Mary and Angel

[Kryss]

Hi all,

As I mentioned in my welcome post, I've been working on this giant cross stitch for about two and a half years now (with breaks for about a dozen other projects). It's about 500 x 500 stitches, and is something that I designed myself by scanning a photo into PM Stitch Creator. It uses about 100 DMC threads and a metallic gold in some areas. The actual picture is this one:



These are work in progress shots from June of last year:





And where I'm up to today (sorry about the terrible picture, my digital camera blew up so this is taken on my husband's camera phone):



You can see where I'm working at the moment in the bottom right corner.

And just a detail shot so you can see it closer:



I tend to take breaks from stitching it, and then have a binge for a couple of months. I'm at the edges of the circle now, so I'm hoping things will start moving along more quickly. The goal is to finish it some time in the next 12 months, but that will really depend on how many distractions there are in that time!

[nikecam]

your creativity is amazing...designing such a large and detailed design!

i'm wondering about your gridding. you seem to have two going on that don't seem to line up? i'm guessing the lighter one is the 10x10 but what does the darker grid signify?

[kathryn]

oh wow! when you said big you weren't kidding. This is one amazing BAP. It's looking absolutely wonderful, love to watch how this one grows.

[Busy_B]

Beautiful project!! Just out of curiosity, what count are you stitching on?

[Kryss]

The yellow grid lines are my 10 x 10 stitches. The red grid lines are the edge of each graph page. The design is split up into 36 pages, and I work on one page at a time. I'm on to page 19!

It's being worked on 18 count Aida. I figured since the stitches were small enough, and I didn't put any half or 3/4 stitches into the design, working on Aida would help me keep my sanity a little bit. And I've been working on it for so long now that it's very soft (and dirty! I'm looking forward to washing it when it's done).

I've always liked working on biiiiiiig projects. I'd always loved this photo, so I ran it through the software program and said, "Now, what would be reeeeally big?" I figured 500 x 500 would keep me occupied for a while.

[meerkat]

Wonderful project Kryss the Angels wings are going to be beautiful, lovely colours, and soooo big

[Kryss]

Meercat, the wings are pretty much the whole point of the design! I'm not actually religious, I just like angels! You'll notice that I've left the wings along the top for last, because that's going to be the best bit. The worst bit was all the folds of fabric on the angel's clothing, but it's pretty much all over now *phew*.

[K1nS]

Great progress

[Lizzy]

Brilliant

[Lessa54]

That's amazing. I love it! It's really tempting me to invest in a conversion programme to get some photos into cross stitch!

[Kryss]

It's funny, I've been using the demo version of PM Stitch for a few years now. It says it will stop working in 15 days, but it never does. The program isn't perfect, it crashes occasionally, but given it's essentially been free, it's pretty decent. It even works with Vista.

[pamang]

Absolutely amazing

I love all the details

[Nachstenliebe]

Wow! I am highly impressed!
Who designed the picture? It was a great choice!
Faith

[coffee_freak]

[Cockneystitcher]

OMG.Love the picture you posted of what your sewing.And you have done a brilliant job on it so far.I can understand why you take a break from it every now and then.Look forward to seeing more.

[Cecilia]

Wow! Well done for attempting this. Excellent stitichng too.

I've scanned a picture of my friend's border collie dog into a pattern creator (Jane Greenoff's). I just bought the threads and fabric hopefully to start on it next year sometime and I hope mine works as well as your design has!

[Lizzieh]

Stunning!!!

Liz

[maggs]

This is stunning and your work looks great.

[Rose]

Beautiful choice!!!!!!! Excellant work!!!!!!!!

[Play Outside]

Your pattern is excellent - it looks so similar to the finished piece. This will be beautiful when it's finished.