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Saturday, February 18, 2006

Ornament Happy Dance!


Yay! I've finally finished my first ornament for February. This one is from the JCS 05 RR, our first round.

Its taken me about a week to stitch up, but then as you know I've not had a lot of productive stitching time. This piece is called a Christmas Blessing c2005 Full Cirlcle Designs. Its stitched on 35ct Lambswool Permin Linen. I have to say I HATED stitching on this fabric! My stitches just didn't lie right and looked rather lumpy at times. This is one ornmaent I probably won't keep for myself this year. Its also not really my style, but that's fine I've got a couple of people in mind it would suit nicely this Christmas.

I do have one complaint about the design... the designer used a lot of overdyed cottons. Now that in itself doesn't really bother me. Its the fact that one colour was used for less than 20 stitches and nowhere else. The Yellow also was used for only the stars... again not a lot of stitches. Then a darker green was used for the vines and loops where the same green from the borders could of been used in my opinion. This is the reason why these ornament RR's are great, at least this way these colours where they are barely used are being stitched with by six people as the supplies move from person to person in the RR.

I have to say that is my biggest complaint with needlework designers sometimes. It feels like there's a competition going on sometimes to see who can design the most expensive piece to stitch. I find it a huge waste to get the consumer to purchase a skein of something when you're not even going to use one length! If I had kitted this ornament up for myself I would of made some substitutions from my stash unless I already had those barely used colours.

Now that this ornament is done I'm moving onto my second one for the month of February. I've got a small start on Never Too Big by Dragon Dreams from the 2004 JCS issue. This is the last ornament in the JCS Retro RR.

Saturday afternoon I'm meeting up with Sara to exchange February Blahs parcels! This will be the first time we meet in the flesh.

11 comments:

Carol said...

Oooo, that's a pretty one Dani!

I agree with you about the little unspoken contests amongst designers to see who can drive up the cost the most! I still think Mirabilia/Nora Corbett wins with either Lilly of the Woods or Enchanted Mermaid - you practically need to take a second mortgage out on your house to buy the supplies for either of those! LOL

Anonymous said...

Great finish, Dani! I agree, if I kit ornies from my stash, I don't have a lot of WDW or GAST, so I often substitute. In my opinion, they tend to look just as good because overdyeds tend to have more impact over longer distances, not the short ones. :)

Erin said...

What a pretty little finish!

I totally agree about the over-dyeds, too. I had a similar problem with Bent Creek's "EduCATed"....super-cute, but I'm NOT buying an entire skein of GAST for just a few stitches (since I don't have a lot in my stash...and I know, there is always the argument that it would be in the stash for next time...but still). I think DMC substitutions work just fine in many cases, especially when it is just a few stitches.

Bastet said...

Lovely finish. I too get a little leary when looking at some of the materials for ornaments. Some of us don't have the means to have half of stuff in storage. Why buy all that if it'll look just as well with DMC/Anchor (depending on where one lives) I guess it all goes back to the saying...to each his/her own.

BeckySC said...

That looks great Dani! Congratulations.

Katie said...

I agree with you completely as well! We do the RR thing in our stitching group and I usually do the ordering which is kind of scary, when one considers the price of doing say 4+ or so ornaments (and that's not including some of the hand dyed fabrics). We were discussing that at the winter retreat when we were looking through the 97 ornament issue, it was so nice to have the majority in DMC! Nice finish though ;) Now to add it to the list and remember where to use the DMC's

Katrina said...

nice finish Dani, and I agree with you about the threads and other speciality bits used in some of these ornaments as its quite hard sometimes to track down threads and the like here in NZ and by the time we buy them in, well there goes all your $$$, lol.

Valerie (grvlgal) said...

That turned out really cute! Congrats. :)

Unknown said...

The Ornie is lovely ... =)

..but HERE HERE on the moan about the designers... Too many of the ornie designs have a huge list fo threads where you are only using each for a few stitches...

I have changed out threads for what ever I have on hand...

If you want an EXPENSIVE chart to kit up - look out one of the Mill Hill designs. I priced up a free standing Xmas tree from the last booklet I bought ..... $280.00 !!!!

Sylvie said...

Nice finish Dani. Congratulations!

Anne S said...

Dani, your latest ornie finish is stunning - I really love it :) And you have all of us agreeing with you about designers and their choice of threads - I have a pretty decent selection of threads, and inevitably only have about half of what I need - that's the great thing about the Ornie RR's I guess ... I'm now learning to substitute where possible - and I never buy WDW etc locally as it's twice the price of importing. The great thing about having thread colour charts on manufacturers websites, is being able to check the colour out, and finding an alternative.