Another Pia dress and cross stitch update.

I made my third Pia dress, by Tessuti

The others were made in linen, this time I made it out of quilting cotton from the specials table at Spotlight.  Cool and loose fitting for summer, perfect.

I'm still busy with cross stitching.  I made good progress on Ornament Healing Rose.

I'm stitching this in the HAED challenge facebook group.  I'm continuing to do 30 stitches per day on it as part of the 100 days challenge.  This means every day there is a bit more progress.  I quite like this technique and when I start one of the larger projects think I will continue to do it for those.

I'm nearly finished Ornament Witching Hour.

This is the screenshot from Pattern keeper as I haven't taken a recent photo. I think another week and a bit and I should be finished.  Yay, my first finish after returning to cross stitch.

I'm wanting to do a new start for my birthday in April but I'm having a hard time deciding which one.  There are a number I'd like to start.

 Sad Koala.  This was commissioned especially by HAED from the artist Dakota Daetwiler and all proceeds went to the Wildfire charities in Australia.  Such a worthy cause, I had to buy it.  I'm not normally a wildlife stitcher, but this appeals.  Especially as I have a photo of me holding a koala, taken a few years ago when on holiday in Australia.

 Gentle stroke.  This is a Limited Edition by HAEd and I had to have it.  Love the detail of her face.

 One with Nature. 

 Morning Sun

Native girl with Dove.

Faces are what really appeal to me when doing cross stitch and I think these are all lovely.  I love how the last 2, the lady fades out into the background.

So as I am totally undecided, I thought I would spin a wheel and see what came up.

And the winner is Morning Sun by Lee Bogle.  stitch size is 350x703, total of 246,050 stitches.

I'm going to try this on 20 ct tent 2  over 1.  I can't get the fabric here in NZ so will order from Lakeside Linens in the UK.  As DMC thread is so expensive here, I will order what I don't have from Itchy Stitchy in Australia.

The finished size on 20ct will be 17.5" x 35" and will fit onto a long narrow wall between my kitchen and dining room.

Birthday gift

It was a friends 70th birthday yesterday.  She said no presents, but of course I had to make her something. 

This is the mandala notebook by Kreative Kiwi.

Janis is a very busy lady doing a lot of volunteer work for the amputee society and she has lots of appointments which she records in a diary which she carries everywhere with her.  I got a 2020 calendar to put in the notebook cover so she can put her appointments in it.

First dress of the year and already a change to my cross stitch plans

I made the Cadence dress by Love Notions.

I've previously made this pattern in a short sleeved top.  For this I made the tank dress version.  I omitted the elastic casing and instead made a belt.  To make the belt I cut a length on the fold 2 1/4" wide, then just sewed together.  The only change I made to the dress pattern was instead of lining the bodice I finished the neck and armscyes with bias binding.

This was super quick to make - it only took 2 hours to sew, as the dress is just 2 pattern pieces.  Easy peasy.

I've already made a change to my cross stitch plans for this year.  I've decided to UFO the At the Steps.  I have a number of reasons for this.  I initially started it working full cross on 22 ct.  I decided to change to try to speed it up and restarted it on 25ct using tent stitch.  I'm not all that happy with how the tent stitch looks on the 25 ct.  Yesterday I had a new start on Healing Rose doing tent stitch on 22 ct and am much happier with my stitching.  I wondered whether to restart At the Steps doing tent on 22 ct , but really I am just not happy with it - the piece is just too big when I have so many others I still want to start.

So I have decided future projects need to be no larger than 150,000 stitches in total, preferably under 100,000.

In place of At the steps I want to start  Storykeep What I See.  At 200x462 there are 92,400 stitches



I already have a spot picked out for it, in the dining room by the kitchen is a long vertical wall, currently with Celtic Winter on it, but I think this would look fabulous there.

As I jsut had a new start yesterday, I plan on waiting to start this in April for my birthday