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Early this year I decided that I would try my hand at cross-stitch. This was partly due to Awesome Games Done Quick marathon which had featured, as a donation incentive, a framed picture of Link with a heart and the saying "Home is where the heart is." It was a fairly simple design but not something I was particularly interested in. On the other hand there were these large, colour dense perler designs of things like Bass from Megaman or Samus that were donation incentives of earlier years that always looked impressive in my eyes. Why not combine the two, I thought? The patterning was basically congruent since they were designed around pixels. And I did try cross-stitch when I was younger but couldn't maintain the effort needed for the kits that my mother got us. Shortly after the marathon ended, I got a set of small aida squares, package of floss and a packet of needles from Micheals and started sewing. Found a couple patterns that were small and disposable and eased into it. For this square, it took about a month.  I had fun and it gave me some alternative than playing some handheld video game while watching TV. It's surprisingly easy to follow most typical shows by audio cues alone, looking up occasionally when the action gets fierce. I established that I could do it. Now could I direct that energy towards something frame-worthy? I managed to stumble upon a pattern that I really liked online and just assembled colours close to the image. I fumbled a good two weeks on a double-size version before I realized it wouldn't fit my cloth (and it would take 4x the floss). Getting to the same point previous wasn't difficult and I breezed through another two months. The picture to the left is one my mother gave me for my birthday when I was late in elementary school, for comparison.  I ended up doing the majority of the background while at a friend's for some Star Wars pen and paper. Alright, I've got a handle on how to do this now. My mother saw my progress and decided to dump her remaining cross-stitch materials in my lap because she's far more interested in quilting and other crafts these days. Now for the actual pattern I started this craft for! I found this block painting of the pose of Samus I was looking for on deviantArt, made measurements for the cloth required, bought supplies, assembled colours and went at it once more. This took me far longer, about three and a half months. I had to repick a couple sections after realizing they were off by one, even adjusting the remaining picture when one of those sections was an entire arm. But it was worth it.  (My mom gave me an idea of adding a line to simulate floor meeting the wall that I might try. Also issues with contrasting colours in some places) Now I can't stop. I ran into an avatar I particularly liked here on SA and ended up doing that for my fourth piece. My mom and dad sort of reminded me to try back-stitching so I used this one as an experiment. I think next time I'm going to tone down on the colour and/or the amount.  Just need to get some decent foamboard for proper blocking and I'll have the last two framed nicely! I know of only one other person who does this stuff near me and she's more busy doing costume work for other people's cosplays.
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Aug 11, 2015 22:49
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 04:17 |
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suddenly cats posted:That's funny, I started a very similar Samus forever ago: Fantastic colours there. If it ever gets finished it's going to blow my version out of the water. 
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Aug 12, 2015 01:16
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Sure. I basically saw a gif from around these parts like so: Popped that into Paint.NET, blew it up until I could see the pixels against the grid and started threading. I took the first frame as the basis of the design and used something like the third frame for the hearts, as shown here:  Unfortunately I don't know the colour numbers of the floss I used because they came from my mother's stash. They either weren't marked or they came from a different numbering system. I only bought a single colour from DMC numbering scheme and that was Sapphire's hair (3753). The others I sort of eyeballed it against the supplies I had and hoped it would work out. Just don't go too dark or you'll be hard-pressed to see details; I had to try a couple arrangements on Ruby's colour scheme.
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Aug 14, 2015 05:23
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vaguely posted:I finished my latest project tonight! a cross-stitch of the peacock spider Maratus volans, using a pattern I adapted myself from a photograph This spider is adorable and well detailed. 
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Oct 13, 2015 01:31
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would have been 10 but I thought only 2 browns was pushing it a bit
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 Got this big project done on December 12th. Started it way back in August because I had finished the Sapphire/Ruby pattern and didn't have all the materials for the other thing I was planning. I had the initial idea that it wouldn't take very long but after a month and only finished Zelda off that thought got quickly banished. It would probably have taken me longer if I wasn't trying to finish it before the end of the year as a deadline I set myself. It's currently getting framed and then eventually be sent off as some sort of donation incentive for a marathon like SGDQ. The next project, about the same size as this one, is the Hogwart's crest for a friend of mine. Denser aida cloth too which is making progress seem so much faster. After that, I think I'll be doing far smaller patterns to prevent further insanity from doing one colour for over a month. Already have an idea for Christmas gifts to my immediate family, taking Native American mythology (father earth, mother sky, brother bear, etc.) and setting them inside medium sized hoops or standard frames.
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Dec 28, 2015 19:34
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Where one project starts, another ends. After 5 and a half months, I've completed the Hogwarts Crest! I had to adjust the top of the pattern and cut off the crest of the helmet to make it fit. I would have tried to add more backing aida but I was pushing to finish this before end of May. If I didn't spend my vacation week basically 5 hours a day on the black outlining, I wouldn't have finished in time. And I'm probably never going to do that dense amount of work again, it's exhausting! Now to frame and wrap it up for a friend who had their birthday a month ago as a late gift. She doesn't know I was working on this at all and I'm hoping it'll be a really pleasant surprise.
