Sarah's Sketch Pad

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

So these are not sketches but I was transferring some photos from my phone to my laptop and thought I'd share some of the craft things I've made in the last 1-2 years. xD Today I'll talk about a really fun cross-stitch project I did.

My grandma taught me to cross-stitch when I was quite little. A couple years ago, I thought I would have another go at it. I had forgotten everything I'd learned by that point, but it's pretty easy to pick up! I started out buying some thread, embroidery needles and a pre-printed template that I could cross-stitch over. I never got anywhere near finishing this piece. xD But it was a good way to learn. Here's what it looked like:

Spoiler:

It's a bit hard to tell, but the only part I filled in at this point is the light brown and a bit of light green near the top.

So doing this, I had an idea. I'm not such a fan of the cross-stitch game sprites and stuff. So I decided I wanted to do an actual proper picture. As soon as I saw Speed's amazing TCG pixel overs I knew exactly what to do!!!

I was going to cross-stitch an image from a TCG card! >:D

Speed's TCG pixel overs are great as they use a minimum number of colours but still look fantastic. When cross-stitching, the number of colours is really important. The more colours, the more difficult it is. It quickly gets quite crazy! So my first idea was to do a TCG pixelover on the computer with minimal colours and then use that as a template. But I quickly discovered this was a LOT harder than it looked. And it didn't help that I chose a pretty difficult TCG card to start with...



I quickly gave up on that idea. xD Then I decided to use Photoshop to 'cheat' and get the image down to a reasonable amount of colours (I settled on 11). Once I'd pixelised the Mewtwo TCG using only 11 colours, I had my template! It was off to the shops to try and find thread that matched the colours as close as possible. (This was also really hard xD). I also bought some Aida cloth which is basically some sturdy material with holes in it to cross-stitch through.

And off I went, starting from the outside. It was really hard to get started as the cloth I was working on was totally blank, unlike the practice piece I had used. xD

Some progress shots:

Spoiler:

(you can see a bit of my template at the top of the last photo)

As you can see, using lots of colours gets very messy! Especially when there are only very small patches of a colour somewhere. Then you gotta cut and tie off your thread every time you wanna move around! If I did this again, I would make sure I cleaned up the template before using it, to get rid of any unnecessary pixels and make it way easier to physically stitch. xD

The finished product...



Like sprites, it looks better from further away. In person, from across the room, it looks just like a drawing!



Overall this was a crazy idea for a beginner to attempt XD But I had a lot of fun and I was really pleased with the finished product! It took SO MANY HOURS though. Cross-stitching is really really slow and it killed my hands after a few hours so I did this slowly over like 3 months haha. The best thing is it's really easy for beginners, so if you feel like doing some craft, I would recommend it! But maybe start with either something smaller or less complex. xD This one is 8 x 6 inches iirc, which is apparently 6912 stitches based on the cloth I was using. Needless to say I haven't really had the urge to do more since I finished this one. But I might one day. xD

Tagging @Speed-X cos she asked me about this a long time ago xD