Ballerina and Bear

 a design by Coats Craft UK.

This was in June 2004 Cross Stitcher, It caught my eye as something a bit different and I saved the pattern and added to my mental to do list (as apposed to my actual to do list). It has waited in a plastic wallet and then moved a bit closer to getting done on several occasions, then been relegated  again to a one day soon. Although I had not realised I had been thinking about it since 2014)

I bought some random pieces of material from a Facebook group and there happened to be a piece of 16 count of a suitable size.  As suggested by the designer name this pattern is intended to be sewn in Anchor thread and my go to is DMC although I have some anchor threads (bought here and there for no particular reason and currently living with my Hark the Herald Angels Project) but not these colours so I turned to the delights of the on line conversion chart. Only to find that I did not have all the colours in DMC either, they are all shades of grey which have taken quilt a hit for Millennium so I thought it would have to wait till I had enough threads required to bother with buying new.

Oh then I remembered Mrs Jackson, the mother-in-law of a friend of mine, I was gifted her crafting bits and pieces some years ago when she was having to downsize and relocate. Most of the items were quilting related but there were also three boxes of bobinated thread stored by colour group not numerical order (that's the way I do it) and I had just put them away with the thought they were spare.  So I pulled them out thinking there might be a DMC 415 in there.

There was not, the reason being that it is a set of Anchor! and all four of the Anchor greys I needed were in there.

The day after sorting out the threads I made a start. All the cross stitches before starting the backstitch of course.

I can already see the characters, but that is probably because I know what I am looking at.

On to the backstitching, there were three shades used in the cross stitch, all four will make an appearance in the backstitching.

The instructions for the pattern recommend that  the needle used for the backstitching has a sharp point as there is a lot of coming up (or down) in the muddle of the stitches already done and not just in the holes set in the aida for sewing.

This makes the characters much clearer and took me less time than I had anticipated given the fiddley nature of the backstitch placement.

The next shade was restricted to the ballerina's hair.

Surprising how much difference defining the hair made.

Day one working on this came to an end with the hair, although I wanted to keep going. Even thought this is not my preferred style of  backstitching I have enjoyed the result.

And now for the penultimate shade.

Hello Mr Bear. Only one more shade to go, and not a lot of that.

Here it is with all the stitching finished, well it is for me so far, it should have "Take your partners Please" at the bottom but I am leaving that off. This is going to sit now in my finished pile till I have any inspiration to do so, and maybe it would make a nice birth sampler for a little girl sometime in the future. The space at the bottom would be fine for adding a name ect. I will see what happens

You could almost play spot the difference looking for the last bits added here.

So after years of waiting, it took just one evening (well make that an episode of Midsomer Murders) and one day (two WWII films watched with my dad) for it to be all sewn up.

It may be years before it is final finished, regardless I am rather delighted to have something move from the to do to the done portion of my mental list.