Floral Finesse Progress

 Hey Everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving to those in the US!

I just finished a page on Floral Finesse!  

This was chart “G” in the pattern.  

Next up?  Not quite sure if I’m going to rotate right now or if I’m going to work on a quilt that’s on my longarm.  The reason I might not rotate to another cross stitch project is because I signed up for the 2025 HAED SAL.  The SAL starts Jan. 1 and I don’t want to stop working mid-project to switch to the SAL.  For anyone considering joining this SAL (or if you’re just curious), I’m going to be doing Jellyworld.  I have my floss pulled and my fabric prepped already.

Happy Stitching!

Stacy

Floral Finesse - another page finished

Whew!  I thought I'd never finish this page!  Of course, I was distracted by the quilts I've been working on.

I've never been so eager to make quilts as I have since last July.  The only down side to that is my cross stitching has suffered from neglect.  The up side is I've finished 4 quilt tops (just the tops, so far) since last Summer.

Yesterday, I sat down and concentrated on finishing my current page on Floral Finesse.  I had all the cross stitching done, I just needed to finish the backstitching.  I tend to backstitch as I go, so thankfully, there wasn't much to do.

Here it is:

I finished this in the early afternoon and then switched to...a quilt top.  See!  I don't know why, but I've definitely been bitten by the quilting bug.

I have all of the individual blocks done, all 1,260 of them.  See?

I'm going to just take them out of the basket randomly.  The only thing I will check is that I don't use identical fabrics back to back.  I've heard this quilt referred to as a zipper quilt or a cobblestone quilt.

These are simply dark (black, navy, deep purple) 2" squares sewn onto light-ish 2" x 3½" bricks.  They'll all face the same way, square/brick, as I sew them into rows.  The rows will be 20 blocks wide, or 90" finished.  When I assemble the rows into the quilt, every other row will be flipped.  In other words, row 1 will start with a brick, row 2 will start with a square, row 3 will be a brick, and so on.

Here are the first 5 rows.  Each row is complete but I haven't sewn the rows together yet.  I am going to wait until all the rows are done so that I can keep identical fabrics away from each other.

I did switch back to cross stitching on God Speed (HAED) after I'd gotten this much done but I didn't take a photo.

Happy Stitching!

Stacy

Floral Finesse Update

Hi All!

This last turn in my rotation belonged to Floral Finesse.  Just a few minutes ago, I had a page finish!

I finished the page on the far left.  Everything from just to the right of the blue iris.  The leftmost couple of stitches on the tendrils above and to the right of the iris were on this page.  I would normally not have done the page to the right first, but it was the easiest way to line up with what was 3 small bits across the top.

Next up is, of course, La Belle Dame Sans Merci.  ;-)

Happy Stitching!

Stacy

HAP SAL August progress report

I know, I know, I'm late.  That really only happens on my blog.  In "real" life, I'm usually early...really!

I've only made progress on one of my HAPs since last month - Floral Finesse.

Here's where I was in July:

And here's where I finished yesterday:

I'll have to see if I can figure out my % done.  Since the first photo is actually three sections of the chart (A, B, and C), it's going to be difficult.  I may just guess.

I am back to working on La Belle Dame now.  My current page is about 95% black so let's hope it goes quickly.  At least I won't have to look at the chart much.  ;-)

Happy Stitching!

Stacy

Epic Project Progress Report

Ok, what makes this project "Epic"?  It's not the size, it's the number of colors used:  390!

No, that is not a typo.  Yes, it uses 390 different DMC colors.  This is the only pattern (to my knowledge) that uses this many colors.  It was created in honor of DMC's 250th Anniversary.  At the time, 390 was the entire line of DMC floss, so it uses every color that was in production in 1996.

The pattern is Floral Finesse from The Heart's Content.

Here is my progress so far:

...and here are the colors I've used to this point:

White	Ecru	208	209	221	301	304	315	316	318
319	320	321	322	333	336	340	341	347	355
356	367	400	402	420	422	470	471	472	498
500	501	502	503	504	522	523	524	543	600
601	602	603	604	605	610	612	613	640	642
644	645	646	676	677	680	699	701	712	720
721	722	729	738	746	758	760	761	791	792
793	794	798	800	806	807	814	815	816	820
822	839	841	842	844	869	904	905	906	907
930	931	932	939	948	956	957	958	959	975
976	977	3022	3023	3024	3031	3045	3046	3047	3064
3328	3708	3712	3722	3746	3747	3750	3752	3753	3765
3766	3772	3776	3777	3778	3779	3799	3802	3807	3812
3815	3816	3817	3820	3821	3822	3823	3825	3826	3827
3830

Whew!  That makes 141 colors down, only 249 to go!

I will keep the table at 10 rows wide so it's easy to keep track of how many colors have been used.

Happy Stitching!

Stacy

HAP SAL July Update + other WIP

Hello Everyone!

It's hard to believe another month has gone by!  Let's get right to the important stuff:  progress photos!

First up will be La Belle Dame Sans Merci.

Here's my where I was in May and here's where I finished in June:

I've gone from 49.16% to 51.61%.  I'm officially past the halfway mark!

You'll probably notice that my images now have the designer and order information on them.  That was inspired by this blog post.  It's an effort to show our support for the designers by proving we have legal patterns that we are working from.

I started working on one of my other HAPs, Floral Finesse from The Heart's Content:  

I have no idea of the % I have done.  I'll probably try to figure it out when I finish the area on the right of the fabric.

While it's not part of my HAPs, I did finish another page on my QS Dragonflies.  That's 2 pages out of 12 now.

Happy Stitching!

Stacy

Empty Scroll Frames

(Gasp).  I know, it's almost a sin to have empty scroll frames isn't it?  I must really be sinning 'cause I have 3 empty at the moment.  Oh, wait, I just put an ornament on one so that means I'm not quite so evil with only 2 empties.  ;-)

I've been considering what to add to my rotation.  Part of the decision has already been made because I have one wide and one narrow frame available.  For the narrow frame, I've already decided to do Heirloom Nativity Sampler from Victoria Sampler.  I bought the thread packs for this when I bought the pattern, so I know I have everything I need.

For the wider frame, I'm considering doing this:

This is Floral Finesse from The Heart's Content.  It uses 390 DMC colors.  When it came out, that was every color available!

I've had this pattern for awhile.  After all the work I've put into my HAEDs, I know I'm comfortable working over one so that's not an issue.  I don't think I'll use white fabric though.  I'm thinking more ivory.  If I dig through my stash and find a dark blue though, I might use that.

Well, the Seattle Seahawks game is almost ready to start, so I have to go!

Happy Stitching!

Stacy