Here's the progress on the latest hardanger cushion, i.e. not much really. I'm finding this one hard to get into, but I've done the kloster blocks on the 4 big white areas and worked in some more floral bits. This one is not as nice to stitch as the first one was and just wait until I get to the beading! If I calculated correctly, there will be 880 beads on this baby! Yeech!
Finally, I won 2 lovely stumpwork kits by Coleshill Collection on E-bay over the weekend. Here they are too. I dread to think when they'll get done, but I might just take one on holiday with me next month..... There are a lot of contenders for the 'holiday stitching' spot. In order to not add more to it though, I decided not to go to this year's Knitting and Stitching Show. Yes, I know, it's sacrelige to miss it, but I just have SO-O-O-O much stuff and there's not much I really need that much that I must pay a tenner to go to the Show. I'll go to one of the others in the spring.
on and centralised it rather than the whole 'Welcome all Seasons' bit. I changed a few colours too. For the lettering I just used GAST's 'Fragrant Cloves' as that had a lot of colour variation in it and I thought orange would be a nice change and stand out from the rest of the piece. I also made the strawberries dark red, (used GAST 'Buckeye Scarlet' in the end as the KK thread was really too bright for the whole tone of this piece), and the yellow flower 'Daffodil' instead of the duller shade prescribed. Anyway, we're pleased with the finished result and look forward to having a bit of cash to spare for framing! Here it is un-framed for the time being:
fair way apart and so there's a lot of stopping and starting. A few colour changes again in that the pink the designer used is being done in Anchor Multi-colour Blue Hawaii, one of my favourites and the bead work won't be yellow/gold, but will be that nice iridescent lilacy shade you can just make out in this photo:
....on the 'Welcome' sign. Not too much more to do now. Just the basket of strawberries, a few other bits to fill in and the lettering. I've decided to change the colour of the strawbs, 'cos L*K has specified WDW's 'Romance', but that's way too pink for strawbs, so I'm gonna use Kate's Kloths 'Strawberry Dream' instead! Apt name, huh?
Anyway, now that I've got my book-keeping job out of the way for this session, I can stitch with a clear conscience!!!
So, the embroidery on the cushion or pillow cover (depending on which side of the Atlantic you speak!!!!!!) is done and it's just waiting now to be made up into a cushion proper. Might buy the fabric today, but I'm not sure that Saturday afternoon is the best time for it!!!! Perhaps next week sometime will do just as well.
....and the back stitch is started too. I've done 6 of the 16 sets of it so far. Not very exciting, but then it's repetitive work, which is never the thrill of the day!!
There's already quite a bit more surface work on it. The flowers have been put into the corner squares and the line of flowers and leaves is done along the bottom and one of the flowers at the side. Should have all the surface work done in the next couple of days.=) I've decided not to do the outer border of cutwork as per the pattern 'cos it'll end up being too big and also my frame is a bit smaller than the design, so it'll be less fuss. Will be finished sooner too and, while I'm not exactly the 'if it's not done in half and hour, I'm not interested' type, I don't like things to go on t-o-o-o-o long. I have a few more things to do as well with two wedding coming up in the spring and so forth.
This one started as an overflow, but as there are now just so many types of thread in my stash and so many skeins/balls of each, I decided to have this one as a secondary workbox instead! It's one of those Art-Bin craft cases where you get a series of tray-like boxes with lids and a bag with lots of pockets to put them in. Very handy indeed and lots of storage space. Hope I don't need to invest in too many more of them before much longer though. I have a craving for £50 of Piper's silks. Still, I also have £45 credit with Helen M Stevens, so maybe I should spend it on one of her (over-priced) thread packs?? Depends on how bad the cravings get!!
New cushion picture sometime tomorrow, all being well. It's coming along well and it is so nice to stitch something for pleasure again. The dog was just plain work and hard work at that. So, I need to work on other stuff too, or I'll go off stitching and, with all this stash, that would not be good!!
Thanks again for the DSL gift voucher, Petra! You can see some of my purchases in this picture as I got quite a lot of beads with it.=) Glad you liked the cushion colours. More tomorrow.
just of the materials. It was just SO nice to sit and do a bit on this when I got in from work today, before making dinner.
Here's the photo as it stood when I took it up on Monday afternoon. I haven't done much more since, just a bit further down on the forehead, so there's no real point in taking another picture as yet. Hope to get some more done over the weekend, but I confess that the only pleasure in doing this one now is just the knowledge that the end is getting closer. Never again!
This is the design process:
Here are the materials: Anchor stranded cottons, #12 pearl cotton for the needlelace strawberries, #8 for the strawberry leaves, Anchor Ophir in gold for the strawberry pips, some bright check (gold chips), for the flower centre and some Needle Necessities Overdyed Kreinik #8 braid to be couched on for the stems. 
Next came the silk shaded leaves done in three shades of warm green stranded cotton. (Not so many photos taken of further stages now.....) Now onto the flower. This was worked in white and pale yellow, again silk shaded according to the Royal School of Needlework tecnique - outline in split stitch, then work from the outside of the shape in in stitches of varying lengths, each layer over-lapping the previous one to some degree. The flower has gold chips as a centre!
Here's the back of the completed work for curiosity's sake!!! 
worked with Anchor Pearl Metallic #5 thread and Anchor Liana, which is actually crochet cotton with a metallic thread wrapped around it. It's a bit too thick to substitute for pearl cotton #8, but it was OK just for weaving. No good for lacey bits though, I don't think, unless the cut-out was really quite big. 
have a 'Martin Week' where I concentrate on doing stuff for him. That means getting the Junk picture as near to completion as possible and also getting the work I promised to do on his textbook project done, all being well.=)
Almost completed the bottom half of the Chinese Junk picture. The chart is in two halves so I thought I'd complete one half before moving on to the next. Gives a sense of achievement too! So, I'm pleased with progress this weekend as I'd set the target of only finishing the mid-blue on the bottom half, but I did that by Saturday evening and went on to do the pale blue as well as starting on the black scroll work. Should be all done this week.
