HAED Bulletin Board SAL

Hey guys.

Since its Christmas Eve tomorrow and I'm going to be doing my normal "op's I've left it late running around" thing, thought that I would update my blog this evening lol.

So other then my Gecko Rouge Model Stitch this year I will also be working on this year's Heaven and Earth Design's Bulletin Board SAL piece. 
These smaller pieces are specially for member's of the HAED Bulletin Board only and aren't available to buy in general. They are however cropped down from the full size charts :)

We got a choice of 6 pieces to choose from, and the pages of the chart are sent out throughout the year - creating a full years SAL piece (yeyy!!)

The piece I have selected is QS Mystic Garden by Ciro Marchetti.

This is a crop from the full piece, Peacock Garden (which you can view and purchase here: Peacock Garden by Ciro Marchetti). When this came out I was drawn to the tigers immediately, but didn't fancy tackling the full piece. You can't imagine my delight at finding out this was one of the SAL pieces! 

After having a quick rummage though my stash, I was thrilled to find a piece of 25ct Magic Guide which will fit my final design on perfectly (will be 5.5inchx5.5inch approx).

Completed prep work

To complete my delight the wonderful Donna at Cross Stitch Heaven decided to offer us HAED Stitcher's thread packs for our selected pieces, so I ordered that to save myself time at this rush time of year

My QS Mystic Garden SAL Thread Pack from Cross Stitch Heaven

So that's me all ready to start. I can't do anything now until January 4th as this is when the first page is released but I'm so looking forward to it.

Many Thanks to Michele and Bob at HAED for these fabulous designs, and for Rachel from the HAED Bulletin Board for organizing it all.

Its going to be a fantastic stitching year in 2013!!

May I wish everybody have a fantastic Christmas - enjoy yourself's and I hope you all have an amazing time!

Much love to you all xxx

Happy Birthday Thea!

Happy birthday to my friend Thea!!!

Gecko Rouge's Majestic Mustang 42!!!

Hey everybody!!

Little slow on the updating blog, but I injured my shoulder and it's taken a while to recover enough for me to hold my hoop and frame's. Thankfully it's improving loads in the last week or so I'm hoping that, once Christmas is out of the way I will be able to jump back into my stitching again (I don't get much of a Christmas break with the job that I do).

Anyway I'm thrilled to say that a couple of day's after my last post I could stop stalking the postman!! My Gecko Rouge kit had arrived, all in a lovely red envelope :D

LOL see ;)

Enclosed was a wonderful chart, 14count adia, all the threads needed and a needle to get going - everything needed to start!

Gecko Rouge kit

All the contents

 14 count Adia, thread cards and needle(s)

Half of my threads

 All my threads post putting onto thread card LOL

Chart front cover and bound chart

Front cover of chart with instruction's

The chart itself is a clear print and is on good quailty paper. I have the standard size chart but the chart can also come in a large print to make it even easier. You can even choose between a black and white chart or a colour chart :)
There is also a choice of stitching on white or black fabric, but I have choosen white. A recent addition to the choices is 25count evenweave.

So of course I have a new kit - so I had to start!!

 Centre point

First stitches in place

This stitched up very quickly and before I knew it I was starting to see shapes and I was starting to wind myself up thinking I coud see a head . . . 

I started seeing shapes so much I mentioned it to Gecko Rouge's owner. She very very kindly sent me a colour copy of the chart, which confirmed that I wasn't see thing's much to my delight!

Can see a definate head appearing here

This stitch uses alot of different shades and colour's in it that you may look at and think is wrong, such as an olive green in the muzzle of the mustang. However, as always it's good to remember that this add's depth to the piece and when you look at it from a distance, it blend's together perfectly. This is exactly what's been happening as the piece has built up..

Mustangs as of 17 December 2012

                          
So stitching on and I have reached this stage in my stitching of this piece. As I say having a shoulder injury has prevented alot of work from going on, but I'm dying to get back to them and I'm really enjoying stitching them and seeing them come to life!

Check out the Gecko Rouge website at www.etsy.com/shop/geckorouge for the full range of chart available.  Its also worth remembering that many of the design's also come as jigsaw puzzles too :-D
Also if your on facebook we have started the GeckoRouge Stitching group - a friendly place for sharing WIP's, conversation and questions that you may have!
Come find us and were see you there!!

See you soon!!

Much love

"Magic" and some News!

Hello everybody

Yes I've not posted for a while. Honest truth is that after I finished QS Dragonflies I lost all desire to stitch anything at all :(

To try and make my stitching bug jealous I started up a bit of latch hook work - and it worked.
My stitching bug has returned in full and he's ready to get me stitching!!

This is how far I got with my latch hook

I've only got the green to finish and probably won't take me more then a couple of hours to finish off.

I'm not going to abandon this new craft - I really like latch hooking and I intend to continue. In fact I've organised a Big Cat Hook Along lol

But as I say my stitching bug is back in full force! It hasn't returned for Mini The Black, but for my paralympic start Mini Pumpkin Cat Magic (Otherwise known as Magic) by Melissa Dawn.

This is how he will look when he's finished.

This is where I am on him at the moment and I'm really enjoying him :)

But I have other new's. I enquired about becoming a model stitcher for GeckoRouge after seeing a friends impressive model stitch. Great news is that I've been accepted!!! And I honestly can't wait!

After talking it over with the companies owner I've selected this to be my model piece.

