Celtic Autumn in alternative colours – 8 (the colour key)

Several people have emailed me for the full colour key list for stitching the Lavender and Lace Celtic Autumn in the alternative colours that I used. To make it clear, these colour choices weren’t my idea – I found the suggested colours on the Celtic Lady StitchA Long blog. If you’re interested in any of the five Celtic Ladies, this blog is wonderful, as it is a place for lots of stitchers to upload their progress photos. Sadly, the blog seems to have virtually ‘died’ now, but the images and text are still there as a really useful archive.

The colourway I used was listed on 3 June 2010 by ‘Little Cat’, if you want to find it by date on the blog. The only amendments I made when I stitched mine was that I used Petite Treasure Braid in shade PB03 instead of the suggested PB01. I used it straight as it came off the card, and in total I needed 3 cards of it, with just about 1/3 card left at the end (which I can use when I stitch the others in the series)  🙂

Here is the conversion:

Celtic Autumn – Changed Colours (DMC stranded cotton)

We have changed the colour of Celtic Autumn to orange and greens. You use the original copyrighted chart that Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum has designed. The symbols remain the same as on the original chart but you stitch with different colours. You may find it helpful to write the symbols on your thread card

Ecru = this remains the same
300 = this remains the same
301 = this remains the same
356 = this remains the same
400 = this remains the same
402 = this remains the same
644 = this remains the same
754 = this remains the same
758 = this remains the same
780 = this remains the same
781 = this remains the same
783 = this remains the same
822 = this remains the same
829 = use 936 instead
830 = use 937 instead
831 = use 469 instead
832 = use 470 instead
833 = use 471 instead
834 = use 472 instead
924 = use 610 instead
926 = use 612 instead
948 = this remains the same
3371 = this remains the same
3768 = use 611 instead
3776 = this remains the same
3820 = this remains the same
3822 = this remains the same
3823 = this remains the same
B5200 = this remains the same
2001 = use 3825 instead
2002 = use 922 instead
2003 = use 921 instead
2004 = use 920 instead
2005 = use 919 instead
2006 = use 918 instead
PB01 = use two of the three strands of gold instead

BEADS (Mill Hill)

Some of these have also been changed
5 = 00557 this remains the same
9 = use 00221 instead of 02009 – 2pks
4 = 02034 this remains the same
2 = 02093 this remains the same
3 = use 62020 instead of 03024

I hope that if you choose to make this lovely cross stitch design, you enjoy it as much as I did!

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Celtic Autumn in alternative colours – 7

Over Christmas, my routine for stitching got a bit disrupted, not surprisingly.

However, I pressed on with my Celtic Autumn when I could, and it’s now FINISHED!!!

In total, the cross stitching took me 72 hours, and the beading another 11 hours, so 83 hours altogether. I’d expected the beading to take a lot longer than it did, as people on various forums have complained about that part ‘taking years’, ‘putting them off finishing the design’, etc. But I got it all done in one concerted effort during a weekend where not much else got done!

Various threads had been suggested for attaching the beads, on the forums. I chose to use Anchor stranded cotton (one strand), in as close a shade as I could find, from the shades I’d already used for the cross stitch. I avoided the temptation to use ‘invisible thread’, as some had suggested on forums, as a wary stitcher had also posted that when you get to ironing your work when it’s all done, invisible thread might melt, as it did with her stitching, and all the beads will fall off! Incredibly disheartening, I should think, as there’s 1250 beads to stitch on in total.

I managed to find a lovely ‘walnut effect’ picture frame in a local shop, for only £8, so I got on with it and framed the piece quickly (see my previous post for how long I can sometimes take to get things framed).

I’m really pleased with how this has come out. It was a big design to tackle, but after taking a short break to make a couple of  ‘sewing smalls’, I’m already eyeing up the other Celtic Lady designs, to see which one to make next.

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Celtic Autumn in alternative colours – 6

I’ve been stitching the skirt of Celtic Autumn for hours now – first, doing all the gold outlining (that took nearly ten hours just on its own), and then filling in the shading. The terracotta part was very detailed, using five shades (some of them very close shades, too), but it’s coming out beautifully. As I expected, I didn’t enjoy stitching the pale cream band quite so much, but that part’s all done, now.

Celtic Autumn after 60 hours of stitching – gradually, the skirt is getting ‘filled in’ !

…and after 70 hours. Filling in the terracotta shades was fun to do. It’s all looking much more ‘solid’, now.

Close-up of the skirt on the right hand side. The gaps that are still left are to have gold seed beads stitched on, later.

