IHSW May – reporting!

Hello friends! Long time no post
I hope you are all well and crafting, and that you enjoyed your IHSWs!

And on that note, let’s get down to it, shall we?

This weekend, I mostly worked on my quilt square for Sprite Stitch. It’s the Shrine of Azura from Skyr– crap, it’s raining and I have washing out…must go get it! — ahem, from Skyrim.
Here’s how it looked on Friday:

And here’s how it was on Monday:

Lots of blues in this piece. Not as many colours as I normally go for, but should be nice anyway. Better order some supplies to get it finished!

Oh, it stopped raining. How annoying! *shakes fist at clouds*

I also did a little work on Rika. I have been forgetting to take photos when I do work on her, so I don’t have a before and after for you this time. So I’ll just show you what she looks like right now!

I added most of the pink a couple of weeks ago, so at the weekend I was really finishing that off and working on the skin tones.

And that was pretty much my weekend, except there were a few orcs and quite a lot of falling asleep.

I’m going to do a catch up post very soon, because I do have a bunch of stuff to upload and talk about. I really need to motivate myself to post more often, but I just seem to forget a lot!

Anyway, thank you for looking and see you again soon!

IHSW March

Late again…but you should all expect that from me by now!

I’ve been rather tired lately (more than usual) so I didn’t do a lot for the IHSW, but what I did do was work on my Nei piece a little more. I really want to get it finished soon.

Here’s where I’m at with it:

As you may be able to see, I’ve started to add in the mid-purple tone of the hair. My phone’s camera doesn’t distinguish between the darker purple and the blue aida very well, so hopefully once the rest of the purples are in it’ll look a bit better photo-wise. It’s already looking much better in real life!

So, yes. Not a lot of progress, but some is better than none, right?

I plan to do some stitching this week, some entries for the latest Sprite Stitch challenge, “minimalism” – they should be really quick to make! I will also be grabbing some other pics of recent things to post at the weekend.

Hope everyone enjoyed their IHSWs, I’ll be touring your blogs shortly to see what you’ve been up to!

Oops! :)

This is totally the tomorrow I meant.
I’m really sorry! I’ll be honest, I haven’t much felt like posting, or doing a lot of anything recently. But I did promise a report on February’s IHSW, so let me start with that!

I spent most of the IHSW weekend working on my second entry for the Portrait challenge over at Sprite Stitch. I kind of neglected to take photos at the right times over the IHSW to show my progress…but I’m happy to say the portrait is now finished so let me show you that instead!

This is my Skyrim character, Valena. Or as I’m now calling her, Creepyface. Her face has been watching me for several days as she’s been coming together and has given me a few scares in the night!
Ahem…anyway, she’s 14,411 (I think) stitches and 38 colours. She’s in an 8×10″ frame which I have painted black with red trim, for those of you that are in the know regarding Elder Scrolls it was meant to look sort of Daedric-y
I’m very pleased it’s finally finished though. I wanted to do something unusual for the challenge.

I also worked on something else unusual. My brother got an idea in his head to customise a mouse for a friend and wanted me to stitch the top piece. He did a design and I gave him plastic canvas, which he cut to shape. So I stitched the design for him, here it is:

It says “Loz”, which is some kind of nickname and absolutely NOT Legend of Zelda, or lozenge, or anything else I tried to think of to get on my brother’s nerves.
The blue star-like thing will have a blue LED under it and the small blue parts (mouse buttons) will have white LEDs. The mouse itself is a Razer DeathAdder that had somehow lost its top. It’s still being constructed very carefully, but my bro says I can take pictures when it’s all finished!

So that was pretty much what I did for the IHSW. Since then I’ve been able to make some progress on Rika and also finish up some secret gifts. I’ll show the gifts as soon as they are received, so for now here’s Rika.

I’ve finished up on the black and started on some grey. More on this project soon.

Oh! Just realised there’s a couple of projects I haven’t posted about here yet! One is my first entry for the portrait challenge (can’t believe I forgot about that one!)

It’s a portrait of Black Mage…from the front. Bit of a cheeky entry! I hoped to make people laugh at it. It made me chuckle when I was stitching it!

Next, something my baba Ivy asked me for. She saw a picture of the Ice Climbers while I was browsing through my images looking for something to stitch and asked me to make it “into a tiny cushion”. So I did!

While she saw me stitching most of it, I finished it in secret and gave it to her for Christmas!

I have some other ideas cooking up at the minute, when I get some more time and more energy I’ll plan ‘em all out and try to get started. Should be quite interesting.

Pattern Theft!

Hello friends! I will be posting about the IHSW tomorrow, but today I wanted to bring everyone’s attention to something that happened yesterday.