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May 30, 2016 02:34
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Could you try a different font setting for UNBROKEN? The other patterns seem to give precedent for such an alteration.
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May 30, 2016 23:39
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Uggghhh, working with metallic thread is the worst for cross-stitch. Especially when I decided this section needed to have two threads of different colour because either one on its own was not quite what I needed there. Tripling down when I left it to work on the other sections, coming back months later and forgetting that last bit so now I have to carefully unpick a couple rows out. Want to get it done before Christmas because this is part two of a couples gift. Motivation is at a low ebb due to life (and lack of decent things to watch) but I'll be able to dig in this weekend. Pics to follow in a week or so! EDIT: METALLIC THREAD STILL CHAMPION OF CRASS-SHITTINESS BUT I DON'T HAVE TO WORK WITH IT ANY MORE. Gotta clean this piece, iron it a bit then showtime. Sage Grimm fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Dec 11, 2016 |
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Dec 7, 2016 16:34
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 Went with a Norse mythology motif for the pair. It started out with the tree to give me something to do after the hogwarts crest. Then I remembered my friend used the Yggdrasil tree as a symbol a couple times so I figured it would be a perfectly good gift. However they have a partner who I am also good friends with and it would be silly to give them something applicable to only one! I asked her discretely about what she sees in him and had a couple ideas bounced back and forth until they hit upon "bird." Odin's ravens intersected perfectly! The tree was a pixel image I found off the internet. No idea where, I had it for a year. The birds was actually a black and white vector image that I manually converted to pixel form and then decided on the colours to suit. The metallic thread is the piece in the middle that's sort of difficult to make it because jpg conversions. The image had the runic alphabet for the raven's names in the middle but it didn't feel historically accurate (I researched quite a bit during this work) so I came up with my own pun. The guy I'm giving it to loves/hates that I can come up with subtle puns on a spur the moment so this is just rubbing it in harder. They're both framed in 8x8s, no matting.
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Dec 22, 2016 17:56
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^^ Video is literally a series of still pictures organized like a power point presentation. I imagine the author didn't have a personal website of their own so they went with the next best thing. Anyway, in short instead of hand winding those paper organizers for your embroidery threads you can use this thing to wind it up for you!
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Feb 22, 2017 20:13
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HelloIAmYourHeart posted:-image snip- That's some sexy texture you've got going there. I might have to give that a go when I get back into embroidery. Here's my initial efforts from about a year ago.  The bear I took a tribal tattoo image, printed it out so I could trace onto the fabric, selected a colour and went at it. Fabric was not the best choice because it wasn't a tight weave but it turned out okay. The unicorn was similarly found but for some silly reason I decided to use black marker to trace it. I had a large amount of colour changing floss from my donated stash and I wanted *something* that could use it. Again, not the greatest piece but I'm satisfied with how it turned out. And pretty swiftly too, I think that only took a couple weeks all told, working at it semi-frequently but not consistently. The practice helped when creating my dad's christmas gift which was multi-coloured and attempts were made to capture some of the texture of a red*mumble*-tailed hawk. I don't have a picture of it fully completed handy, though. =/
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Jan 29, 2018 04:08
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I haven't updated in a while, so here's a halfway there progress of my current piece. It's mostly well-defined, enough so that I can basically pick a section and be able to locate myself in the pattern. There's something like 9 months at an hour or two invested into this? I'm also collecting the thread ends because I've never done that and while I wasn't convinced when all I was working on were the yellows, now that there's some variation it's interesting.
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Jun 2, 2018 14:45
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Hey thread that I forgot about! I have been busy. All the cross and half stitching is done, now I've got to do all the fiddly backstitching with black on black and blending thread that breaks apart if you look at it funny. I think I'm up to like 90 movie runtimes on this one so about ~200 hours work? I'm planning on adding them all up afterwards, anyway.  Beauty steadily gets more and more resolved. It's my comfort project when I need to do something else with my free time and don't have something else to focus on. I really should give both of them their faces.  A married couple I'm friends with wanted me to make this for them. They wanted essentially a unicorn farting/pooping a rainbow for what I originally thought was for their bathroom but it may end up in their recent baby's bedroom. Banged it out in a couple weeks watching SGDQ with some small modifications from the original pattern. It's not something I would have done for myself but they were quite happy with it!  And this was the result of realizing I could no longer be present at a friend's wedding due to life changing circumstances. So if my body couldn't be there, I could send something with my heart and soul in it instead! It took the first half of August to get finished and working at it like it was a part time job. Getting it in the frame was fun as it didn't have the depth with the standard back, so I had to jury rig something together so it'll hang nicely. I probably could have stretched it better but it turned out alright.
