I envy those crafty people out there who can compete those big works or are seemingly constantly productive. As you may be able to tell, I'm a fairly slow spasmodic crafter. But I do try to complete what I start and EVENTUALLY move my ideas from concept to creation. Sometimes it even works.! Anyway today I finished a more random bit of cross stitch I thought I'd given up on. And I'm actually fairly happy with the outcome.
Some while ago I saw a chart for sale on etsy (i think?) with the words "there's more to life than books" some cross stitch books in the middle and then the words "but not much more." At the time I thought it was cute but not for me. Bit too pastel/cutesie.
But after thinking about it for a while I did decide that a variation might suit one of the multitude of bibliophiles I know. I didn't buy the chart, for one it wasn't quite what I wanted and more importantly I'd forgotten where I'd seen it. Instead I got the crazy idea to throw some aida into a hoop and just start stitching. No planing - nothing.
Understandably this resulted in some hiccups that ultimately resulted in me putting the partially completed work aside in disgust and forgetting about it for a year.
1) I used the same size hoop my finished product. Stitching right to the edge was hell. You'd think I'd have put it in a bigger hoop at some point. But nope, just carried on with the small one.
2) I'd decided to use charms instead of cross stitching the books...you'd think with all the crazy scrapbooking/embellishing going on in the craft world charms in the shape of a book would be easy to come by. Think again, there were some expensive (very nice but expensive) charms made of silver and such but nothing nice and reasonably priced. After a ridiculous amount of searching I finally found something I could live with on eBay. Thank you China.
3) realise I'd stitched the 't' and 'h' in the word 'than' too small. Improvised rather than frog.
4) really really should have thought out the last line better. It ended up extra shquished and looking a bit like the dogs breakfast.
And lastly the charms dangled but due to the limited space there wasn't room for such shenanigans so I stitched them in place with a little hoop in each corner.
All this was done in black floss.
And that was about where I left it. Most of the writing done and charms attached.
I was cleaning recently and stumbled across it again and on second thought decided that actually it didn't look as bad as I remembered and made a mental note to finish it.
I did the last few cross' in the bottom line. A whole 3 required I think. Then added a backstitch line under the books to tie them in better - this worked really well I think. And lastly I used the leftover floss from the owl quickie freebie kit I finished last month to backstitch around the words. This gave the work some colour and made the squished bottoms line legible.
Some felt on the back and all done.
