Today, I Dance

Teresa Wentzler's Tracery Dragons.

Tracery Dragons Progress

Just thought I'd post a photo of my latest progress onTeresa Wentzler's Tracery Dragons.

Continuing progress on Tracery Dragons

It's been a while ...

... approximately three months since I did any stitching on Teresa Wentzler's Tracery Dragons. But I decided to make the dragons my focus project for the International Hermit and Stitching Weekend and made a reasonable amount of progress. After the long break, it was surprisingly easy to recover my rhythm and enthusiasm for this piece. It even seemed easier to stitch, somehow. Go figure that one out! Though I really don't get much stitching time in the early part of the week, usually an hour or less a day, I think I'll continue to make this my focus piece through Wednesday. I am anxious to see just how far I can get with this project before the week is out.

TW Tracery Dragon's Progress Post

Well, pages 2 & 3 of both the cross-stitching and backstitching/specialty stitching charts are done. I start on page 1 of the cross-stitching chart tomorrow. This has been a joy and a frustration. I never thought it would take so long to finish. At this rate, I will be thrilled to have this piece done by the end of the year. It's just one piece in a rotation of five pieces ... so I don't work on it exclusively.

Teresa Wentzler's Tracery Dragons Update

I am still working on pages 2 and 3 ... but I have finished the cross stitching and am now doing the backstitching and long stitching. I still have quite a bit of the backstitching on the trellis to complete and then it's on to adding the dragon's mane with a Kreinik metallic braid and using a wrapped backstitch to connect all the leaves to the rose bush canes. It's nice to see the design take on some definition. I hope to finish up all the backstitching and long stitching this week. I figure at the rate I am going, I may see a finish in late October or early November.

Teresa Wentzler's Tracery Dragons

This is becoming a love-hate kind of stitch. I have had to frog errors four times on this project ... something most unusual for me. I have been stitching for a little over 40 years and like to think of myself as rather an accomplished needlewoman. But this rather unforgiving chart is doing a number on my ego. It is deceptively simple with its many unstitched spaces [at least, at the cross stitch stage of the project ... these spaces won't be quite so empty after the backstitching]. However, what this means is that all the stitching has to line up precisely. Well, as many of you know, TW is the unrivalled mistress of the irregular repeat. Most recently, my aging eyes didn't take note of a 2 1/4 stitch repeat causing me to have to frog two rather lengthy branches of the rose bush. And I do hate to frog quarter stitches!

But I love the design and so am determined to get this done perfectly. Here is my current progress photo. Lest you wonder where the dragons are: the blue stitching will begin to look more like dragons after the backstitching.

TW's Tracery Dragon's Progress

Now that it is actually beginning to look something like the model photo, I feel comfortable in posting a progress photo. TW designs depend heavily on back-stitching. Compare the back-stitched rose at lower center with the un-back-stitched rose on the upper left and you'll see what I mean. The one not yet back-stitched looks rather messy with all those quarter stitches going every which way, exposing the background fabric. Even so, I'll be waiting till I complete page two of the chart before I do any more back-stitching ... it has to be done in a specific order to define the design properly.

Some small progress

I am back to working on a Teresa Wentzler project each Wednesday after missing a week earlier this month. Still my progress is slow ... but I have gotten far along enough that I am satisfied that choosing a lighter fabric than recommended is going to work out well. This project will probably take all summer to complete ... there are a record number of fractional stitches, even for TW, and the backstitching will be very complicated. She included a separate three pages of chart just for the back-stitching which will be in five different colors.

Introduction to Jo

My post on rotational stitching seems to have vanished during Blogger's tizzy fit on Friday 13th so I thought I'd do my Introduction instead.

I'm Jo from the East of England.  I've been into the whole fantasy genre since I out-grew Enid Blyton books.  Back in the 70's there wasn't much for the pre-teen market so I started reading Science Fiction instead.  Asimov and Andre Norton to start with then moving onto the Anne McCaffrey Dragonriders of Pern books.  I played D&D as a teenager (my female elf Helena Henna was a pun on Kerrang's Pandora Peroxide!) and drew endless pictures of dragons.  During the late 80s and 90s the Fantasy genre exploded and I read every series going from Marion Zimmer Bradley to Terry Pratchett via the Shannara books and the Belgariad.

So it seemed logicial when I started stitching in 1993 to stitch fantasy designs.  My first large design was Teresa Wentzler The Castle - a rite of passage for any fantasy fan!

If you go into my Picasa photo album you can see all my finished TW's after The Castle (I try to be organised!).

I veer between fantasy and traditional samplers now usually alternating between the two genres.  I now have an 8 year old son who shares my love of dragons and fantasy (cross stitch not so much although he does show an interest in what I'm stitching).  Together we are reading all my favourite books and some new ones.  We have just finished our second reading of the entire How to Train Your Dragon saga by Cressida Cowell.  We read The Hobbit earlier this year and are debating whether to dedicate an entire year to Lord of the Rings (that's how long it took my Dad to read it to us!).  Right now it's Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.  We love Greek Mythology too!

That's enough about me now.  If you want to know more then read my blog - http://www.serendipitousstitching.blogspot.com/