It kept calling to me and drawing me to it. When that's the case - that's the one to stitch!
Its being posted out this week so I'll be stalking the postman for its arrival!!


You can see the lovely creations on Gecko Rouge right here : http://www.etsy.com/shop/geckorouge

Anyway that's all for now - I will be back with you soon with more updates

For now - loves ya!!

QS Dragonflies Complete

Hey!

I completed QS Dragonflies!!

I certainly didnt make things easy on myself. They are stitched on 28ct Brittany evenweave, using DMC colour variation threads. The hand dye is called "Dark Goddess" and came from Sparklies.
And I absolutly loved it once I got over the the difficulties of the stitching not quite working!!
In the end I found that stitching 2 over 1 in tent stitch seems to suit both the threads and the fabric so thats what I stuck to and I LOVED the results in the end!!

All I need to do now is to frame them. Ive got the frame sorted, which I love, but I dont like the mount. So once Ive got a new mount I'll frame them properly but this how they look in the frame I've choosen.

Getting a new mount next weekend so Ill post how they turn out then :)

Now im back to working on Mini The Black, so Ill post a progress on him soon

See ya

QS Dragonflies SAL

LOL - I haven't gone back on my promise.

Although Ive not been posting much I have been stitching. But Mini The Black has been put away for a while in favour of some colour!!!

I got bored so I organised a SAL using a HAED chart called QS Dragonflies by Ching-Chou Kuik.

Now I can't tell you too much about how im stitching this as one of the rule's of the SAL is that we keep what we are up to a secret ;)
I will say im certainly not stitching it in black and white :D

I can tell you that I've made things difficult for myself, and im actually up to my 5th start. However it is now looking lovely and I have completed 1 of the 2 dragonflies and have started on the other. Im now enjoying the project which is good because I was close to giving up!!!

So this is what I've been doing recently and im hoping to finish in time to put it into the rewards programme

See you all soon x

Mini The Black

Hi!!

So seems im not great at updating my blog - ops sorry for that.

It's been a really stressful couple of months for me - I changed jobs, had my car have a major breakdown (which I need for the new job!!) so needed to get that repaired, but im also having troubles outside of work - but I won't go into those one's here.

I will try and come update more often!!

So anyway's most of my stitching has been abandoned because Mini The Black has an amazing pull on me. Now I know I said that I was aiming for Mum's birthday but I think we all knew - never gonna happen ;) So now he's a christmas gift lol

Im absolutly loving stitching him even if im stitching him in such a strange way,

You see, as his name suggest's, this stitch contains a large amount of black. So I got it into my head to stitch ALL off the black stitching first (told you it was strange).

The effect is quite stunning really . . .

So Im actually very proud of the way he's looking at the moment - he's seemed to pull together more over the past 48 hours (I have been on holiday from work this past week which has allowed extended stitching time) and you can actually tell it's a horse now!!

Anyway 1 last photo to show you the progress as a whole - this was taken before the one above - hense the big difference!!

Anyway I promise I'll be better at updating here too

Loves you all!!!

Mini The Black HAED

OK OK I admit it

Mini The Black has had such a calling to me that I just had to start him.

I'm stitching him for my Mum for her birthday (that is the excuse I used to justify starting him!!), however her birthday is April the 29th so I have my work cut out for me - I'm not entirely convinced I can get him finished in time . . .

. . . only time will tell and I not going to fret about getting it done. I know Mum will love it if its ready in time or not lol

Love you all!!

Echoes of Autumn

OMG . . .


. . . Im so excited!!


My thread pack and fabric have arrived at last for Echo's Of Autumn. This is my christmas present from my parents, but didnt order until last month.


This is a real big deal for me as Echo's is the first large Heaven and Earth Design chart which attracted my attention, was the first HAED chart I bought, and is the chart which started the HAED obsession and i love her still!!


I get my thread pack's for my HAED from the wonderful Donna Lamb from Cross Stitch Heaven (link at page bottom) and once again she has supassed herself :D


And I have some Piecemaker needles now - christmas again for me!!


Loves you all xxx

Bad Jo!!

Today I've been very naughty . . .

My favorite website for charts (Heaven and Earth Designs) have had a 35% off sale on. But today the owner decided to include the mini's in with the sale . . .

And I had to buy Mini Autumn Cat Magic and Mini Phantom of the Masquerade by Melissa Dawn, to go with Mini Pumpkin Cat Magic, which i already have.

My plan has always been to stitch her cute kittens as mini's so how could i possibly ignore the 35% off. It helped that I actually get paid tomorrow and still have some petrol money saved from this month . . .

. . . still naughty of me though ;)

Loves you all!!

Hello and welcome

Hello everybody and welcome to my blog!! Ive created this (eventually!!) so that I can share with you my cross stitching projects, and their complete stories, from all the prep work, to the stitching to the, hopefully, completed stitching!!

I've been a stitcher since the age of 14. The only reason I ever started was because I took Textiles as my D&T choice for my GCSE's, and I needed to add on some detailing to a bag I had made.
The teacher (Miss Garner) suggested maybe using a bit of cross stitching, showed me how to do it and that was it - love at first stitch!!

And I've honestly been stitching ever since!

Now Im 27 and the project's I stitch have come a long long way from that first little stitch. I have a stash which is completly out of control (and I dont care!) and with so many wonderful design's to choose from Im sure that it will only continue to grow!

Anyway I hope you enjoy what you see and read!!

Love's to you all xx