The bear looks kinda creepy without the eyes stitched in, welp..
Been making lots of progress with the Past, Present, Forever and the Flowers and Lace patterns. I’ll leave it up to you guys, my readers, to take that as sarcasm or not :D. I spent the last few days stitching those two patterns more than I normally would, and I suppose in the process, I got sick of them and started a new one. The new pattern’s called Teddy Bear Gathering, and it’s another from the Dimensions Gold Collection :).
I’m in love with the railroading technique. For those whom this is the first time seeing this term, it’s a stitching technique that helps make two strands in a stitch lie parallel to each other. I don’t think I’ve ever had my stitches lie so flatly and neatly before, and I feel like it’s reduced the times the threads have gotten tangled (knock on wood!). Thank you so much, Nat, for introducing me to the term! Please check out her beautiful stitching here and here. She also writes heartful, and at times, raw posts about her personal dealings with social anxiety.
I’ve been lately hoping to stitch faster, and stumbled upon the term “the sewing method“. I’ve seen the method used before in other videos, but didn’t have a chance to place a name with it until now. I do hope to use the method soon although I probably won’t be able to with the constant color changes I have in the patterns currently. I’ll have to wait until I finish most of those sections, and get to the background since backgrounds have generally large sections of one color.
Another thing I’ve seen a lot of stitchers do in videos that I wish I mastered is poking the needle in the right place from the back of the cloth/pattern to the front without having to flip to look at the back of the cloth. For those of you who stitch like that comfortably, HOW THE HELL DO YOU DO THAT? I always have trouble pushing the needle through the right place and end up poking EVERYWHERE but the right one. It looks like stitching would go sooo much faster if I could do that properly!
Do you ladies have tips and tricks to stitch faster or any other general tricks you like to use? I’d love to hear from you! I have a few cross-stitch tips and tricks videos in my YouTube watchlist and wouldn’t mind adding more :).
halfstitch 