Bless This Hizzle Custom Cross Stitch

Last May, my childhood friend got married. We'd been close friends since elementary school (so over twenty years!). For her wedding gift, I wanted to make her something special that both commemorated the exciting occasion, was personal, and incorporated her amazing sense of humor. She and her fiancée at the time were just wanting to save up to buy a place of their own. I knew nothing out there existed that was exactly what I wanted (well, I'm sure something existed on Etsy but I wanted to make it myself) so I decided to see if I could design my own cross stitch. I've never done anything like it before as all of my previous cross stitches (see here and here) have been kits. I like to think I was successful....

So, a while before I started (but knew what I wanted to make), another friend's stepmother was doing some cleaning and asked if she wanted a pile of cross stitch centered magazines. My friend didn't cross stitch but knew I did so she asked me if I wanted them. I said yes and took the pile and began to flip through them looking to see if there was a house in any of them. I found this one:

I liked the shape of the house but it was very small compared to what I was imagining. I got to thinking about how I could blow up the house and make it larger. On the opposite page was the cross stitch design.

I color coded it and transferred it to some graphing paper I had printed off (and made WAY too large). For every square on the original design, I colored in four squares on my graph paper. The design ended up looking like this:

To get the wording centered, I figured out how many columns of the graph each word would take up. For example, if the cross stitch was going to be 43 columns in width and the word was 21 columns long, I did (43-21=20/2=10). So, I would count off 10 columns from the left and start the word there. It ended up working pretty well!

I think I started the stitch in March or April. It should have been plenty of time to finish for May but, as always, life got in the way. Here is a quick progression of some pictures I took:

I made the cross stitch using all old colors from my previous cross stitches plus a random pack of thread I bought on Amazon (since I didn't have any greens).

 

I was initially worried about the gray in the roof but I think it came out just fine!

I made the writing in a combination of purple and orange as my friend's wedding colors were yellow, orange, and raspberry.

Then I framed it and gave it to her a little while after the wedding (I believe around August).

I am really happy with how it came out! I think it looks great and is the perfect, custom wedding gift!

Once again, congratulations to my dear friend on her wedding!

Cross Stitch Complete (Finally!)

Guess what? I finished it. I finished my cross stitch finally! I actually finished it last month just in time for my mom's birthday at the end of September but I forgot to take a picture of it in the frame. Before you get to see the finished project, here's a walk down memory lane of every month since I started the project (almost two years ago!) up to its completion last month.

DECEMBER 2012

JANUARY 2013

FEBRUARY 2013

 

MARCH 2013

 

APRIL 2013

MAY 2013

JUNE 2013

JULY 2013

AUGUST 2013

SEPTEMBER 2013

OCTOBER 2013

NOVEMBER 2013

DECEMBER 2013

JANUARY 2014

FEBRUARY 2014

MARCH 2014

APRIL 2014



MAY 2014

 
JUNE 2014

No change recorded.

JULY 2014

No change recorded.

AUGUST 2014

No change recorded.

SEPTEMBER 2014 - COMPLETE!

Feel free to click on the pictures for a larger version.

Here it is framed!

Is it time to start a new one yet?

Cross Stitch: May

With the beginning of May came the end of classes. I thought I would have a lot of time to work on my cross stitch but I found I was very socially in demand for once. I had lots of activities to do on the weekends but I still managed to get some progress done - in fact, I got nearly all the progress done! I have finished the "background"!! All that's left is the detail work.

As a reminder, here is where we left off at the end of April.

Here it is on May 4th. I worked on trying to finish the upper left corner. I very nearly succeeded.

Here is the cross stitch on May 11th. I finished the entire left side (yay!) and moved back over to the right. The colors I worked with on the right are a little hard to see.

Here it is on May 18th.

Then I powered through Memorial Weekend and finished!

Here it is with a little bit of zoom so you can see everything better (I did realize later I forgot to finish a couple red petals on two of the poinsettias...whoops!).

And, of course, your month by month updates:

I've begun working on the details. This means more lines in her dress and you'll be able to see her face as well as many other things. The details are one string threads that go on top of the cross stitching to enhance the piece.

I technically began it at the beginning of June but haven't picked it up since (well, I was on vacation - I'll share about that later). It's going still slow going. Plus, I can't find the frame I bought a year and a half ago to match this one. It's put a little damper on it all and made me grumpy.

Cross Stitch: April

This update for April is a few weeks late. I've been slacking on sharing, especially on Twitter where I post my weekly updates. April was pretty busy for me. I had my final projects due for my classes (all done now!) that I had to focus on. There was also Easter. And, of course, my little girl turned one on the 8th. Happy birthday to Violet!

Here is a picture of her a few weeks after she was born.

Here she is when I got her in August at 4 months.

And here she is on her first birthday. I feel like she's just stretched out in length but otherwise hasn't gotten much bigger. Don't you just love that spotted belly?

It's definitely been filled with lots of ups and downs. I think we're finally on a pretty good (and healthy!) path. Her last round of antibiotics that we finished in March (to catch people up to speed quickly - she'd been suffering from upper respiratory problems since I got her) seems to have worked (it's safe to say that 2 months later, right?!) so here's to a long and healthy life and many more birthdays!

Okay, onto the cross stitch. As a reminder, here is what it looked like at the end of March.

Here it is on April 6th. I worked some on the bottom center.

Here it is on the 20th. I didn't have a chance to work on it the week of the 14th. I started filling in the right side.

And here it is on the 27th. I continued working on the upper right side before turning back to the upper left to finish that off.

Here is the month by month progress. This project has been going on forever but I'm SO CLOSE to being done!!