Firefighter Logan: Fourth Post - Framed

Where have I been this last month...  Nowhere exciting, just super busy.  So I decided tonight I would make at least one post in December before the new year, even though most of you will see this in January.

I gave my nephew his cross stitched name on his birthday.  He seemed to like it, and, as usual, my sister, his mother, helped me frame it.

So that's all I have for now, hopefully I'll have more time in January to get some stuff worked on or done.

Happy New Year everyone!

Firefighter Logan: Third Post - Complete

I realized as I was working on the N I didn't mention one change.  I've made all of the letters the same color.  In the sampler they are multiple colors.  To the right is the pillow for my Nephew's room.  The color's a little off, the carpet looks green... it's not, it's gray.  I was thinking of using a blue fabric, but my sister thought it would be better to just do the letters blue.  Honestly I don't know what color the letters would have been if I had used a blue fabric.

I took this when I was over at my sister's house on Halloween because I wanted to show the plaid border I've talked about.

Quite a bit of this letter is visible.

This letter gets the fire extinguisher it was designed with.

While it may be the same design I did tweak it a little bit.  In the  pattern, the yellow band and the nozzle were both unstitched.  I decided to use the same pale gray I used for the hose nozzle and I had the yellow the same gray initially, but changed it to the yellow to add more color to the letter.  Also, the original color of the fire extinguisher was orange, I have seen a few orange fire extinguishers, but the majority I've seen are red, so I changed the color.

And here it is outlined.

Finally I added a border on the bottom to match the paid of the pillows.  On the window valance there's a red bar above the paid and that's what I designed.

Now I just need to frame it, luckily there are some sales coming up at work.

Project Stats:
Pattern: Firefighter Logan
Pattern by: Firefighter's Sampler
Started Stitching: October 11, 2013
Finished Stitching: November 3, 2013
Fabric: 28ct. White Evenweave
Floss: DMC 2 over 2, or 1 over 2 Kreinick #4 Braid
Percentage: 100% complete
Stitches: 4,173 out of 4,173 complete

What shall I work on next?  I guess I'll have to figure that out.

Firefighter Logan: Second Post

Two more letters down, one and the border to go!

First up is the L.  This is the one that also had a dalmatian.  Since I liked the dalmatian in the O better, I swapped this one out.  This was actually the last one I designed for the piece so I knew I wasn't going to be using the firefighter from the A.  I thought it'd be a good idea to use one of the other firefighters.  I found I liked the one on the letter P the best.

In redesigning it, I found most of the actual letter was no longer visible.

But that's okay, the firefighter is just standing in front of it.

I did lengthen the hose to drape over the L, added color on his jacket buckles and the hose nozzle.  I also changed his hair line slightly with two quarter stitches.  I did find that the black crosses on his eyes made me think he looked dead. :(

I fixed that with backstitching.  There wasn't supposed to be any backstitching around his eyes, but I wanted the firefighter alive, not dead.

I also used some blue Kreinik that I had as water spray from the end of the hose.  And he's smiling too, that makes him look even less dead.

The A was next.  As I mentioned this one had a firefighter with an ax, but I didn't really like the way it looked so I ended up taking the fireman's hat from the letter B and putting it on A's "head".  Here's the letter.

Here are the hat's colors.

And a little bit of backstitching.

Project Stats:
Pattern: Firefighter Logan
Pattern by: Firefighter's Sampler
Started Stitching: October 11, 2013
Fabric: 28ct. White Evenweave
Floss: DMC 2 over 2, or 1 over 2 Kreinick #4 Braid
Percentage: 58.61% complete
Stitches: 2,446 out of 4,173 complete

The N is next, I only changed colors on that one, then I also have a kind of plaid border that I created, hopefully it'll look good with the rest of the piece.

Firefighter Logan: First Post

Here's a Christmas gift I started working on earlier this month, or is it a birthday gift?  I haven't decided yet.  It's for my nephew, Logan.  Recently his bedroom decor has changed from his baby jungle theme to a fire engine theme.  I found this firefighter's sampler when my sister told me of the change.  But I was not going to stitch the entire alphabet.  I was just going to stitch the letters of his name.

When I received the pattern I found it was an incredibly old hand written pattern.  I decided to digitize it to make it easier on me when stitching.  I also found that I didn't like the letters as they were.  Both the L and the O had Dalmatians, the G had boots that kind of looked like ski boots, and the A had a firefighter with an axe, but it was difficult at first glance to tell what it was.  Also, none of the letters in his name had a fire engine in them.  So I went to work on doing some altering.

The first letter I stitched was the G.  I took the original G and made it a little bit wider.  Then I took the fire engine from the Q and put it behind the the G I made, then filled in the blanks on the engine left by the now absent Q.  I took these pictures in the same way I took the pictures for the 12 Dragonlets of Christmas.  So, first up is just the letter G stitched.

Now, all the rest of the colors, the colors of the fire engine.

And now for the backstitching.

I'm quite proud of my rework on this one.  I also added color to the windows (half cross stitches), the yellow + and the squares in the middle of the hubcaps.

Next up is the O.  This is the only letter that I did not modify at all.  Here's the O first.

And this is the one with the dalmatian that I kept.

And here he is with the backstitching.

Project Stats:
Pattern: Firefighter Logan
Pattern by: Firefighter's Sampler
Started Stitching: October 11, 2013
Fabric: 28ct. White Evenweave
Floss: DMC 2 over 2, or 1 over 2 Kreinick #4 Braid
Percentage: 35.41% complete
Stitches: 1,478 out of 4,173 complete

Two of the remaining letters have been entirely altered, the other I only altered the colors.  I seem to be missing two of the colors, I'll just pick those up tomorrow at work though.  I also have a border that will go along the bottom, that matches the new bedding, drapes and pillows my sister ordered.  You'll see more soon.