Since starting on the detailed and time consuming Heaven and Earth Design picture I decided that I would allow myself to have two sewings in progress at a time to keep the enthusiasm going.  I got off to such a good start with Fairy Tales that I found I was spending most of my time on it, that isn’t a bad thing but I was worried that I would get fed up with it so I decided that I would try to work in rotations.  This is my first attempt at it really, I used to only have one picture on the go at a time and then it got to one large picture with a small one on standby for when I didn’t have a lot of time to settle down and stitch; now I have stepped it up to two large projects.

Each Monday I change what project I’m working on, this week has been spent on a sunflower design by Nel Whatmore which was printed in Cross Stitch Crazy magazine.  As soon as I saw this design I knew that I would have to stitch it, I really love the colours and the way it looks painted.  So far I’ve done a few petals of the sunflower and yesterday completed the centre of it, I can spend a little more time on it today and then tomorrow I’m back with Fairy Tales.

It feels a bit strange at first to swap between the projects week on week, what I’m hoping will happen is that as I near the end of each week I’ll be looking forward to working with different colours and different size stitches the following week.  Sunflowers is being stitched on 14 count aida whilst Fairy Tales is being done on 25 count evenweave, I think it’s been a little while since I’ve done any stitching on anything larger that 16 count so the stitches feel huge.  Once I’ve done a couple of months with this rotation I’ll think about how it’s getting on; if it’s working well I’ll leave it as is but if a week doesn’t feel long enough I’ll consider doing a two week rotation.