Queen of Hearts HAED - she's finished!!! - PHOTOS ADDED!

[Jess03]

Another HAED, this one is very elegant And you've made great progress!

[Lisa]

[Jilly]

I love your enthusiasm and the design it is a stunner!

[burgundyice]

Thanks for your comments everyone!
Mabel - how sweet that you thought it was done on hand-dyed wine coloured fabric!!! I think that means you are more craft-minded than me & think more about different types of fabric available, whereas I'm just stubborn & do everything the hard way!
Sarah - that's an interesting idea about stopping the edges fraying, sounds much better than clear nail varnish which I read about on the HAED bulletin board!

Well, here is (I think) page 4 done & 5 outlined, this was around Christmas (and I've worked out that I'm still doing an average of a page a week!!)

I've got to the top of her butterfly wing so got to use some (more) shades of red and almost finished off the black leaves in the top corner.....

While I'd been doing the first couple of pages I had started to notice that although I was doing continental tent stitch it still seemed to be pulling it all in one direction a bit, with the result of it not being quite square.... but for some reason the further I've gone on, it doesn't look as bad anymore, maybe because I've gone further across the width of the material, it's sorted itself out..?

As you can imagine I mark the chart off VERY carefully as I go, with it all being solid black squares for all the black, I was using gel pen to show up over the black symbols so I could see what I'd done, but decided it was a bit of a waste of my pens, so when Woolworths closed down I got a load of felt tip pens really cheaply & am using them (am onto my third pen, and I've only used them to mark off this chart!)
I've also been pretty good about buying the threads only as & when I need them - e.g. just started by getting the ones I'd need for the first row of pages. I get them off the sewalong site but also a Hobbycraft has just opened near us so I can buy just one or two at a time now. (Also after Christmas treated myself to a bendy clip-on daylight lamp which reaches over my bed, so I don't have to carry the desk daylight lamp up & down the stairs depending on where I'm working ) Also in the same shopping trip I got a couple of pieces of 25ct lugana for my next HAEDs -- but going to make every effort to stick to this one for as long as I can, as I just don't tend to go back to projects after I've started new ones, am very bad )
I'll add the next picture shortly, as again it's better quality than this one

Louise

[Busy_B]

Great progress! It is looking great! I don't think I could do all those reds.

[Mabel Figworthy]

Wonderful progress, and thank you so much for writing that progress report, it's fascinating to read how people tackle projects!

[coffee_freak]

[Rose]

It is looking great. I am glad that the pulled fabric seems to have worked out for you. It does sound as if the reason for the distortion was that only half of the fabric was stitched.

[~threadbear~]

Loved reading how you're tackling this. Thanks for sharing it.
Oh, and great progress as well!

[lauramac]

Very nice!
Have you finished Snow White???

[burgundyice]

Well Laura, I'm afraid Snow White now lives at work & doesn't get worked on much..... it was nice of you to remember though! also in the spirit of saving the pennies, I went through the colours & took out the ones that Queen of Hearts needed I'm ashamed to say I think it might be to do with the tent stitch, I think I've gone off doing full crosses now!!

Louise

[lauramac]

Louise,
I am looking forward to doing the tent stitch. Hoping to be able to get the MS Cinderella soon and use it on that one. (Their 4 for 34.00 sale goes off soon)

It'll be fun to see either of your projects completed.
laura

[nicgoss]

Wow! Talk about speedy! This is a fabulous design and your getting on with it amazingly quickly! Can't wait to see more updates!

[burgundyice]

Time for another update from me - this is up to page 7 done and page 8 outlined......



Page 9 was just a single column of black stitches down the side, so this is the full width of the pattern! as you can see, I think I did cut it pretty close at the right-hand side... in fact both sides maybe, but I did the maths a few times before getting the fabric (I wanted it to fit on a fat quarter!), and as I was seeing how wide each page was I kept measuring how many more would need to fit on the row, still, I think it was a near thing! This piece is 500 stitches wide on 28 count so is around 18 inches wide. I think I'll have a bit more room on the length of it as the fabric seems to be a long rectangle.
Anyway you can now see both her wings & the top of her head (one or two more shades of red for me!!); in real life it doesn't actually look as bright red as this. I've also got more black roses to do at the far side, which I really don't notice until I step back & look at them properly!
I'm very pleased with this photo as I took it from further away & it seems to have turned out better, plus you can't see the annoying white bits much either!
I have one more photo for you all and then it's back to trying to get my camera film used up again, but I take a photo each time I finish a page and am working on it a couple of hours most days so hopefully shouldn't be too long......

Louise

[coffee_freak]

[redraven]

I'm glad my stitch experiments were helpful as well. I thought the tent stitch gave good coverage and I'm stitching on 25 count, so with 28 count, yours is going to look even better.

Sorry, for off topic. But where can I find these experiments?

Now on topic: These is really a wonderful design. I´m looking forward to your progress.
Bye redraven

[Mabel Figworthy]

Great progress, and I'm glad it does fit! Isn't it intriguing how you stitch a blob, stand back from it and it's a rose, or a butterfly, or the shading on a tree -- it always amazes me

[charmagne_capalad]

Great progress!

[~threadbear~]

You've done alot on this. I'm amazed at how quickly these HAED's look to take shape, even though they are complex designs.
I love seeing how the colours develop into something.

[elin]

Great progress