On Sprite Stitch, one of the members made a post about some of our patterns being sold on a website, “Los Angeles Needlework”. I’m not going to give it the luxury of having a link from me.
So on behalf of affected SS members, I emailed the person politely to inform her of the concerns and ask her to either seek permission for use or remove the patterns. I also made a small post on her Facebook page, which was promptly deleted and I was blocked from posting anymore comments. The same happened to several other people. It then turned out that every pattern she is selling has been taken from someone else. They have all been informed and everyone is doing their best to take legitimate courses of action. The Facebook page, Pinterest and Etsy shop have been closed, but as of the time of writing the main shop site is still up and running.

I cannot tell you how despicable I think this person is. To take other people’s work and pass them off as her own and take money from people who do not need to spend it on these patterns is low. But what really annoys me is the behaviour – the deleting and blocking. It says to me that she knows what she’s doing is wrong. That is the worst part of all of this.

This is not the first incident of free patterns being sold by people who should not be selling them, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. But I wanted to share this information with my friends and readers in the hopes that we can totally discredit this individual and stop her from taking any more money from people.

Here’s some links to other posts about this:

http://jemimabean.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/counterfeit-dresden-petal-handbag.html

http://sewhooked.com/2013/02/17/pattern-theft-alert

http://artisania.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/pattern-theft

http://www.dorkstitch.com/stolen-content

Sorry for the nature of this post, but I felt it was important to make it. Normal service will be resumed shortly, so look out for my next post!

UPDATE – 19/02/2013 00:59
Just wanted to update this post with the news that the offending website has now been suspended. Well done to the crafting community for chasing this person down through legitimate means – it just goes to show that people can pull together to do things properly and have a positive effect!

IHSW January and Stuff

Hello again everyone! How are you all?
I’m sorry I haven’t been posting (again) – those of you that know me will know about my health problems of late and my lack of mojo. I am trying to do more, though and what better way to get back in to your craft than the IHSW?

I can’t actually remember what I did on Friday, so I’ll go straight to Saturday!

First of all, I worked on Nei. Because she hasn’t been out in a while and I felt like she deserved some attention.

Before IHSW:

After IHSW:

It’s kind of hard to see but I did a good amount of the dark purple-ish colour in her hair.

Next, Rika from PSIV. I actually started this over a week ago, when I received my new fabby from DoveStitch. But I used a couple of hours in the IHSW to do a little bit more to her.

Before IHSW:

After IHSW:

Didn’t do a lot, but it was mostly just to have something else to work on. I have a WIP thread at Sprite Stitch following this project, with my new buddy Lileya, who is doing something extremely similar! Please check it out at http://www.spritestitch.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10797 and follow our progress!

And finally, Sunday’s work – a piece for the latest Sprite Stitch challenge, Portraits! It’ll be my second entry, the first being a mini-portrait of Black Mage (which I’ll add to a later post, but for now you can see it here). I’ll let you guess what/who it might be!

Before IHSW:

And after IHSW:

This is proving to be an interesting piece to work on, and I’ve done more since this photo was taken! Will keep you all up to date on this project and the others.

I am also working on some make-up gifts for people who missed out in the last swap on Sprite Stitch. They are small, so I hope they’ll be done and sent out shortly. I’ll be able to show those soon, along with all the other little bits I’ve done recently (not much before this month, I grant you, but worth showing anyway )

So I think I had a pretty good start to the stitchy year. As always, please feel free to leave comments, good or bad!

Lazy woman is lazy. Also IHSW and stuff.

So…not exactly when I said I’d post but close enough, right? Right?
I’ll be honest, my motivation level is still pretty low, but I have been doing stuff and I did do some stitching for the last IHSW like I said. Not much, but it was more than I had been doing. Anyway, have some pictures!

This is the Nei project. Before the IHSW her skin tones weren’t fully done, so during the weekend I finished that and made a start on the hair.

Also during the IHSW I made a start on the Blaze from Streets of Rage, I think she was finished by the next Thursday, so I made Adam too! Here they are:

And with the Axel I made a while back:

I’m pretty happy with how they turned out. They need backs and then a purpose…although I have this image in my head. You ever seen a set of three ducks on a wall? Like that. In case you don’t know what I’m on about, I mean ducks like:

Pic of wall ducks I “borrowed” from amazon.co.uk

Only Streets of Rage characters. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea!

I started an Ice Climbers piece for Ivy, she kept asking for me to make it. She chose some ice blue aida. I’m working on it now and it’s not far from being done so will have a picture of that soon.
I was supposed to start making a fabric advent calendar on 1st – the idea was for me to make a number pocket every day. Thought it might help with the motivation! So far…zero pockets. But it’s only the 4th so maybe I can catch up. When I’ve done all the numbers I’ll attach them to a piece of fabric and put it away to use next year (will put treats in the pockets!)

I have been doing other stuff, although right now I can’t think what they might be. Morph balls, possibly…maybe a Black Mage too? When I find out I’ll do another post with pics and stuff.
Really need to bash my sis around the head for some good pictures of my cosplay too.

Anyway, hope everyone is well and keeping busy!

The Plan.

