Spaceship Stitched - the Enterprise is complete!

[anonymityblaize]

Exactly 16,752 stitches, approximately 66 metres of thread, and four months have gone into this 42cm by 20cm piece of loveliness.

It's very pleasing to have finished a project and actually still like it. Goodness only knows what craziness I'll put myself through next. But for now at least I know that I like this ship. It's exciting!

A wee preview:

This picture has come out a little blue for some reason, but I think it shows off the subtle changes in colour quite nicely.



This one's much more accurate in terms of colour.



And then this pic shows up my not always perfect stitching skills! But it does show the stitches close to their actual size.



And so she is finished! Hurrah!

And relax.... Until next time.....

And as this is the first time I've used my new mood theme I'll take this opportunity to credit: saxa246.

Comments

[jsherlock.livejournal.com]

WOOOOOOO!

Looks fabulous! :D Well done. I think I would have tried to hara kiri myself with th needle...

[anonymityblaize.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I had moments of despair with the last big cross stitch project I did, but this one went a little more smoothly!

[fuchsias18thcdress.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

Woooohooooo! Congrats! It looks great! =D

[anonymityblaize.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[notchka88.livejournal.com]

So awesome. It must've taken forever.

[anonymityblaize.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It wasn't too ridiculous considering the size of it. Started on the tenth of june and finished on the tenth of october, but I didn't work on it every day in between - sometimes I'd go a week without touching it and some days I only stitched for five minutes or so.

[kiwicoy.livejournal.com]

My God I totally love to cross stitch but I could never have stuck with this!!! AWESOME work! Did you design it or get a pattern somewhere?

[anonymityblaize.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much! I designed it myself with the help of photoshop and a cross stitch pattern program called XSPro.

[hurricanine.livejournal.com]

(Found this through ontd_startrek, btw. :3 )

Wow. O3O That is absolutely amazing! I know next to nothing about cross stitching, but just seeing this makes me want to attempt it. :D

What kind of thread do you use? What kind of needles? What are the best products to use? XD I probably could just google this, but you seem to be rather good (read: MOST EXCELLENT), so...

:DDDDD

[anonymityblaize.livejournal.com]

Oh my, such kind words! Thank you.

And where to start with Cross Stitch 101? Well, embroidery thread, embroidery needles and a fabric called aida are what you need first of all. I mostly design my own patterns these days (or steal them off the internet in some cases!) but how I began cross stitching is by buying a starter kit like this one (that's a pretty expensive example of the genre, but it shows how easy they can be to get started with, as everything's included). There are even some starter kits available where the whole pattern is printed directly on the fabric so that you can't have any counting mishaps (personally I think that's cheating as half the fun is the potential for hideous disasters of parts of the picture not meeting where they're supposed to. But if they'd been available when I started doing this I may well have learned much quicker!). And as you get used to how it works you can move on to smaller stitches and more complicated designs, and even designing your own spaceship!

Without knowing where you are it's hard to recommend specific products as what's available differs greatly from country to country. Hit up your local craft store or haberdashery department and have a look at what's there. And there are loads of cross stitching communities on the web. Crafster have a needlework board here where you can get tons of advice and inspiration, and feel free to ask me anything, anytime!

Good luck with the brave new world of cross stitching!

[notchka88.livejournal.com]

That is amazing. The details are so impressive. How come this wasn't posted to 'Make it sew'?

[anonymityblaize.livejournal.com]

Totally belated reply to say that I'm fairly certain I did - will check back through previous posts.