Prairie Schooler SAL

I know I said next year was going to be the Year of the UFO and that I wouldn't do any new starts ... but I really couldn't resist the Prairie Schooler SAL Vonna has set up! And I told myself (and everyone agreed) that if I started it now, well, it was obviously going to be a UFO for 2010 ...

Initially, I thought that I could just stitch the little boxes with the letters, but that wasn't really working for me in the end. So, I decided to bite the bullet and go for the full blown designs! Eek!

I'm going to stitch them over one on 28 count evenweave, but only do a half cross stitch in two strands. I've done this before and liked the effect. And the speed!

I'm going to do the alphabet in three pieces, so I will have a layout of 3 x 3 on each piece - it brings them down to a more sensible size for handling, I like working with a small hoop in hand.

So, here's the set up, with my lovely Prairie Schooler floss tag I received from Laurence on Hooked on Exchanges...

And this is after my first session on Sunday - I'm starting with C is for Cow, as there was a nice solid border on the right hand side so I could just measure and go ... well, calculate, measure, calculate, measure and go...

I'm happy with the coverage of the threads, on the whole. Of course, as it's going to be framed, it only needs to look good from a distance :o) It looks yellowish because of the lighting, unfortunately.

And this is how it looked after Monday night's session:

 

 

I did a little bit of frogging (and you can just about see the fluff left) as I felt that the C didn't stand out enough against the dark background, so I'm going to leaveall the letter spaces unfilled. For now... I may decide to do them in a paler colour later, I think I need to ponder on this a bit more.

I've counted all the grids on the charts, and I think for this section all are 70 wide, and there's only one that isn't 100 stitches high. I'm leaving 5 threads between each design to allow for 'leakage'.

My goal is to stitch this before the end of the month, and then to stitch one piece a month. But you know what they say about best laid plans...