I started this kit called "Britain in Stitches: The British Isles" by Heritage Stitchcraft (Susan Ryder is the designer) about 4 1/2 years ago when I bought it in a shop in Christchurch, near Bournemouth. (If you follow this link you can see a photo of it with some of the parts of it stitched independently. The kit I'm doing is the big one on the right hand side.)
It is huge-- a massive 2 feet wide by 3 feet high! The design is a map of the UK & Ireland with town/city names, rivers, moutains, trees for forests, and individual landmark buildings. That's what really drew my attention to it -- the detail of the buildings-- castles, cathedrals etc. It is very difficult to stitch, however, because absolutey everything involves half-stitches and backstitch (both of which I am not a fan!!).
I've got a system though, I've started re-charting all of the names and buildings. There are about 8 pages of charts with everything on, and another 8 or so with the buildings on separately, just stitches on the right, and backstitch on the left. So I've started with page 8 of the everything pages, which happens to start in the middle of the fabric-- and using colored pencils and re-charting the buildings I'm re-drawing them over four squares of graph paper to each square of regular chart. This really helps with the half-stitches and backstitch! I'm also doing the names of the cities/towns in this way too-- only I don't need the color for those.
I re-charted all of the names and buildings on page 8, then got to work!! I've got 4 buildings done and about 12 place names so far. Nearly finished with the Isle of Man. I can't take it with me to the Sewing club I run at church once a month, because the light isn't good enough to see with the jobelan. :( Pretty much I can only work on it at home, with my halogen lamp shining brightly over my left shoulder.
I know it will be worth the work-- it will be the ultimate souvenir of Britain if we do move back to America! Plus I won't ever worry about forgetting where places are, because I could always look them up on my map!
It may be a project for life though-- at this rate... 8" square of stitching in 4 1/2 years..... it will take forever!
Posted by Andy at January 8, 2004 6:21 PM