More Cross Stitchery

I am ever so excited; I've finished all the plain colored cross stitches on my Art of Disney Cinderella's Castle humongous cross stitch and am now at the sparkly bits, to be followed by the backstitching and finishing of the design. Which means that I am inching slowly forward. I don't think I'll be finishing it by 2009, but I do believe it will be framed and hung by 2010. We've decided that any cross stitches I happen to finish while we're in Japan will be hung in the back storage-type room, as there's already all kinds of holes from posters and things in those walls, and that way they won't clash with any decor. Also Lee is not terribly fond of either cross stitches or Disney. I assumed my crafting stuff would be relegated to the back room as well, but he does like the colorful yarns and wants them to be stored in a bookcase in the living area. Sounds good to me!

I know I've said before that I needed to move Tinkerbell because the first time I stitched her I was on crack. Well, really I was young and dumb and read the directions to say that there should be at least 2" of canvas surrounding the design when finished, and decided that Tinkerbell should be done first at 2" in from either edge. This was not the correct way to go about it. I had put the piece down for awhile, and when I picked it back up again, realized the correct way to stitch and started at the center, stitching the castle correctly and leaving Tinkerbell as she was until it was time to deal with her. She's really quite far off. Horizontally, she's not bad, but vertically, well, as you can see, it's bad. I worked on the new one until I needed to take out the old one. The old one has hair and wings, while the new one has a face and a dress. At this point, I ran out of flesh-colored thread, and I couldn't do her hair or wings as they needed to go where the old one was.

I love looking at the back of correctly done cross stitches, and as you can see from the back of this design, when I started, it was not correctly done. Look at how much smoother the new one looks! I have obviously come a long way from where I was when I started stitching this piece. Everything else looks great from the back, and now Tinkerbell does too. I think I'll be continuing on this one for quite some time, since I'm on the sparkly bits like fairy dust and fireworks, and I like sparkly things. Once I'm done with that, I love how backstitching really makes the design pop, so I'll probably keep going for awhile on that. The castle does require a lot of backstitching though, so I may lose my steam and put it down partway through that. Like I said, it probably won't get done in 2008, though it could, and I'll most likely get it done sometime in 2009. Who knows, if I'm still wanting to cross stitch more than knit, it may actually get finished sooner.