Cross Stitch Update

I worked hard this week to squeeze in stitching time.  I got an okay amount of time in and the majority of the time I spent working on my Forever and Ever samplers from Brenda Gervais of With They Needle and Thread.  Carver had ball games two of the nights so I went to them.  Kalissa keeps telling me that I don’t need to go to his games, but honestly, I’m having fun going.

Here is where I was last week.  I was starting in on the letters.

I got about this far and sent an SOS message to Judy at Patchwork Times.  I knew she had this as a project she was working on so I sent her a message asking if there was a special trick to making the Symrna Crosses go faster.  She messaged back that she had not done the specialty stitches there and just did x’s.  Oh, great idea but it’s too late for me.

For those of you who don’t know, in cross-stitch, there are other stitches besides x’s.  See the “A” and “B”?  Those are stitched with Symrna cross stitch.  They aren’t hard but they are time-consuming.

WAIT…UPDATE:
So want to hear something funny?  In writing this post I went to Youtube and was going to find a link for you so you could see how to do the stitch.  In my hunt I realized I wasn’t going a Symrna cross as the pattern called for, I was doing an Algerian Eyelet stitch.  AH!!  Oh well.  They look much the same and it totally works so I’m just going to continue on with Algerian Eyelet stitches.

I guess that all goes to show I’m a newbie too!!

If you want to see someone doing either stitch, an Algerian Eyelet stitch, or a Symrna Cross, check out Youtube.

Here is where I ended up for the week.  I ended up getting quite a few letters done.  I’m hoping I can finish up one of the rows of large letters and the last row of small letters in the upcoming week.

I did make a mistake.  See the row of letters that has x,y, and z?   Well I was supposed to have two y’s in that row.  You can scroll up to the picture with the chart and see what I’m talking about.  I didn’t look at the chart close enough and missed a y.  So…now that means that my numbers in that row don’t go over far enough.

Looking at the chart you can see that all of the rows of letters and numbers end at about the same spot.  That row, being I’m missing that y won’t.  I don’t want to rip that out so…I debated on adding another zero at the end.  I thought maybe I would count and see if a 10 would fit there.  I thought about adding a do-dad there.  It’s nothing to fret over and not worth ripping out.  I decided I will finish the other rows of alphabets and then decide.

I did a little more work on the Redbird Stitch Along.  I’ve had Carver and Gannon here a few of the days this week.  Gannon sometimes needs someone to sit by him at naptime until he falls asleep so I have been stitching on this.  I didn’t make a lot more progress…but some.

Here is where I was last week.

Did you remember that I put too many stitches in along the bottom?  I got those pulled out and then did a bit more stitching.
Here is where I ended up.  I LOVE stitching this piece.

Can you tell that I would rather stitch letters than the bird? HA!

The same designer has other bird samplers.  I like this one for Halloween time.

There is a Hummingbird and Bluebird one too.  They are the perfect naptime stitch.  We’ll see I might have to order this next time I put in an order.

I decided that Redbird will likely be just what I stitch on at naptime.  I only do a few letters each time I sit down and that’s plenty to keep me up to date on the stitch along.

I decided I am definitely starting the stitch along for Come into my Garden by Teresa Kogut on June 12th.  I have everything I need.

I will be stitching on 40 count Picture this Plus Vellum.  I have the called for colors and Kayla made my working copy with the changes I requested.

I had several people ask if I would share the word change that Kayla made for me so it will be “I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses” from an old hymn.  I talked to Kayla and happily she put that together.  She noted that you will need to modify the flowers at the sides.

She wrote a blog post about that HERE if you missed it.  By following the link you will find where you can go to print your own copy of the words if you would like to stitch along.

That’s all that’s new in my stitching life.  I am supposed to have a slower week as far as caring for kids goes…so maybe that will translate into more stitching time.  We’ll see.  Stop back next week and see my progress.  Fingers crossed that I have at least a border flower done for Come into My Garden.