IHSW TIME! Here’s what I plan to be working on over the weekend:

WIPs – Nei’s the most likely candidate for the most work, but I might cycle a few pieces such as mother’s leafy thing, Daedric lettering, Prishe and the new pieces I started the other day from Halo Zero.
New starts - I got a few patterns languishing in the depths of my hard disks that I really would like to make a start on and now seems like a good time! I also have a few mini kits I’d like to make use of too

Not much of a plan, I know. I’ll try and do as much as I can, with pics to follow of course!

Oh, and before I forget, one of the Sprite Stitch quilts is up for auction on Ebay! We’d really appreciate it if as many people as possible could share the link in their various places!

Everybody have a great weekend!

I’m back :)

I’ve been kinda silent for a while. Some of you may know already but in October I was struck down with a bad case of tonsillitis (really made my birthday suck!) and was basically out of action for a week +. When I got better it came back!
While I was sick I tried to make things but only really ended up concentrating on  a Black Mage costume for the Distant Worlds show in London on the 2nd November. I was still putting the finishing touches on the morning of the show! And I didn’t get to add all the extra bits I wanted to. My sister says she will get me some good cosplay pics, I’ll share those here as well as the other thing I managed to do (which is secret for now!)

Other than that, I haven’t been able to really do much, apart from help with the things going on at Sprite Stitch – challenges, mini-swap and the site’s 5th birthday celebrations! Oh and a bit of Skyrim for its 1st birthday

So, I’m pretty much back up and running, and feeling the need to make things. Things need making! I have birthday presents, must finish that leaf thing for my mother (tonsillitis got in the way of that!) and I have a ton of ideas for my Etsy and for Christmas.

I missed last month’s IHSW so I’m making sure I do this month’s! My plan is to post on Friday with some of the things I want to do over the weekend, and post again on Monday/Tuesday with how far I got. That’s the plan, anyway – we’ll see how that goes!

Anyway, it’s good to be back around and I’ll be checking out everyone’s blogs soon to see what I’ve been missing!

Very late IHSW Report!

Sorry it’s late everyone! Had some bad luck on the IHSW weekend. On the Saturday, I fell down the stairs and hurt my back really badly, and on the Sunday and Monday, Ivy wasn’t very well. So I didn’t get a lot of stitching done that weekend, but I did sort of use last weekend as a catchup

I started a new piece, which will be for my mother’s birthday if I can get it done in time. She will be on holiday then so I do have a bit of extra cheating time!
The pattern is from the most recent issue of the Cross Stitcher mag, and it’s designed for a cushion / pillow. I’m going to make it into a hanging, because they have enough cushions in that house! Here’s the design:

And here’s my progress (not a lot yet!):

Sorry for the lighting, it’s been rather dull recently. It’s actually a pretty deceptive pattern – it looks easy but there are a lot of stitches to deal with. And I get rather bored with blocks of colour sometimes! Will be working on this one more in the next couple of weeks!

Somehow, I managed to end up with two sort-of-finishes. One is a small Sprite Stitch piece (which I can’t show at the minute, but I promise I will when I can!) and one is a birthday card Ivy and I made for my friend Tina (her birthday was on 22nd). Here’s the card:

The butterfly pattern was from one of the Cross Stitcher magazines, I kinda screwed it up so ended up modifying it as I stitched!

Since the IHSW (and my little extension to it) I’ve been working on some swap gifts and writing a guide to making the little standing figures. I’m not much of a writer (if you read this blog regularly this won’t be new to you!) and on top of that I’m not great at explaining things! So the writing part is going rather slowly, but having an item to make, and explaining it as I go is making it easier!

I’ll be mostly working on stitching presents in the coming weeks, although I do have a Black Mage costume to make if my back allows me to

If I ever try something like this again…

…you all have my permission to do whatever it takes to stop me! What was I thinking? 245 colours! And that was AFTER I reduced them as best I could! I thought the Great Fairy piece last year was nuts, but this was just insane.
Oh, I’m talking about the Ivy piece for the Sprite Stitch quilt, that I spent my entire IHSW on. I finished it at 2:45am this morning!
Here she is:

Still looks pink on my phone camera (although to be honest, everything does!) Looks better the further back you stand from it, hehe. Despite hating it most of the way through, in that way that we do when only some of the pieces are in the puzzle, I’m really happy with how it came together. Also, pretty sure it can stand up by itself, there’s that much thread in the back. Kinda bulky in some places, but I knew that would happen because of the stupid amount of colours! It should be fine with another wash, though. (Which it will be getting when it gets to Toni, the quilter.)
I am most happy with the sword, actually – I was afraid it wasn’t going to stand out from the armour but it seems fine!
Here’s a picture I snapped of both my pieces before they left earlier today:

I feel a certain sense of relief that they are gone now. But the work for this Black Mage never stops, as I’m sure some of you know! I have (as usual) a bazillion more projects to finish, and indeed start!