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?

New start!

Well, since I'm stalled out on the alphabet sampler for now, I decided to start something new. This is "Gather Hearts" from the latest issue of Cross Stitch & Needlework. I'm doing it on 28ct white evenweave with DMC floss.

Apologies for the weird photo - I've been taking these at night using my iPhone as I've just been too lazy to either find the nice camera or take it out of its Q-snaps to be scanned.

I'm liking this so far, though I'm worried that it's hard to tell between the two colors of pink - a darker pink is used for the checkerboard and solid hearts, and a lighter pink is used for the polka dot heart and striped heart. Hopefully, once the other colors are added in (and I take a better photo!) it'll be more obvious.

I originally decided to do this project because I wanted something springy (the temps here have been hitting the 60s!), and also because it uses DMC's new memory thread. If you look at the picture from the magazine to the right, the green curly stems and the little ties around them are done in memory thread. What I didn't also realize before I started stitching was that this called for perle 8 and not normal stranded cotton. Since I was already planning on buying the memory thread (and probably the beads for the flower centers, unless I decide to just do french knots), I decided to just sub in 3 strands of stranded cotton. It seems to be working out well so far!

I have high hopes of making two craft store trips this weekend - one to AC Moore or Hobby Lobby to pick up the memory thread I need for this project, and another to the LNS to pick up the floss I need for the alphabet sampler. I hope you get to go do some stitchy shopping also!