SYOA - Phoenix

I started the phoenix on Friday night, but only got the 2 small flames at the bottom nearest the castle.  The rest I stitched on Saturday.  I hope to have it all done today.  I love the bright colours of the phoenix against the brown castle.

Forgot to say that the smoke was designed by one of the other stitchers on the Facebook group Letters From Hogwarts.  I just changed the smoke colours.

SYOA - Chapter 6 - Smoke & Wand - Happy Dances

Yesterday I stitched the smoke above the train.  I chose the same dark (DMC 04) and medium (DMC 03) grey that I used on the brick wall in The Three Broomsticks.  Then I added a lighter (DMC 02) grey to go with them.

Today I stitched my wand.  I tried to make the handle look like tree bark and the shaft to look like the inside part of the tree.  I’m happy with how it looks.

That is 2 things off my list.  Next will be the phoenix, but it will take me a few days.  My goal is to have it completed by the end of the weekend.

SYOA - Chapter 6 - Happy Dance

I finally finished Chapter 6 and I love how it turned out. It is one of my favourite parts of this project.

I thought you might like to see the whole project.

I have 10 or 11 more things to stitch and then it will be complete.

1. Wand (open space under the snitch and broom)
2. Smoke above train so the train on the right side will be balanced with the Knight Bus on the left
3. Phoenix (above Hogwarts castle)
4. Flying letters at the top (not sure yet, will decide after seeing the smoke and phoenix)
5. Book 1
6. Book 2
7. Book 3
8. Book 4
9. Book 5
10. Book 6 
11. Book 7

I have 5 more weeks until the end of the year and I do love a stitching deadline.  Let’s see how much I can get done by the end of 2020.

SYOA - Chapter 6 - Patronus - update #2

I am almost finished, just need to fill in the random floor tiles.  I love the look of the full coverage background.

SYOA - Chapter 6 - Patronus - update #1

I didn’t get a lot of stitching done last night. I focused on backstitching the rest of the window panes, brick wall on the right side and the house points counter.  I love how it is coming together.

SYOA - Chapter 6 - Patronus

Chapter 6 is all about producing a Patronus and you have a choice of 3 backgrounds,  

• Room of Requirement where Harry taught the DA club how to produce their patronus.
• The Great Hall where everyone took their OWLs and got to produce their patronus.
• Outside on the castle grounds where students might be practicing spells and produced their patronus.

I took a test online and it said my Patronus is a Horse.  I wasn’t surprised because my Chinese Zodiac animal is also a horse.  I don’t mind horses, but I don’t love them.  I really wanted a turtle because we had a red-eared slider turtle named Frodo for 12 years.  She passed away in March 2018.  To me a Patronus is supposed to protect you, unfortunately a pet turtle is very small, ours was 12” in diameter.  I decided to use a sea turtle because they can be quite large.  Stewart designed a lot of animals (horse, dog, cat, birds, hedgehog, rabbit, otter, Stag, fox, wolf) from the books and movies, but no turtles.  So of course I had to design my own.

I chose The Great Hall because it has the House Points Counter which I really liked.  I looked online for photos from the movies and tried to give the room more details like the wainscotting along the back wall which runs under the window and the house points counter.  I moved the window, door, wall sconces and points counter up higher to make room for the wainscotting.  I also thought there should be a dementor outside the window, this will givie the students a reason to learn how to produce a  patronus.

I started this on Wednesday night last week.  Here is my progress so far. Please excuse the strings, I was too lazy to pull them all to the back before taking a photo.  I am very happy with how much I accomplished.  I’m using a variegated terra cottas for the brick wall, hopefully it looks better after I add the grout and backstitch the house points counter cylinders.  My son Jaspar thought it should have a wand producing the patronus.  I think it is a great touch.

Peppermint Purple (Green) - weeks 44, 45 & 46

I’m finally all caught up again because I stitched 3 blocks (weeks) last night.

SYOA - Knight Bus - Happy Dance

I can’t believe how long it took me to stitch the Knight Bus.  It looks so straight forward by my design.  My computer screen shows the floss colours different than in real life, so I had to change the floss on my design as I was test stitching it.  I’m very happy with the results, even with all of the frogging.

Here is the Knight Bus when we last left off.  My oldest son Jaspar complained he couldn’t read the light green letters on the pink sign.  He said it was like doing one of those colour blind tests, so of course the perfectionist in me had to frog all of the letters (and green backstitching that you can’t see in the photo). At first I tried to backstitch the letters with dark green in stead of frogging, but hated the look, so after frogging I went with a dark green (699) without backstitching (to save a little bit of time.  As you can see in the 2 photos below, the dark green letters are a lot easier to read.

This morning I finished the Knight Bus letters.  The backstitching got lost, so I used long stitches instead to create letters.

Here is the whole project so far.  If you are wondering how large this project is, the photo is taken with the fabric tucked into my reclining chair seat.  It takes up the whole seat area and I will be adding more to the top portion and bottom portion, so it will be really long when completed sometime next year. 

I thought I was getting closer to finishing the top portion, but Jaspar said the train looks like it needs something above it to balance it with the long flat top on the Knight Bus.  I only wanted to add designs that were either Stewart Cunningham’s originals or my own, but someone did create a design for smoke billowing out of the top of the train.  So to save me time with reinventing the wheel as they say, I will use their free design that was posted on the Facebook group.  I love asking my sons’ for their opinions on my projects, even though it does usually mean I will be doing more work.  :)

SYOA - Knight Bus - update #3

Well I thought I was all finished with the Knight Bus, but after looking at the photos, I noticed that I'm missing some backstitching around the Honey Dukes sign and I forgot to add the words KNIGHT BUS under the sign.

Here is the top portion showing the Knight Bus, Hogwarts Castle and the Hogwarts Express Train.  I'm happy with the symmetry on the top. I made the bus as tall as the tallest part of the train, but because the bus is flat on top it looks bigger than the train. I know the bus would look better if it was facing Hogwarts, but the back door only opens on this side and I wanted to show that in the design.  It looks like you show up to Hogwarts on the train and leave on the bus.

Here is the whole project so far.  I still want to add a Phoenix above Hogwarts, my wand under the Quidditch chapter, some letters on the side areas, and then all 7 books lined up at the very bottom.  I'll decide once all of that is stitched if I need to add any more letters since it is called Letters From Hogwarts.

I also haven't started Chapter 6 (which is all about your Patronus).  I took a test online and it says my Patronus is a horse.  I'm not surprised, since my Chinese Zodiac is also a horse.  I have decided that I will include the horse, but I love turtles.  We had a female Red-eared Slider turtle as a family pet for 12 years.  I thought it would be nice to add a turtle Patronus as well.  Not sure if it will be a pet turtle or a sea turtle.  I might also add more Patronuses flying around to look like several people have produced them at the same time.  

There are 3 different backgrounds for Chapter 6.  The Great Hall, the Room of Requirements and outside on the castle grounds.  I'm not sure which one to do yet.  I'm also thinking of making my own background, maybe the Defense against the Dark Arts Classroom.  We saw it a lot in the movies since there was a new DADA teacher each year.

SYOA - Knight Bus - update #2

I’m slowly stitching away on my Knight Bus.  I love all of the purple (my favourite colour), just hope it doesn’t look unbalanced with a red train.