As I’m working my way down the skirt of this Celtic lady, I’ve noticed that different kinds of stitching make me think of different things. Or, rather, stitching of different kinds gives me opportunities for different kinds of thinking.

Let me explain:

Usually, I do surface embroidery of various types – particularly stumpwork. Lately, I’ve been attracted to cross stitch again, after several years of not doing any. For my business, Janet Granger Designs, I do miniature needlepoint, on fine counts of canvas and silk gauze.

A doll’s house room, showing miniature needlepoint items from my range of kits

I’ve found that each of these types of stitching make me think differently as I’m doing them. For instance, with stumpwork and other surface embroidery techniques, although the planning stage can be quite tedious and needs attention to be successful (such as when I’m transferring the design to the fabric via tracing, or working running stitch over pencilled lines on tissue paper), once that part has been done, then the actual stitching is incredibly relaxing. I can get into an almost meditative state while I’m doing it. Each stitch almost ‘places itself’, as I don’t have to be consciously aware of what I’m doing, and yet I’m really concentrating – but in a relaxed way. It’s as if my left brain has been switched off, and my right brain can ‘get on with it’. So, I can really relax with surface embroidery.

This is a bag I made for my MP3 player, using surface embroidery, gold thread, and beads

Cross stitch (or any counted technique) leads to my brain working differently, I think. If I am constantly referring to a chart, then what I tend to have running through my mind while I’m stitching is something like ‘three green squares, miss one, two more green ones, miss one, down a line and one to the left, stitch five, miss two’ etc etc. So, there isn’t much opportunity to go ‘away with the fairies’!

‘Mrs Waddelow’s Huswif’ – a cross stitch design from With My Needle

Needlepoint is similar to cross stitch in the effect it has on my thinking, in that the design needs counting from the chart first, but then there is the ‘right brain’ part of the project where the background needs to be filled in (which isn’t usually the case with cross stitch). So I can get to the meditative state with that too, to some extent.

This is stitched in needlepoint on 40 count silk gauze – stitching the background is when it can get meditative!

It’s not that one type of stitching is better than the other, it’s just that I hadn’t noticed the differences in the way they make me think before.

One way that I have found to introduce a bit of ‘meditation practice time’ into my cross stitching is to repeat affirmations while I’m stitching some of the simpler areas; either a short phrase with each up or down motion of the needle, or one word each time. I’ve got some of the Louise Hay affirmation cards, and also some of the Abraham Teachings (Esther Hicks) cards, and they both have good affirmations to work with.

It probably makes me look a bit strange if anyone were to watch me stitching, as I tend to mumble them just under my breath, but I have found that they help to keep me focussed on ‘inner stuff’, which is important to me, and I get my stitching done at the same time!

Does this approach resonate with anyone else?

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Celtic Autumn in alternative colours – 5

I’ve been busy the past couple of weeks, and not had as much time for stitching as I’d have liked, but here is the Lavender and Lace ‘Celtic Autumn’ cross stitch design after another ten hours (fifty hours of stitching altogether):

Celtic Autumn by Lavender and Lace, after 50 hours of stitching

…and after 40 hours:

This is what it looked like after 40 hours

As you can see, what I’ve been mostly working on is the gold swirls on the skirt. In fact, I’ve hardly done anything else on this, during this 10 hour section! I’m stitching it using Rainbow Gallery’s Petite Treasure Braid number 1 (one strand). Some people who have stitched this design have said on their blogs that they hated stitching the gold thread part of Celtic Autumn, but I quite like it. It clearly defines the areas that are to be filled in with the Anchor stranded cotton, making the next part easier to do. I’ve used other ‘gold’ threads in the past, such as Balger blending filament (which I could have cheerfully thrown across the room, as it stretched and snapped really easily, even when used in conjunction with other threads in the same needle). Kreinik number four braid is a possible substitution for the thread I’m using, but would have worked out quite a bit more expensive. I’m on my third 25 yard card of Petite Treasure Braid already, and I haven’t finished the gold detailing yet.

The method I’ve been using to stitch this part of the chart is not one that I usually use – I’ve been working across a horizontal line of the chart, from left to right, then from right to left, working my way down to the hem of the skirt, just stitching what it says on the chart, and taking no notice of whether I’m making the ‘swirls’ or not. I use a magnetic ruler on top of a metal board, placed aross a line of the chart, so that I can clearly work out which line I’m copying. I’ve read on a cross stitching forum that the design is so complicated for this part, that it’s really easy to go wrong if you try to complete one ‘swirl’ before doing the next (if you can identify where one ends and the next one begins), so I just decided to be like one of those Seventies knitting machines that would read cards with punched holes in, line by line! I managed to get right down to the hem without going wrong, fortunately.

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