IHSW May

Wow, can’t believe it’s been a month since the last one! Time sure has been moving swiftly these past few weeks.
Well…I was all set for May’s IHSW, had all my stuff lined up…but I’ve been unwell over the weekend with a sudden and mysterious cold! So, I actually did more coughing than stitching…!

But I did get some stitching in and here is the proof. I mean the pictures!

Firstly, I did some work to the Elder Scrolls thing I was working on a while ago (but put it away due to working on other things – not sure if I ever posted pictures of it though).

It’s from the Shivering Isles box and when complete it will say “there is no genius without a touch of madness”. It is a version of an ancient quote from Seneca the Younger,  a Roman philosopher (among  other things). I really like the quote, and I feel like it kinda suits me!
Anyway, I just completed the “without” (think it was mostly the “out” part!), and next will be the “a” – should be simple enough!

Next,  I dug out my old Phantasy Star II title screen thing. It’s the one project of mine that really haunts me, so I did a little work in DMC 823:

There’s quite a lot of this colour dotted all over the picture, so I really need to do this when it’s daytime (and preferably bright!) to get it completed.
Also, since I started this piece so long ago, I can see how my stitching has improved over the years. It’s really interesting to look at!

Last of all, a quick non-game piece I whipped up for a friend’s birthday:

He’s a child of the 70s, and seems to have this thing for orange VW campers. I was googling stuff and came across the pattern at http://hancockshouseofhappy.blogspot.co.uk/ . They have some really nice free patterns that are super quick to stitch!
The VW will be going in either a flexi-hoop or a circular frame (haven’t decided yet!). Hope my friend likes it!

So, apart from a little bit of work on my secret swap gifts, that’s all I really managed to do. Hopefully next month I won’t be so full of cold, so I should be able to more!

 

Lots of stitching!

It’s been too long since I last posted something here. Life has been busy, personal stuff, stitching stuff, all kinds of stuff. But I have a whole bunch of stuff to share!

I got around to framing my Feena and Justin pieces, they are now up for sale in my Etsy shop.

Another Skyrim piece, also for Etsy (and to prevent loitering in general).

One more Shining Force III icon, a cute little thing called “Charm”!

A couple of gifts for people who (still) haven’t received their stuff in the mini-swap we at Sprite Stitch in September/October.

I’ve also completed a Streets of Rage piece, a retro-style FFXI piece and a Breath of Fire III piece, but don’t have good pictures of them yet (soon, I promise!)

And I’m working on more stuff for my shop, a piece for the Sprite Stitch 2012 quilt (I’ll be putting WIPs of that up in the next week) and a commission piece!
So I shall be incredibly busy stitching!

Two Phantasy Star Pieces

Very different, but both very much Phantasy Star pieces!
The first is the party from Phantasy Star (Master System) – from left to right we have Myau (JP:Myau ~ ミャウ), Odin (JP: Tylon ~ タイロン), Noah (JP: Lutz ~ ルツ) and Alis (JP: Alisa ~ アリサ). I actually started this piece months ago and put it aside until this week.

Second piece is from Phantasy Star Online – one of my all-time favourite games! It is a Section ID called “WHITILL”, one of ten such ID’s from the game – each ID governs the types of items that the enemies drop. WHITILL is my favourite as I have spent the last ten years playing as a character with that ID!

I’m really happy with how both stitchings turned out. I’m in the process of framing the party but the ID is proving to be a little more difficult, as I want something that really suits it!

Busy busy…

…as always! I’ve been hard at work on many things lately, but I got my Shining Force I square all finished – and just in time for the 20th anniversary of the Shining series. My Anri stitching made it to Camelot at roughly the same time! I hope they liked it

Anyway, here’s the finished square:

I’m so happy with it – it really turned out quite well. And I actually played this bit of Shining Force I on Tuesday morning! (Although, I had Gong in my force…whoever took the screenshot I used for the pattern hadn’t picked him up yet! But that’s one for the Shining fans )

After the Shining Day in my house, I decided to crack on and start Shiva from FFX. Haven’t done a lot yet but here it is anyway:

It’ll be a little bit more recognisable next WIP – I hope

In my last post, I mentioned the Pokemon quilt project. I’ve been working closely with Faewren (a member of Sprite Stitch) and we’ve put together what we now call the Patchwork Pokemon Gym. I started a blog – http://patchworkgym.wordpress.com and Faewren (with her husband) set up some forums – http://www.patchworkgym.com/forums/index.php. It’s going quite well so far! ^^ I also hope to be able to help out with the stitching at some point, but that all depends on how my current stuff goes!

Squares update

Back on to the squares this week! The Alis square is finished and the Shining Force square is progressing nicely.

Hopefully the SF square will be done this week, as I really need to increase my work rate.

In other news…

My Shining Force parcel got to Moogie of SFC this week, and she will be sending it on to Camelot with all the other gifts and letters very soon. I hope they like it!

At Sprite Stitch there is some talk of a Pokemon quilt – with sale proceeds going to a charity that is helping out with the situation in Japan. I can’t take on anymore stitching at the minute, but I have offered to help out with any web support they need – such as managing a blog etc. More news to come on that project, I’m sure.

I am in the process of updating my pattern collection, and also making the list of Littlemojo’s Pokemon pdfs – the patterns area will be revised very soon!

And that’s about it for this week!

Shining Force SOS!

Howdy everyone, sorry for lack of posting – I’ve had the flu recently and so have had very little to report But, let’s crack on…

Recently, as I was browsing the interwebs, I visited a site that I used to frequent a few years ago – Shining Force Central. Reading bits and bobs, I was reminded that the 20th anniversary of the Shining series was coming up (March 29th). I discovered that SFC had put out something of a clarion call to Shining fans…a call to aid in their campaign to save the series…a call which I heard loud and clear.

