Eek I Suck!

Hey everyone I know it's been a while.  My only excuse is that I've been on vacation at the end of every month for the past 3 months.  But I'm excited to say I have a finish to show!  Finally!  I finished it 10/15 and got it framed and sent about a week and a half later.  I haven't seen it hanging yet but I know the recipient has gotten it safe and sound and was really excited.

Here is Paradise after it was finished:

 

And here it is after it was framed:

Sorry for the really bad glare.  But I promise it's pretty in person :)

I framed it myself in a floating picture frame that I had to engineer.  Basically the way the frame worked was that it had the frame, a piece of glass, another piece of glass and then a smaller wood frame that fit inside the first to help sandwich the two pieces of glass together to hold the pics in place.  In order to make it work I cut the foam board so that it fit snugly inside of the smaller wooden frame.  Then I switched the order so that it was: frame, glass, smaller frame with the cross stitch inside, and then other piece of glass.  I stretched the fabric on the foam core board and pinned it in place but I didn't lace it because the fabric was large enough to just fold over the back and since it was a clear back I wanted it to look nice.

I hope that makes sense :)

As for this blog I'm not really sure what I want to do next.  I've already started 2 other projects but I don't know if I'm going to start another one on the 1st or not.  I guess we'll see how this blog is going to work next year :)

Thanks everyone for sticking with me on my journey!

 

Paradise in July

Well I think I'm averaging about a page a month.  This month I have a bit less than a page but I've been focusing a lot on getting ready to move.  We have to be out of our apartment next week.  We're probably getting one of those pods so they'll move the pod across the country and so were staying in hotels for a week or two until we secure jobs.  Then we're driving across the country to move ourselves.  The bad part is my cross stitch frame is too big to stitch in the car lol.  I may get a hoop or qsnap just for the car ride :). 

My progress last month got me here:

And my latest progress is here:

Stitch count wise it's over a page since I'm stitching into the next but I still have about 100 stitches left in the official page.  Hopefully the car ride will give me lots of progress for next months post :D.

June Post I'm Halfway Through the Top!

Yay!  I just finished putting in the last few stitches on this page and I'm officially past the halfway mark on the top row.  The whole piece is 14 pages across and 3 down so I feel like I've made progress.  A lot more this month than last.  But I actually did 3/4 of the page in 2 days.  Unfortunately now I have to focus on school again.

Here's where I was last post:

And the whole:

And here's where I am now:

And the piece as a whole:

Sorry I just noticed that pic is a bit blurry.  But I feel like I made great progress this month.  About a page and a half done.  I'm still far from my goal but that's okay.  I'm aiming for a Christmas finish now.

See you all next time!

Paradise Isn't Paradise :(

Unfortunately I haven't made much progress at all this month on paradise.  I finished about a page.  I have a good excuse though I was on vacation for 2 weeks and couldn't take my project with me because it was too big.  It seems like a lot of us this month haven't gotten much done though so I don't feel too bad :)

Last month:

Now:

And the piece as a whole: 

I was so frustrated because I really wanted to finish the half page yesterday but I was tired.  There's only 3 colors left in this section so that should be quick I hope.  I'll get it done tomorrow after work.  I  didn't get to stitch at all today because I slept until work and did errands after lol.  Oh well, see you all next month!

April Progress Paradise

I didn't manage a page finish before the post.  I'm on page 5 but have stitched 7/42 so far.  The page after next is the halfway point.

The top pic is my latest.  It has a few more stitches in but I won't get home until after midnight so can't get an updated pic.  But there's only about 30 extra stitches.  I hope my next post will see us moving further down because I'm pretty sure once I reach the halfway mark I'm going to work down again so I don't have to move my scroll rods.  See you next month!

March Update

Hey everyone I've got an update for paradise.  I just finished the first half of the 5th (I think) page.

I've still got a long way to go.  I switched from stitching in hand to using a scroll frame and I've gotten quite a  bit slower.  But that could also be because for some reason my floss keeps breaking.  And because I'm still learning.  

For those of you who don't read my blog the phrase is "smell the sea and feel the sky. Let your soul and spirit fly". I'm doing it in 2 lines so that just shows you how much I still have left.  

It's been great watching your projects grow!

January 31 Stitchy Start

I'm still behind on my goal.  I should be done with page 4 but I'm only about halfway through page 3.  I didn't realize how much confetti was in page 3 ad it's taking longer than I anticipated.  Since a good portion of the piece will have text on it I should move faster hopefully because they are solid so here's hoping.  I'm estimating I'm about 10,500 stitches in so far.  Only 151,100 left to go lol depressing ;)

Sorry for the quality the lighting in here is pretty poor.  I promise my next post will be better.  Great progress by everyone so far I'll go back and comment on your posts in the next few days.  I'm trying to get ready for a Super Bowl party tomorrow.

Whew!

New Years was nuts!  I had to work until 2:30 am New Years Eve and then I had to work on New Years Day.  I started on the first but wanted to wait until I had some progress to show and had good light.  This is about 3,300 stitches in.

I'm working it in columns of 20.  The grid is in 25 and it's 32 ct linen.  I messed up a bit on the grid since it's my first time using pen whereas before I used thread so I was working between the lines but it's okay since I really just needed to know where to start.  This is the last column of the page now and I'm aiming for a page a week.  This is the largest page but only by a single column or two.  There are 3 rows of 14 pages, the last row are all half pages.  Love watching everyone's progress!

Paradise

Hi everyone I'm looking forward to seeing all of your projects!  For my project I'll be doing Paradise from Love Thy Thread.

It's 800x202 and has 100 colors.  It will have some slight modifications because I'm going to put a beachy life quote over it.  It's going to be a gift for my cousin's wedding in October because she loves the beach.  I'll be pretty much stitching this non-stop to get it done in time but I do have another large project I'll be starting right after.  I'll be starting this on the 1st and have already dyed the fabric.  I'll be doing this on 32ct linen dyed in a mottled blue/white.

Thanks for the add I can't wait to get started!