All Finished

Finally, After 14 months, its Done!!! Here's Samus in her Full Glory

 

All that’s left is to Wash, Iron and Frame this massive piece. I think once it was all said and done, I used between 3 and 5 skines of White on the pattern.. Almost three weeks just filling in the left side. I even managed to correct some mistakes I made, its suppressing how easy it is to use the wrong color when there are more than a hundred colors in a pattern. The ECRU is also a bit darker than expected, but it stands out an helps break up the flat white of the left side. I like this piece a lot, but I can't say I’m sad to not have to look at it without feeling guilty :)

 

Thank you to ServoStitches at Etsy for the great pattern

http://www.etsy.com/shop/ServoStitches

Metroid Update 2.0

Well, it's been almost 6 months since my last update, Around 9 since the start and and I’m just over half done.

The thing about a project of this size and complexity, you can get to a point where you don’t want to look or think about it. I hit a good month or two of this in the last 6 months, but concentrating on the easy parts (large swaths of color) got me excited about it once again. Luckily, the left side is mostly the same white color, with Ecru accents so once I've gotten her left leg and arm completed, it'll be fast progress to finish. Speaking of the left side, it’s all white. To prevent it getting dirty just by over exposure to my hands, I'm leaving it for very last.

 

So goodness, wish me luck. Another 4 months and this project will have taken me over a year.

Metroid Mega Project In Progress

Give me something to do I said and a friend Provided. He selected a gigantic, 15x11 inch pattern, but said he didnt want me to spending Months and months on it. I Assured him i was ok with it. His estimate may have been a little low :) I Purchased the pattern at the very end of January, and this is how far i've gotten so far.

I does look very nice so far, and I'm very happy with it, but DAMN its going to take forever :). Here's what it'll be when its done.

Thank you to ServoStitches at Etsy for the great pattern
http://www.etsy.com/shop/ServoStitches

Little Bunny FUUUUUUUUU

"Make me a Bunny"

A Simple request and one I was Glad to fulfill. Luckily I had done some Google searching back when I started this craft, and had managed to save a few patterns for prosperity.

Finding the picture I had saved too difficult to follow, I Decided to convert it to Excel.. Let me tell you, that was a terrible idea. About half-hour in, and only 5 rows converted, I decided to find an actual pattern. It’s a good thing I did, since what i was attempting was to convert a poor picture of a pattern sold on Etsy.

The pleasant lady over at http://www.etsy.com/shop/SilhouetteCentral was kind enough to sell me the full size pdf.

Cloth: Aida 14ct Black
Floss: DMC 912 Emerald Green - LT
I used my standard 3 strands
Almost two skeins later it was done.

Phoenix Rises

Continueing the patterns for my firends, We come to the Mon of Clan Phoenix for the card game "Legend of the Five Rings". Orriginally the request had another 3 emblems but they would lose too much in the translation to cross-stitch

A compromise was reached and each of the 5 rings would replace the three emblems.

The Main pattern was extreamly easy to produce. I used http://www.myphotostitch.com/ again, but instead of fiddleing with or refineing the pattern, I stuck with the pattern produced by the site. (.pdf available for personal use) Doing this preserved the Flame effect of the pattern. Each of the Coins were also sent through the site, and solidified by MSPaint Magic.

Coloring the Rings was just a matter of selecting the color to stitch with:
Air: DMC-162                      Earth: DMC-801                      Fire: DMC-321
Void: DMC-E310                 Water: DMC-820

Ill tell you what, The E310 Floss was a Pain to work with. Its one of DMC's "Metalitc" floss and is far more rigid and coarse than the regular floss. I will honistly never use it agian.

Overall, this pattern took about 5 weeks from Pattern completion to last stitch. I'm pleased with how the Phoenix turned out and that the arrangement turned out pretty well.

Thank you to AEG for the Legend of the Five Rings.

Ave Imperator

Haveing run out of ideas for myself, I started takeing requests. First request, The Imperial Creed. The Mario pattern used alot of Black thread on a white background. I really didn't care for how it was easy to see the white fabric through the floss. So I decided to switch this pattern up and use Black Fabric.

Text: I used http://www.stitchpoint.com/eng/tool/alph/cross-stitch-writing-tool.php once again.


Eagle: The same process as before, feeding it through http://www.myphotostitch.com/ resulting in this almost complete but horrifically headed monster.

Useing MSPaint I refined the above so it more closely resembled the original, completly redesigning the head in the process.. Yet, pure black or pure white felt bland and uninteresting. I tried for a stone emblem look. The change in color is ment to show a density change to add more debth to the pattern.

Once planned out, the stitching was pretty easy. Overall, took about 2 weeks.

Thank you to Games Workshop and Black Library for the game and fluff behind it.

Caterpillar Wisdom

Hookah is a wonderful thing. To sit, relax, and enjoy the company of your friends definitely sets a delightful pace to the day. We found this quote and I had to make a pattern. It turns out that there aren't any patterns for hookahs. Here we dive into actually designing my own patterns.  

Luckily I found a great tool on the internet that takes a picture and converts it into a pattern.
Site: http://www.myphotostitch.com/
Simply converting the picture above with this site resulted in... A very blurry version of the picture above. This wasn't quite acceptable. Using my Professional MSPaint Skills, I refined the pattern down to something workable (*taktaktak* Enhance *taktaktak* Enhance)

Now that I had the hookah pattern nailed down, it was time for the Text. Now standard text patterns are usually generated using text charts. Once again we head to the handy-dandy internet.
Site: http://www.stitchpoint.com/eng/tool/alph/cross-stitch-writing-tool.php
Using this tool combined with Good ol' MS Paint I cobbled together a pattern. Slap on a bit of color selection and  the pattern is Complete:

The BackStitch Technique is featured heavily here in the Text and detail of the hose handles. The hose handle embelishment is really just for me, since you dont notice it at any kind of range.

Once the pattern was complete, it took about two weeks to finish.