That's a massive skirt!

I didn't work on Lady of Mystery a lot last week (darn cleaning and errand running take up so much valuable stitching time!) but I did work down to the bottom so I can now see just how much work filling in that skirt is going to be--shocker, it's a lot! There will be about another half inch of dark blue below the lowest swath of medium blue, and the bottom right portion extends all the way over until it's even with the border frame. I now realize that there is no way that I can get this done before another model arrives, but I will keep plugging away a bit at a time. Here is my current progress:

I did spend some of my stitching time last week completing Heart in Hand's Patriotic Tiny Town, on PTP Feldspar Edinburgh:

When I first saw this one it didn't appeal to me as much as the Christmas town, but seeing it stitched makes me like it a lot more. It really is pretty tiny on the 36ct linen; I did Christmas on 28ct and it looks a lot bigger in comparison:

And Saturday I made a start on the third in the series, Big-Hearted Tiny Town:

I'm doing this one on 36ct linen as well, since I found this color that went so well with the design; it's from the Eggs Collection by Nicholas Flamel Design on Etsy. I've contacted the finisher who made the drums for the model photos on these charts and have arranged to send the three pieces to her when they're completed; I just don't enjoy doing finishing work, so I thought I'd have it done so I can enjoy seeing these in my craft room.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

The race is on!

I heard from Wichelt last week and should be getting a new model in a couple of weeks, so now it's a race to see if I can finish lady of Mystery before it arrives. I'm thinking probably not, but I'm hoping it's close enough that I can just wait to start the model until I do as I really don't want to put her aside and have her go unfinished for a long period of time. I would like to send her to Jill Rensel for framing, and since that can easily be a 6+ month process the sooner I send her the sooner I'll get her back. 

The border is now complete except for a few beads and I'm getting into the larger part of the dress so progress will look slower from now on:

I'm using beads for the scrollwork on the dress, because you can never have too many beads:

I do have to wait for some more Qsnap extensions that I've ordered to arrive so I can have the entire piece in the frame once I finish the part of the skirt in the first photo, or if they don't ship soon I'll have to take another frame apart to get some more extensions. I hate to do that though, because then the piece that's in that frame is more likely to get set aside and end up in the never-ending WIP pile...

In SAL news I did finish the next parts in two that I'm working on; this is part 9 of The Rooky Wood:

And part 2 of Cecilia Votta's seasonal SAL:

Yesterday I made a start on Heart in Hand's Patriotic Tiny Town:

I wanted to get this one started because the third in the series, Big-Hearted Tiny Town, will be arriving today and I'd like to try to stitch these as they are released. I really enjoyed Christmas Tiny Town and the other two are just as cute--in fact I think Big-Hearted might be my favorite of the three so far.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Lady of Ice is taking shape

I have been stitching like crazy on my conversion of Lady of Mystery; when you don't have a photo of what a final design will look like there's a huge sense of anticipation that makes you want to just keep going until the full picture emerges. I'm at three weeks of work now and I'm well past the halfway point, though her dress gets pretty big at the bottom and that's a lot of solid stitching that will take longer than the open scrollwork in the top half. Here she is as of last night: 

I went with blue for her dress, which is why I didn't want to say anything before I had some progress to show as I know a lot of people would think there needed to be more difference between the fabric and the design, but sometimes subtlety suits a design better than "pop". I think she looks like she's at one with the night and the frost garden around her, and am very happy that she's turning out pretty much as I pictured her in my head for several months. 

I did take a couple of days away from her to work on a couple of SALs; the first was part 8 of The Rooky Wood:

The second was the first part of Cecilia Votta's seasonal SAL:

Both of these have parts being released later this week, but until then I'm hoping to get a lot more progress on my lady.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Lady of Mystery start

Last week I mentioned that there were a couple of Mirbilias that I've been wanting to start, so after posting I pulled out Lady of Mystery and decided to finally get her ready to go. I have thought about this one a lot over the past several months because I had a hard time picking a fabric for it; it needed to be light enough for the dark scrollwork to show up well, but dark enough to be "mysterious" and I couldn't find anything that meshed with both in my mind. I then worked out a conversion to make the dress green, but still couldn't find a fabric I liked with both the dress and border, so I started thinking about what dark background I could use and it occurred to me that if I went really dark I could use light threads for the border and make her a Lady of Ice, so that's what I've tried to do. I'm using Kreinik braid for the border and Petite Silk Lame for the hair and so far I am really happy with the way it's turning out:

This is what the original design looks like:

I have colors pulled for the dress but I have a feeling people might think they're not going to work so I'm going to keep them to myself for a while. I have a vision in my mind and as long as it works for me that's what matters, but I don't want to second guess myself before I even start. 

I might take some time this week to start Cecilia Votta's SAL for 2022, as I really enjoyed doing her Advent SAL last year. This year she's doing a seasonal piece, and the first part (which is free) has been posted in her FB group. This is the layout preview with the first part stitched:

I have the threads and fabric ready to go, now I just need to pull myself away from Lady of Mystery and get it started--I don't want to get behind right at the start of the SAL or I'll never get it done.

I also have another SAL kitted, this one by Ship's Manor called Folk Art House SAL. This one sucked me in with the floss colors that Erik posted on FB, as they are so bright and cheerful:

Here's what the border will look like:

So far I've received the chart for the border, so I'll try to get a bit of that stitched this month. I very much doubt I'll be able to keep up with this one on a monthly basis, but I look forward to working with those colors as the mood strikes.

Hope everyone has started the New Year well, and wishing a great stitchy week to you all!