that entire row, Part 24 across the bottom, and the rest of the border, including the bottom side, too.    

To finish out that 5 day rotation, I picked up my August finish goal, the Lemonade freebie by Sapphire Mountain Handcrafts (available on Instagram).  It only took about an hour, 323 stitches, and I got a finish.  There’s not much to say about this, it’s about 5″ square and took a total of 2 stitchy days since I started it for Maynia a few months ago.  I used 32 count linen in Scuppernog by Weeks Dye Works, and all the DMC as charted.  

My next focus piece was Cathedral Woods Goddess. Previous:

Now, after 6 days and 6,092 stitches (just a little bit of stitchy progress eh):

I think she is fully stitched now.  Backstitching has commenced.  I love how it brings out the antlers.  There’s more backstitching to do for leaf vines, her face and arms.  Then beading, I do own the embellishment back, so it’s all ready to go.  I’m not in a hurry to bead, maybe in October.  

Fantasy Triptych also got some love.  First, I dealt with all the parked threads at the midline, and pulled dozens of colors to finish the maiden panel.  All in all, I gave it 3 days and 2,414 stitches, which was almost enough to finish the panel and get it ready for the petit point face and backstitching.  

Twilight Bridge had 4 days in total… to finish the regular back stitch and tent (with exception of a few ninja stitches), and start on the detail work including backstitching in a few colors and couching on the top half.  2,038 stitches in all (backstitch counted for half).  It’s defintely coming along, but there’s a little more backstitch and couching to do on the bottom half, and french knots to do all over, especially on the bottom.  

I needed Toy Story Cast for the Magical Stitches extra credit, it was rather lengthly, a 12 letter spell out challenge (100 per letter) and there is quite a lot going on in this chart, so it was easy to map to the letters.  Progress from June (sorry, the little alien’s legs are wrapped up in the scroll):

So it was 2.5 days and 4,002 stitches.  My daily stitch count went up around this point as I started a battle round with my team (the Elves) in the Dragon Lore stitch game.  Yes, this is as nerdy as you would suppose and I love it.  

I worked on Sherrif Woody, Rex the Dinosaur, Round up the Horse, and even started Slinky Dog.  Rex’s head, and Round up, are both across page breaks.  I’m hoping to stitch the rest of the page with Round up & Slinky, which will include Jessie and the Prospector, this year, and do some backstitching.  Everything in this chart is backstitched to the nth degree.  

Stained Glass Angel got a surprise short rotation, because I am trying to finish all the ornies I started for Bingo a few months ago.  It was 1 day and 960 stitches.  Now, it’s all done except the DMC 666, of which I ran out, and the backstitching.  I’m considering getting some black petite treasure braid for the backstitch, which is extensive, I think that would be really pretty.  

Harvest Witch needed some effort for a Semisane challenge (to stitch a witch), but I just wasn’t satisfied after reaching my initial goal of 1,000 stitches.  So I gave it 2.5 days and 2,639 stitches in total, finishing the bottom 2 pages with the exception of metallics, backtitching and a few ninja stitches.  The top half isn’t nearly as extensive so I’m hoping I might be able to finish this year.  

Several more ornaments also got some love.  +250 stitches to finish Tree Tuffet, +613 stitches on Coffin Paint, 584 on Noelle, 400 on Holly Jolly.

Finally, I dedicated a little time to my Gryphon, about 2 days, and 1962 stitches.  I finished the legs, the tail, now I’m trying to work on the front side wing. I really do love this project even though it is so many shades of brown.  The background is so gorgeous, epic mountains, suitable for this magnificent beast.

Question of the month: Have you participated in any of the mystery SALs on Facebook (or other social media)? What do you think makes a successful mystery SAL?  Never have I participated in a mystery SAL, for the simple reason that I only stitch what I love and it’s impossible to know if I love it before seeing it.  Even my very favorite designers have published patterns that don’t interest me. That may change this year, with the Alice SAL from Cross Stitcher magazine, but it’s not a true mystery since it’s based on Tenniel’s illustrations. 

My September goals are as follows:

•Finish Save the Stitches

•Focus rotations on Fairy Rainbow, Fantasy Triptych, Twilight Bridge, and Harvest Witch

•Short rotations on basically everything else, as I’m participating in the Semisane event “Crazy Domino Effect”, the idea is to work on as many WIPs as you can, linking all your projects and work on each with sequentially bigger stitch counts.  So I’m starting with ornies and working up to Save the Stitches, my big finish goal, which willl require a boatload of stitches to finish.  

Happy Stitching