Here goes, the official first stitching day, 11th May 2019.
On the 12th May 2011 I lost my dad to his fight with cancer, I hate tomorrow with a passion as I think of all I have lost but this is the start of something new and I know dad would think I’m mad but probably laugh as well as he always believed in me.
The last 8 years have been monumentally difficult but I have had some incredible highs as well.
My marriage broke down, I have moved house 4 times, had 2 broken relationships but I also had my wonderfully unique 3rd son who inspires me every day.
If the last 8 years has taught me anything it is to appreciate what you have, make the most of every good moment. Don’t dwell on the past but use it as a life lesson. And above all else believe in yourself and what you can achieve.
From today I have set myself the challenge of making this huge piece of art, it will be a constant reminder of what I can do if I believe in myself and at the end after the very last stitch I can look back on this and feel very proud.
It will be fun, I know I will probably cry with frustration and despair at how long it is taking but every day will be a bit more progress.
I hope you enjoy this journey with me and I hope I will achieve the near impossible of finishing this crazy creation.
I’ve just spent the best part of this evening sorting out the 107 colours needed for the first quarter, luckily for me I am a hoarder of anything craft related so already had roughly 3/4 of the threads needed, I’ve ordered 5 skeins of black as that is the most used background colour ( 33,390 of those to look forward to!) And the rest of the missing colours have been ordered from a site charging 69p a skein which is roughly half the cost in the shops and on amazon ( really hoping they are genuine dmc but I think they are a reputable site!)
So another £39.00 added to the total cost so far and treated myself to a set of size 26 needles too!
Getting very close to starting the stitching now and I’ve got a kid free weekend to make the most of it!
Started the daunting task of gridding the fabric and I’m extremely relieved to say it will fit!!
Not a lot of spare fabric at the top and bottom so I’ve decided in the far distant future when it is all stitched to turn it into a wall hanging.
I am now rather cross eyed from all the counting so before I make any more mistakes I’ll leave it there for tonight, I’ve discovered a really brilliant way of marking the grid using a pilot frixion pen, it completely disappears with heat so a little iron and voilá the marks have gone!
Time for sorting silks tomorrow and to find a reasonable online shop to get the colours I haven’t already got in my stash, little did I know when I collected them many years ago they would be put to such good use and thankfully I’ve kept them dust free and away from sunlight so hopefully any new silks will colour match with the old.
After a weekend away fighting the Roundheads in Newark on Trent ( managed to get through over 40 cannon shots between us as a crew!) and excitedly talking about my project it’s time to make a start.
Preparation is key and although I’d love to jump straight in and start stitching straight away there are a few things I need to do first.
When starting any project be it large or small the whole thing needs to be organised, I have printed out the first 10 pages of the bottom left corner ( thanks to the printer at work) bought the fabric and have started ticking off the skeins of thread I already have.
Looking at the pattern key the biggest colour is obviously the background which is black and in the first corner there are over 33,000 black stitches! This really isn’t for the faint hearted.
The first major thing I have to tackle is gridding the fabric as any miscount would end in disaster! After researching many techniques I have decided to use heat erasable fabric pens, basically you draw on the fabric and when it’s time you use an iron to magically remove the lines. I have tested it on a scrap of aida and it really does work. So armed with my trusty pens and a straight ruler let’s see if this fabric really is big enough for the whole design ( fingers crossed!)
Thank you for taking the time to check out my very first blog, I guess I should start by introducing myself and telling you all about why we’re here!
My name is Susan and I started cross stitching way back in the early 90’s and it soon became quite an obsession, I was a regular at Hobbycraft and amassed a huge collection of silks, kits, patterns and everything else that goes with it. Time passed and I got lost in kids, work, running a house and various other mundane things so unfortunately my cross stitch took a back seat (but I kept everything and it has all moved house with me 5 times!)
To cut a very long story short I am now 44 years old, a single mum to a teenager and a 6 year old (both boys who occasionally get on) I work as a special needs teaching assistant at a secondary school (more fool me!) have 2 cats called Cheese and Pickle and in my spare time I enjoy cross stitch, knitting, photography, collecting Lego, oh and I am a gunner in the English Civil War society and travel the country firing a very large, very loud cannon (called Nancy)
Anyway back to the blog, I had a 25 year old project of a dragon that I started in 1992 and decided as I now have more time on my hands if I could find all the silks and pattern I would finish it. Well I did and my love of cross stitch was rekindled and has grown ever since.
Anyone who knows me will tell you I am certainly not one to pass up a challenge so after seeing lots of peoples projects of Pokémon on Reddit ( highly recommend the Reddit cross stitch sub group if you’re not on there already!) I stumbled across the pattern that we are all here to see unfold, I decided as soon as I saw it that this was the ultimate project for me to do, undaunted by the size and complexity I set about sourcing a single piece of fabric large enough to stitch it in one go. After an exhaustive search on the internet it seemed impossible to find anything large enough in the recommended 14 hpi aida, luckily as my maths skills are pretty good I resized the piece to either 18 hpi (which would have been an absolute nightmare to stitch even with reading glasses) or a more manageable 16 hpi. Lo and behold after putting in every imaginable combination of “very large/huge/by the metre 16hpi aida” I found exactly the piece I was looking for and so the project from a crazy idea to reality has happened.
I am aiming to update this blog with progress at every step of the way from the initial setting up and preparation, progress of panels being stitched to the completed piece that I have already decided to turn into a wallhanging/tapestry as there is no way I will ever be able to find or afford a frame large enough to fit. I love maths so have also decided to document number of stitches completed and also the total cost of it all. ( I am cheating with that slightly as I already have a big stash of silks)
This will be a labour of love and there will no doubt be blood (pricked fingers) sweat (heaving the huge piece of fabric around) and tears ( one more stitch of dmc 742, damn it was the wrong colour!) but it will be worth it and one day ( if I’m not still stitching it) I can show my grandchildren this blog, show them the piece and say this is what granny started way back in 2019…… And their response will be “What the heck is a pokémon?!!”
Epic Pokémon 