Christmas / Yule 2018: Who Needs to Buy Presents When You Can Make Them? - Part 1

For Christmas / Yule 2018, I decided I was not going to buy any holiday presents this year. I was going to make all of the presents myself. Before you go all, "Girl, what were you thinking?!" ... I did start making the items in April because I knew it would take quite a bit of time for at least two of the presents. 

I made a Darth Vader wall hanging for one friend, a landscape wolf wall hanging for another friend, and a Disney Villains hooded cape for another friends. I also took a couple breaks during the summer to make another friend a Zelda themed house warming present and to start up a block of the month quilting project.

I am almost done with all of the darkest blue sections.
The Death Star looks like it has a boob.

The Darth Vader project was definitely the most challenging and rewarding of the group. I bought the cross-stitch pattern Needlework #002-10 on Etsy from StitchLine. I decided to stitch it out on a light gray Aida fabric I bought from JoAnn's. There were only about seven colors in the pattern, and almost all of them were shades of dark blue, gray, and black. 

Early on, I was pretty sure my eye-sight would never be the same. With the colors being so close to the same shade, it was easy to  miscount. I cannot tell you the amount of times I had to take out stitches because I was one square over from where I should be. I kept at it though, and things started to come along.

I was so sad that my hoop size was just shy of the full width of the cross-stitch pattern. Before I do another this size, I want to purchase one of the scroll type holders for the fabric so that I do not have to re-hoop and also so that it does not leave hoop marks on my fabric.

I started with the green and light gray shades and slowly worked into the dark grays, blues, and black. The black is the last color I did because it allowed me to mostly just fill in without any sort of counting at that point. I spent a couple of hours a night, maybe three days a week working on it from May until November. I spent so much time

So close to being done with this section.
Just filling in the black.

working on it that last week that the muscles in my hand started cramping any time I tried to hold something smaller than a fat marker. My hands ached and my wrist hurt. I ended up using a compression wrap to finally get it to not be painful.

The fabric looked kinda dingy when it was all done, so I consulted one of the local framing shops on how best to clean the fabric gently. The owner said she always used dove soap, so that's what I did. It did get out the unfortunate Dr Pepper stain and cleaned the general hand grime that always ends up on a project that takes this long to complete. 

Unfortunately, the process that fixed the stains caused the green thread to bleed. I have made at least a dozen wall hangings, and I have never had something like this happen with one before. I always use name brand thread and am careful about using only cold water. It looked like a small creature had peed on the fabric. After some research, I made a fast dash to the craft store for some Carbona Color Run Remover and followed the directions exactly to *cross fingers* remove the color bleeds. When I pulled the fabric out of the chemical solution, the whole design was dark chocolate brown. I was on the verge of the panic attack and a blind rage all at once but something made me decide to rinse it out as the instructions said to anyway. As the cold water washed over it, the colors slowly started to show through. The brown disappeared after about five minutes of rinsing. The flood of relief was real. I was almost crying. That product should REALLY warn you that is going to happen.

I got it dried, ironed out the wrinkles, and ordered a nice frame and mat set  for it since the framing store wanted way more than I could afford to invest this year. I think the finished product turned out quite beautiful, and my friend seemed to really like it. That was the most important part, and it made the aches, pains, and almost tears completely worth it.