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.

SYOA - Knight Bus - update #1

My Knight Bus is starting to take shape. I decided I didn’t like having the same purple (550) inside the door for the whole bus. I went through all of my purples until I found one I liked (333) to use for the rest of the bus. I’m finally happy with this combination. 

43, 4, and 1 ??

 I am still keeping up with the Peppermint Purple (Green) SAL. I completed week 43, last Wednesday on the day it was released.

I added some more items to the bottom of my Harry Potter SYOA project.  I am not adding the letters at the bottom as originally charted. I found 4 small house crests. This photo shows how I placed 2 on each side. I used the same floss colours and placed them in the same order as the swirls at the top. I will be stitching my wand in the middle under the Quidditch Chapter. Still deciding what colour wood for my wand.

Here is a close up of the 2 on the left.

Finally 1 Knight Bus, which will hopefully balance the top with the castle and train. I started stitching the Knight Bus yesterday. I already frogged most of the purple because I thought the floss colour was darker on my computer screen, but it was too light. I will use the same purple for the whole bus with lots of back stitching to show the details. There was a photo online of the Knight Bus with a Honey Dukes sign on it, so I had to add that little detail (also less purple to stitch). I know the bus is not facing the opposite way from the train, but the back door is only on this side and I wanted to show that detail. I didn't think about that before stitching the train, or it would have been flipped.