What the campaign requires of fans is that each of us write a letter to Camelot, the developers of the proper Shining Force series. Not exactly to beg for a new SF game (I don’t count the recent incarnations knocked out by Sega) but more to offer thanks for the last 20 years. Of course, should a new and true SF come out of it then that would be great!

We could also include a gift or some fanwork – and so I came up with a pattern for a stitching of Anri from SF1. Of course, my luck determined that I should suffer from flu that night and for more than a week after I made the pattern…but as soon as I was better I stitched it up! And here it is:

I’m really pleased with how it turned out, even though I had to cut it down from the original idea – I was going to include Anri’s sprite and portrait from Shining Force CD (where she is around 20 years older and a queen) but having the flu really slowed me down, so I found I didn’t have the time. But, like I said, definitely pleased with how it is!

I’ll be sending it to Moogie of SFC on Monday, along with my letter, and hopefully my brother and sister will also be writing letters too. And, to top everything off, we will be having a Shining birthday party on the 29th!

Follow the campaign trail at http://sos.shiningforcecentral.com/

It’s not very effective…

This is my entry into the Sprite Stitch February challenge – “Unlikely Partnership”. As techno-ninja put it, a kind of anti-valentine. I wasn’t sure I was going to enter, but I had an idea one day and couldn’t resist stitching it up. And this was it! Tails attempting to carry Snorlax – quite an unlikely partnership, I think

Well, I have work to do (mostly on squares!) but I also have an upcoming important project that I will be posting about shortly. So stay tuned!! ^^

Stitching for charity!

Over at Sprite Stitch recently was a discussion on possible charitable projects. Eventually, it was decided that we would make a quilt, with each of us submitting squares to be stitched together. We got a lot of people signing up, so that quilt then became three – a Zelda quilt, a Final Fantasy quilt and a miscellaneous one.

We’re well past the ideas stage and I think that most people have got their patterns sorted – some of us have started work on the squares. Now, I put down ideas for nine squares, that’s three for each quilt:

Top row (misc quilt): Alis from Phantasy Star, Shining Force and Super Metroid;
Middle row (FF quilt): FFX Shiva, FFVIII Rinoa and Cactuar;
Bottom row (Zelda quilt): Golden Goddesses, OoT Great Fairy and LTTP Fairies.

I thought it would be hard to get images to fit the size we all need, which is 96×96 stitches, but by chance I had a lot of good pics that size or similar on my PC – I just had to choose some! I also tried to pick games and pictures that meant something to me personally

Still not too sure about the third column there, and I do have more images ready to be made into squares. I’ll see how it goes! On to progress!!

Damn those energy-saving bulbs! It actually looks a lot brighter than this in daylight. Ah well. This Alis square is going really well, but I can’t finish it until my new stock of colours arrive. So, before I run out of black, I thought I’d make a start on my next one:

Not much to see here, but there’s the beginnings of the Shining Force square.

Work is ongoing, of course, so I hope to update very soon with more on this great collaboration For more infos on the project, please check out the thread on Sprite Stitch to see how we’re progressing!

The unreliable poster strikes again (aka catching up pt2)

I realise this isn’t the tomorrow I was on about in my last post, but what can I say? I’m lazy lol. I’ve not really been doing much last few days except for sitting in front of the tv too much… But, as I promised, here’s some pics of my recent WIP’s. First up – the Fighters’ Guild crest from Oblivion.

My sister requested this one as she’s kinda into Oblivion right now. It’s been sidelined a fair bit what with all the swaps etc I’ve been doing, but I’m back into it and it’s not too big so it should be finished fairly soon.

Next – Alisia Dragoon.

I started this one when my old PC died and I was left for a while with only printed out patterns. Alisia Dragoon was the first console game me and my bro bought with our own money – sadly the cartridge stopped working about a year later, but I still have it for sentimental value I think that’s partly why I chose to do this one and not one of my other printed patterns (which I must get around to doing, lol).

I’ve also been crocheting and doing blackwork (as birthday presents for my family) and I shall be bribing asking my sis to go on a mission to get pics at the weekend

BMH has been working!! Oh yes.

Ahhh, nothing like a cross stitch to convey how you *really* feel There’s a whole site for this on teh interwebs, www.subversivecrossstitch.com, run by a smashing laydee called Julie Jackson. She has a book of patterns, surprisingly called “Subversive Cross Stitch” – this pattern is from that book. I made a few little changes here and there but the spirit of it’s essentially the same. It’s also serving as my msn display pic – I leave it up to individuals to interpret its meaning for themselves I’m gonna frame it and keep it around my desk area (once I make space for it). If you’re looking for something a bit different and quirky, and completely stuffed to the brim with irony, please do check out the site and the book!

So…that out the way I come to the main event. Yes, the title is correct – I have been working. And yeah, you’ve probably seen more work on a sick note.

But look – it’s the Phantasy Star II piece, no less!! Finally felt like dragging it out and working on it, totally for teh lulz of course. That and I want it finished

Apologies for the bad pics, couldn’t be bothered to go ask my sis to borrow her camera, so used my phone >_<

I’ve done some work on the right lady, mostly on her hair and dress – running out of DMC 3777 now though! – and also some on the lettering. I’ve also been eyeballing some extra colours in preparation for finishing the planets and doing the blues in the background.

I’m feeling really motivated to do more on this one so expect updates soon.

Finally, I must add that the next challenge on Sprite Stitch has begun, it’s an alphabet type thing. I have a couple of ideas but need to start em, will post about those soon (hopefully with pics!).

Til next time!! ^^