The Fairy Spell Beginnings

My birthday was a little over a week ago and as a birthday present to myself, I decided to allow myself to start one of the HAED designs I had purchased. So I spent most of last week putting together the kit. I used 28 count evenweave and set my floss on the bobbins, printed my pattern, found the size 28 needles, ordered a QSnap Frame, and put everything in a binder for safe keeping.

I decided to work with The Fairy Spell

And after several hours of stitching, I had this to show - a complete disaster. the stitches are uneven and bulky (I was working two strands over one) and it was neatly impossible to put the stitches where they belonged.

At this point, had it turned out that it would be this difficult throughout, I would have forgone this project all together - or at least purchased an EXTREMELY large pieces of 18 count aida to work with. Not to be defeated by a couple hundred lousy stitches, I parked myself in front of my computer and begged advice from seasoned HAED stitchers - who came through with tons of encouragement and good advice, the number one consensus being stitch one strand over one. I was using two strands because that is what the pattern recommended for 25 count and I wasn't confident that one strand would cover well. At this point, I probably wouldn't use two strands on anything smaller than 22 count. Many of the HAED stitchers posted pictures of their work on 1 over 1 and it looked just beautiful.

Just to be on the safe side, I tested a 1 over 1 and am mostly happy with it. It is much easier that the 2 over 1 and the stitches are much neater. You can see I also played around with an erasable marking pen for gridding but I didn't like the results. Too much bleeding into adjacent rows. I will stick with my red plastic thread, time consuming though it is.

I cut off the offending piece of stitchery, regridded the fabric, and started over from square one - literally!

And that is as far as I have gotten to this point.

Let me just say that working on fabric this small is a little tedious. I find myself switching back and forth between this project and easier ones. I'm hoping some of this will be relieved when my standing floor frame arrives and I can clamp my magnifying lamp to the frame.

Happy Stitching all!