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Sep 3, 2018 03:38
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It sounds like she considered herself as a super special snowflake for her work and can't stand the fact she knows someone IN PERSON that does a similar thing. If you were someone I knew did embroidery in my local area, you're definitely not going anywhere until you had shown off your work. There's so few in my social group. *grumble*
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Feb 27, 2019 18:27
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  From the scattered progress images in this thread to now a complete piece, this is Beauty and the Beast all prettied up and ready to be handed away to a friend who isn't aware that it was being made for her. It's originally a Kingdom Hearts 2 in-game stain-glass that I stumbled on online without knowing the source until I started digging. Both the image as a computer wallpaper and subsequent pattern cuts out the bottom of the circle so I had to basically fudge really hard with the adjacent colours enough, freestyling about three lines worth. And there's some impromptu back-stitching for her shoulder things so it could stand out against her skin. All told, this was about 2 and a half years in the making, probably averaging around an hour or two a day. It's my best piece yet. Sage Grimm fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Sep 2, 2019 |
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Sep 1, 2019 23:59
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Alright, there's a decent automatic pattern generator online that I use called pic2pat.com. It lets you dump in any image below 4MB, lets you set a couple options expected for the pattern like size and stitch density, and then it generates several options to preview anywhere from 2 colours to something like 150. It's particularly good for semi-noisy pictures with a naturally large number of different colours but even then there will be artifacts due to how it aggregates hues and shades. I've also made it work for a graphic much smaller palette but I also really only relied on it for colour choices instead of the pattern itself because the artifacts are much more noticeable. Doing this again, I'd likely see what cstitch would make of it. Regardless, once you've chosen the preview image you like, it will produce a PDF file that is the pattern chock full of symbols (~75 stitches across and ~80 stitches up and down per page) and the matching colour list. For this particular image, I went for a middle of the road 50 colours, 18 inch density because it was the best trade-off between readability and my own sanity. The diameter of the piece is approximately 246 stitches so doing the surface area of a circle off that comes out to about 47 500 stitches total. It wasn't bad to start because of the large swathe of yellow for Beauty's dress in the middle to build out of. However, once I got most of the contiguous areas complete and was bouncing around the circle filling in single squares I was starting to miss more and more in the noisy pattern. Eventually I had to spend a couple days with the PDF open and highlighted all the squares in the pattern that were not filled in on the canvas, so I could make sense of it again. The last 5% was me spending more time looking for the next empty square and recharging my needle with a new colour rather than actually stitching!
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Sep 2, 2019 17:42
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100% the site's recommendations, I wasn't ready to try repicking against such a wide range of colours.
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Sep 3, 2019 16:32
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That's some sexy dithering there, good colour choices. A smaller project this time, for my grandma. Some recent family losses and how we ended up handling things inspired the words: It is what it is, but I will find the joy in it.  It's also where I found out there's actual "Delft" colour for DMC floss!
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Dec 18, 2019 19:34
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Ooh, that would have been a good resource to have for this, thanks for the heads up! My process was more: found a piece online that I liked (theirs was a wedding gift), transcribed it into pixel form with Paint.net, expanded the middle portions so the lettering could fit inside (creating something new because the repetition was boring), and then modified some bits that I didn't like from the original. The center picture is another border, cut to fit; I really don't know what flower it's supposed to be! My grandma has it now, she was over at my Mom's for supper yesterday and I didn't want to make a big ol' scene of it at the extended family dinner tomorrow. She loved it. 
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Dec 24, 2019 17:25
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That would depend on how complex you want the pattern to be. This one is dead simple, 7-8 colours even if you don't ultimately buy the pattern itself but work off the picture (and it being that hefty a price for that size, I'd recommend the latter): https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/554820720/cross-stich-poppy-seed-flower-pattern Along similar lines is this "watercolor" type though it's more abstract pattern with a black outline on top and much more reasonable price: https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/613428493/watercolor-poppies-cross-stitch Stepping up a bit to a bouquet in a pot, the greenery feels a bit overblown but I can't say if it matches reality: https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/595129925/red-poppies-cross-stitch-pattern-flowers And then we get to medium complexity and detail. This one is pricer than it should be for merely a PDF pattern that can be eyeballed but it's a good design ignoring their choice for a cream aida cloth losing the pink poppy highlights: https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/160969843/poppies-cross-stitch-pattern-instant I've just been scanning through etsy shops using this search term: https://www.etsy.com/ca/search?q=cross%20stitch%20poppies
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Jan 25, 2020 18:43
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 04:17 |
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You'll also want to use bolder symbols so they'll stand out better in the B&W versions. Take this example from a wreath pattern I bought elsewhere.  You can see the bracket they used but it's slightly thicker than what you're using. They also decided to fill in the square with the colour but your method works nearly as effectively with the right symbol. And you'll want to avoid having symbols-but-rotated in the same areas like you do with Bulbasaur's bulb and ear. Otherwise it's pretty readable at a glance! Good job!
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Jul 31, 2020 01:46
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