Embroidery Project Update

Earlier this year I posted how my current embroidery project was coming along.  I was able to stick with working on it regularly until about the beginning of April when I began preparations for attending Samford and cross-stitch took a backseat in my life.

When I got back from Samford, I thought that I would take it up again, but about a month later the unpredictability of life reared its head and I couldn’t do much with it until nearly two months later.  Since returning to this project I’ve been able to devote the better part of my weekends to stitching on it and have even at times kept a journal of the amount of time spent cross-stitching on it. 

The project is on of my fairly short list of 2012 New Year’s resolutions and hopefully if I’m able to complete a resolution this year, this will be the one.  Earlier this year, I had been hoping to complete the picture this summer and enter it into the county fair, but after weathering a bit of chaos in my life, I see that I was deluding myself.

I very pleased with how the stitching coming along.  The magnifier is working out very well.  However, when I moved it from the top scroll bar to one of the sidebars, I noticed that it had discolored the fabric some.  Thankfully, the dis-colorization is only on the wrong side of the fabric so it’s not visible from the front. 

Stitching progress since 14 October 2012

On a previous project years ago, I did experience the fabric getting stained from a clamp or something that held the scroll frame in place.  The stains did come out when I applied bleach to the affected area with a cotton swab.  Just call me the cross-stitching Heloise!  Thankfully, that hasn’t happened to me with this project and it’s interesting that when things seem to go wrong with projects, it’s the ones that you plan to give to other people.

I’m still having issues with flecks of the linen coming off onto the stitched areas.  I’m still thinking this is just a ‘feature’ or bug as they say in the computer world when working with linen.

The project does have some DMC brand metallic floss in it.  This is always a challenge to stitch with.  Thankfully, there are only fairly small amounts of this being used in the picture, but the funny thing is the more that I study the pattern, the more areas that I can point out as being stitched with the dreaded metallic floss.  As I was working with it today, I considered stitching the other areas that require the metallic floss just so that I could get it over with.  Sort of how one might approach walking across hot coals, their annual prostate exam, mammogram, or Pap test.

I will say that the DMC brand metallic floss isn’t completely awful to work with at least in comparison to others.  The metallic flosses or filaments that gave me the most grief were the ones that came with kits, so I could never be sure where the manufacturer got their stuff from.  I think the worst were in kits from Bucilla and Leisure Arts.  Both companies have beautiful patterns and wonderful kits, but they need better quality control of the metallic flosses and filaments that are included in them.  In the past, my first exposure to metallic floss was when working a project that required a Kreinik brand metallic floss.  This wasn’t horrible to work with, but did require a lot of patience and attention to manipulating the floss so that it laid flat on the fabric. 

 The only issue I have so far in working with the DMC metallic floss was that when stitching with a blended needle, meaning two different colors of floss on one needle.  I found that unless I worked the stitches one at a time instead of my usual method of working a row of one bar of the X for a row and then going back over this row to stitch the top bar of the X that the second (non-metallic) color of floss would loop it’s way up from the backside of the fabric.  I hadn’t experienced this with the Kreinik brand floss or filament.  The plus side of the DMC metallic floss is that I didn’t have issues with the metallic portion separating from the white stabilizing thread, but then the areas I was stitching were very small rows.  Perhaps, if I were stitching large areas this would happen.

Embroidery Database

I use Access frequently in my current job.  I didn’t know much about it before, other than it was a database program.  I’m the sort of person who learns best by doing a particular thing instead of just reading about it.  It must have something to do with being a visual learner.  I wanted to improve my Access skills and tried to read books on it, but each time I would begin a book on Access my thoughts would flit towards actually creating a database.

Finally, I decided that the best way to learn about Access was to use it while creating my own database.  I’m also a Ravelry user and have been very impressed with their knitting social network/database set-up.  I also use Stitcherie, it’s a great place to post images of my needlework projects, but is seriously lacking in helping me organize and keep track of my embroidery projects, patterns, and supplies. 

Since I may never find an embroidery-geared site such that Ravelry is for knitters, I decided to create my own embroidery database in Access.  I started by making a list of things that I wanted to include and how it needed to be organized.

So far, there are 24 patterns in my database.  Some of the patterns are ones that I’ve completed.  The patterns range from simplistic needlepoint, crewelwork, to counted cross-stitch.  I’ve accumulated many embroidery patterns and kits over the years.  Some of these I’ve made and given away to family members.  My initial major embroidery purchase was three patterns that I planned to make and give to my mother and two sisters.  I still need to complete the last one, to my eldest sister.

The database is far from being finished and as I work on it, I keep finding or thinking of different things to add to it.  Creating the database has helped me to categorize my embroidery stuff in a way that I hadn’t really thought of it. 

Before starting this project, I hadn’t really thought of embroidery floss or beads as just being a general item.  It was always in my mind fairly synonymous with DMC or Mill Hill.  To think of it in a more general sense and then to sort by company, color number and name actually made more sense.

The analogy I that formed in my mind was if you took a picture and you basically broke it into pieces and put each of those pieces into different categories.

I don’t think that this database will ever rival Ravelry, but I can see a definite use for it in today’s online world.  Even if this database doesn’t lead me to making something on the same level as Ravelry, at least the idea is out there for someone else to pick up and run with it.