An Unexpected Finish!

So how has your stitching week been?  Mine proved to be much more productive than planned!  It was your typical English Bank Holiday weather this past weekend, so an excellent reason to sit in and stitch and watch the snooker (no judging please!).  It appears I was very much in my "stitching zone".  This happens every so often with some projects and is the reason why, on occasion, I have been known to finish a regular HAED page in two days and a (small) Chatelaine in five days!

Anyway, what started life as this, 12 full skeins of silk and 5 packs of beads:

 

 

Has now been reduced to this:

 



 

The eagle eyed amongst you will notice that there are only five colours of silk in the picture and there are six in the pattern - I ended up with a single length of Boulia left (not sure what happened there!) and also thought I may run out of a bead colour!  It all worked out in the end though.

 

So you know what's coming..........somehow I managed to finish Plum Pudding!

 



Just to recap, it's stitched on 28ct Jazlyn in Candytuft by Crafty Kitten and stitched with the recommend colours of Dinky Dyes silks.

 

I loved stitching it, it proved to be worth the wait and reminded me how much I love stitching with Dinky Dyes silks - I swear I stitch twice as fast when I use them!

 

I am happy to say that the lovely Nic is still speaking to me - I shall be cheering her on for her Plum Pudding finish as I know she loves this design as much as me and it has been awesome to stitch on this knowing she is doing the same.

 

So a slot has opened up in the "rotation", not sure what I will fill it with!  Aside from Box of Delights (parts for which are released monthly), all my other WIPs aren't really far from a finish, so maybe I'll have a blitz on them and get them done first before starting anything new.  Although I do have the first part of a new Stitch Specialists SAL.......

 

After the Plum Pudding stitching marathon this week I doubt I will pick up any stitching over the weekend, but I might wade through my stash to choose my threadporn threads and kit up a few more projects!

 

Happy Stitching!

Plum Pudding by Glendon Place - April Progress

Nic and I are SALing on Plum Pudding by Glendon Place on 1st -7th of each month, I picked this on up on Friday and here is where I got up to by Tuesday:

 

A lot of stitchers have commented on the way I have chosen to stitch this piece - working from the inside out in a round instead of page by page or corner to corner.  I've stitched quite a few mandala designs in my time and I've always found it easier and quicker to stitch identical elements together as by the time you've stitched something for the 4th/8th/12th time you know the pattern by heart!

 

One of the questions I get asked the most over on my YouTube channel is "How do you stitch with variegated floss?" - to which my (probably unhelpful) answer is "However you like, as long as it looks good to you that's all that matters!".  Of course we all have our preferences, but there are very few rules in stitching and far be it from me to make my methods rules!  In Plum Pudding there is only one really variegated thread out of the six silks used and that's Moonie Ponds.

 

 

I have no hard and fast rules on how I choose to use multi-coloured/variegated/overdyed/space dyed etc etc threads, I take it on a project by project basis. I'm a stitcher that doesn't mind the stripey effect you sometimes get when using these threads, I stitch with them vertically, horizontally, in a round, to match the shape - but for areas of Plum Pudding I chose to stitch with Moonie Ponds diagonally, horizontally and vertically!  I wanted the change in colours to go in the same direction as I felt the shape was going - if that makes any sense :).
 

 

I love stitching on this piece - stitching goes so much faster when you are using silks!

 

Not sure what I will stitch on next, possible my Threadporn projects - here are my thread choices for this month for my SOTW Hardanger square:

 

 

Not much in the way of hand dyed threads for this one in April, but there is nothing wrong with good old DMC and I have a mountain of perles to get through!

 

I couldn't decide between two freebies this month, so decided to stitch them both as they are only small.  One is from La-d-da (you can probably guess which one by my thread colours!) and the other is from Glory Bee in their archives section:

 

 

 

I've picked out hand dyed fabrics for both (Polstitches and Chromatic Alchemy)- I've got them so I might as well use them!  Top threads are a mixture of Valdanis and Crescent Colours and bottom threads are Thread Pickerz silks which were left overs from Twisted Rainbow (I LOVE leftovers!).  The Glory Bee design I've chosen was originally charted in GASTs I think - I've pimped up the design a bit with pink, purple and sparkles :).

 

Happy Stitching!

Plum Pudding by Glendon Place - March Progress

I was very excited to make a long awaited start on Plum Pudding by Glendon Place.  Nic and I decided to unite over our shared love of purple and SAL on this one together as it has been on both our wishlists for so long!  We settled on stitching on it for the first week in each month which makes it easy to remember :).

Here are the materials - as it happens both Nic and I are using the same fabric, 28ct Jazlyn in Candytuft by the Crafty Kitten and gorgeous Dinky Dyes silks:

 

 

I love love love stitching with Dinky Dyes silks!  Granted I know I say this about most silks, but you may be surprised to find some brands conspicuous by their absence in my stash as I'm not a fan of them!  I think Dinky Dyes silks are an excellent place to start for stitchers that are new to silks.  They are the least expensive of the branded silks, come in gorgeous colours but are also easy to substitute in designs as the skein lengths are the same as DMC.  A lot of silks come in 12 stranded 6 yard skeins or 7 stranded 5 metre skeins but Dinky Dyes come in 6 stranded 8 metre skeins just like DMC.  So if you have a monochromatic design that you want to make more exciting, you will need exactly the same amount of skeins in Dinky Dyes silks as the pattern calls for in DMC - no thread maths required!

 

Anyway, here is my progress for the week.  I only managed three stitchy sessions on this one but am happy that I have completed the centre of the mandala:

 



 

It was hard to put down, but I will look forward to picking it up next month!  Next up to stitch will be my Operation Threadporn projects for the month once I've settled on thread choices - I swear that choosing threads is the most difficult part of this whole challenge !

 

Happy Stitching!