Project Recap [Landscape #68]

After finishing my Acadia project, I took a brief break from cross stitching until I picked my next project and could get supplies. Sometime during the summer I offered to make a few of my friends from Cornell a cross stitch of their choice if they’d like one, and by early fall I had most of the patterns confirmed. Following a field trip to Michaels, I started in on the first project, chosen because it was large enough to keep me busy for awhile and had a not ridiculous number of colors (20).

Landscape #68 (lake and trees at sunset)

Presenting: Landscape #68 (it’s a lake at sunset with silhouetted trees) by 2x2StitchArt, pattern bought from Etsy. At its widest and tallest points, it measures 130x130 stitches, for a total of approximately 13,300 stitches. It took about nine weeks from mid-September to late November to complete, so I averaged a couple hundred stitches a day, even with a trip up north in October and dealing with submitting my second paper, scheduling my dissertation defense, and actually having to write my thesis in November. Like everything else I’ve ever stitched, it’s done on 14 count Aida, again blanket stitched around the edges to stop fraying, which takes some time but works well and is more durable than tape, fray check, or pinking shears. It’s supposed to be 9.3 inches in diameter, but mine ended up 9.3 inches wide and 8.9 inches high pre washing.

I worked off a 1 page PDF meant for tablets/electronic devices with symbols superimposed over squares colored roughly to match the floss color (skein estimates provided separately). The symbols were easy enough to distinguish from each other and the pattern had almost no confetti. Because the pattern had roughly horizontal stripes I stitched it from the bottom up and didn’t have much trouble keeping my place without any sort of gridding. If there’s one thing that was lacking, it’s that the Etsy shop is one of the ones with a large number of patterns and doesn’t have a lot of stitched examples, but I’d seen some other completed patterns from this store on the cross stitch subreddit.  This one did stitch up nicely in the end, with the colors not too far from the mockup. Overall it’s a well done pattern and I’d do another one by this designer.