Grateful Dead - Steal Your Face

Remember this awesome embroidery? Well now you can have the pattern for free!

If you stitch it on 18 count Aida it will fit on those four-inch square coasters (the design window is three inches, this will measure just under 3 inches on 18 count).

It's been a long time since I sent this away, but I think I used DMC 304 and 312. In the colored areas (left mostly blank on the pattern, for ease of printing, with there to remind you what goes where) I used half-crosses rather than full cross-stitches, because that way it they don't overwhelm the outline.

As you can see I accidentally forgot the backstitch lines on my piece, and it looks fine without it. That's what happens when you fill in the colors without looking at the pattern (because why would you?) and then get so excited about finished that you pop it in the coaster. You can't open those things back up easily, not without cracking the top window! These are things I have learned.

Just click on the pattern image, then right click it and select 'view image' for easy printing (or saving, or whatever, you know what to do).

Finished coaster

Well my lovelies, here is the finished Steal Your Face coaster which I'm rather dissatisfied with. The reason being that I left out some back stitch lines on either side of the skull that I meant to do.

My brain just can't hold anything anymore.

I have had a bit of wine so I'm not going to keep typing. Never know what might slip out!

Steal Your Face

Well here's the basic pattern for my Grateful Dead coaster. Again, it's from the Steal Your Face album. I think it turned out pretty well for the size. It should really have been a larger pattern in order to keep more of the detail, but this is for a coaster with a fixed size and even then I had to stitch it on 18 ct. Aida. I'll be doing the red and blue sections in half stitches so the black stays prominent.

I may design a larger more accurate version and who knows, maybe I'll do a series of band logos. When I was 15 or so I would do my own punk covers of Grateful Dead or Bob Dylan songs to annoy my mother. If only I'd known any Pink Floyd songs that would have annoyed her the most! Though I think in generally she's a bit scoffing toward most covers or any song she actually likes.

I've also gotten a bit more done on my Tintin piece and may possibly have found a decent orange to use for his hair. So now the trick is whether that orange makes the skin tone acceptable. The skin tone color is close enough to what's in the books but you know how it is, can't tell how it will work with the orange until the stitches are next to each other. It might at least work in half stitches, but I've used so many of those in this piece already that I'd rather have full stitches.

Tintin!

I grew up with Tintin and Asterix comics, and while Asterix will always be my favorite, I'm very attached to Tintin. We had some of the Tintin cartoons too, which I adored.

So here's my Tintin-in-progress. It will be just like my base image (just without the black fill background. I think I need to get a lighter skin tone though and also need to look for a good color for his hair, so the project is on hold for a bit. I think it's a really good translation from my base image to the cross stitch though!

Now I'm trying to design a pattern of the Grateful Dead logo from the Steal Your Face album. With Christmas coming a lot of the things I'm stitching either can't be posted here (since they're presents) or are so obscure that I don't think you guys would enjoy them. I did design a fabulous blackwork ax though, so if anyone needs an ax design, just ask!

I'm desperately hoping that I won't have to turn the AC on again this season, but it's hard to say. Sometimes it's still pretty warm during the day. All my plants are inside though and I've rearranged some of my succulents. These days my only non-succulents are my lemon tree and a lone African violet. Oh, and the cat grass but that doesn't really count.