Taking A Break For Jubilee Stitching

Thank you for all of the lovely comments and emails on Night Queen, I am glad you are enjoying watching her progress, i'm managed a couple of hundred stitches and brought 10 more skeins of thread, but have popped her away for the day to have some fun with my drawing and some Jubilee stitching.

Here is a picture of my current drawing WIP, I think its a chocolate Lab, which is a required piece for my portrait course, its taking such a long time to get the detail into the fur, I think upwards of 20hours so far, but i'm really pleased with how he is coming along, he isnt perfect, and there are areas which are really bothering me, but thats why i'm taking this course, to help, so for now, i'm very happy :)

This morning, we had a mad time running around town looking for Jubilee bunting as requested by my four year old son, he was so disappointed when we couldnt find any flags, that I stitched him one, I think you can tell how pleased he was with it, try to ignore the fact that it is upside down :)

Tonight, i'm planning a little more Jubilee themed stitching, with a blackwork design from the latest Card Shop magazine, its a lovely design and stitching up pretty quickly, I might see if I can get two done and made up into pillows, but I think I may have left it a little late.

Page 7 finished!

Page 7 of 24 is done :)  236 strands of DMC purchased so far - eek!

A quick re-cap, she is being stitched in 6 strands of DMC threads, over 2 on 18ct evenweave, so it works out at 9 stitches per inch. The design is Night Queen by Jessica Galbreth @ Heaven and Earth Designs.

I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into page 8, it looks like a big chunk of hair, but then i'm onto the facial features, I cannot wait to see how those stitch up.

It looks like I will have a little more time to give to this project for a while, although I do need to juggle my time with art course work as well, i'm hoping to be able to share another page finish before the end of June.

I'm also going to try my best to update my blog a little more frequently from now on, i've been a bit of a bad blogger ;@)

Here are some piccies, I hope you like her x

300 stitches till page finish

Nearly there!  I have a free day today, lots of stitching time.  I hope to have this page finished by lunch and will get a picture up as soon as I can.  Then, once again its time to buy more threads!

I may even get a few hundred stitches into page 8 if I'm lucky!

I thought I would share a picture of a quick finish I made at the weekend, its a blackwork ankh made into a cushion with with a mix of black fabrics

Page 7, very nearly almost done

I've really enjoyed working on Night Queen recently, I seem to have gotten used to the large piece of fabric and how to hold it to stitch as easy as possible.  But these last few days its been too hot to stitch with the fabric drapped over me, so although I only have about 1000 stitches to do, getting them done has not been easy.

Thankfully, weather man has told me its going to cool down a bit -phew, so watch this space, I hope to be back in the next day or two with a new update and page finish.  I'm really looking forward to taking the fabric off and laying it out.  When I'm stitching on it, its really difficult to see what i'm actually stitching, it all looks like just random squares until you take it off and stand back, then the picture comes to life.

Whilst I havent been stitching, I am working away on my art course, i've now completed my Drawing And Painting Diploma, and have moved onto a Pets Portrait course, I'm finding this very challenging, but so much fun, here are the first couple of drawings I have completed for the course: