So close!

... and yet, so far!

As you can tell from the picture, I didn't meet my goal of finishing Gather Hearts by Valentine's Day. I motored along and got the backstitching and beading done in record time, and then went to try out my first bit of memory thread.

I settled for a smaller piece to try out first - the little bit of darker green on the left that runs from the checkered heart to the bright pink heart. I eyeballed the piece, cut a little extra and was ready to go! Finagling the thread into the fabric was tricky, but over all, I thought the couching would go quickly.

And then I got to one of the longer pieces. Securing the thread near the hearts was easy, but securing it out in the middle of the open fabric was much trickier. I had trouble straightening out the areas where they had been wound around the plastic bobbin-style holder. Fiddling too much with a certain spot made the thread inclined to fray and look wobbily. Overall, it took most of last night (a good 2-3 hours of stitching while my husband played video games - aren't we romantic ;) ) to do most of the memory thread shown.

So, so far, I'm not sure whether the memory thread is worth the hassle. I'm reserving judgement, however, until the project is finished - which I hope to do tonight!

Sooo close!

Remember this project? I'd really wanted to finish it by Valentine's Day, since, you know, it's a Valentine's Day pattern, so I picked this up after finishing off H on the CHS alphabet sampler last week. I had hoped to finish it this weekend, but well - life happened!

My husband and I went out for a day of fun on Saturday, and then forgot that Sunday was the church's founding anniversary, and one (non-stitching) thing led to another.

Luckily, I had some time Sunday night to finish off all the cross stitches. All I have left is the backstitching, beading, and then couching the memory thread. Think I can finish it all before Valentine's Day is over?

*Crickets*

Whoops, where have I been? Another busy week at work, unfortunately, but I have been cross stitching. I finished up the G block on February 2nd. This one was fun, because the flowers under the goose actually required partial stitches, which are, of course, a bit tricky to do over-one! I attempted to split the threads on the ones under the right side of the goose with not as much success as I'd hoped, so I left off the partial stitches on the left side of the goose. Overall, I do like the block - the little flower poking up through the G is quite cute.

And here's a general overview of what the whole sampler looked like when I finished that block:

I say "looked like" because I'm actually hoping to complete the H block tonight. All I have left is a little bit of the filling in around the word and it'll be time to move on to the next row!