I’m already at a standstill on the new cross stitch project. Sigh. I’m out of the floss. The order is in; more should arrive next week. We’re using The Gentle Art threads, along with DMC. As I mentioned previously, this design is perfect for hand-dyed threads.

Mike has had to change gears and return to his other work. He won’t get back to this design for several weeks. How much I butt in and take over remains to be seen.

Where it currently stands:

The elements are all in place. Like the fish in the Puzzle Pisces pattern, Mike cut paper models of all the individual elements, and just like puzzle pieces, fit them together into the available space. He wound up reducing, enlarging, and re-drawing, as he labored to find a snug, yet balanced fit. It took days! But what are days when it’s taken years to choose, assemble, and draw the elements?

Then he sprinkled small elements in the small spaces for an even more snug fit. He wound up with an awkward open space that he wanted to fill, but couldn’t think of anything to fill it with. Last night I racked my brain to come up with a creative solution, searched a variety of related keywords on Google for inspiration, and even sketched a couple of ideas that I hoped he might be able to make useful. He played with one of my sketches (made me feel important!), but in the end went with a couple of the small elements he had been sprinkling throughout. It looks great!

Then it was time to overlay the puzzle-piece backstitches, and move a number of the pieces out to the perimeter so that the puzzle is incomplete. Our software program is ancient (in terms of software) and cannot cut/remove anything but squares and rectangles, so this meant re-drawing. No big deal, but time consuming.

The end result is a beautiful design with a stitching area of 183 x 165 stitches, and 17,703 stitches to be made in that area.

Only 2 colors have been chosen, and this is what will prevent me from stitching day and night. General colors are noted, but actual colors are up in the air. This is often something we decide as I’m stitching, or sometimes after I’ve stitched! I love choosing colors, so I may plow ahead on my own, but it seems rude since this is Mike’s creation. He’s given me permission to go for it, but that’s no guarantee he’ll like my choices! We’ll see. I have projects of my own to work on, but I’m terribly eager to see this one come to life in stitches.