Progress Report: Families Photo Album, Part 1
Today’s article is late because I spent today stitching and wanted that to be today’s upload!
This is the project I talked about in yesterday’s article, How Many Days Until Christmas?!
I bought this photo album several months ago with the intent to give it to my grandfather for Christmas. My grandmother, who passed away two years ago from cancer, used to be an avid photographer. She always loved photos. I worked with him over the summer to catalog some of her older photos, as their photo albums were falling apart. So I decided to buy him a new album as a Christmas present.
The photo album had a spot in the front for a photo:
The photo window.
But instead of putting a photo, I decided I was going to stitch something and stick it in there instead! I had to do some hunting for a chart that would fit, as I measured the window as being 4.5 inches by 4.5 inches.
I ended up purchasing the Families Are Forever chart from Daily Cross Stitch. There’s no cover photo and I can’t show you the chart, but here is the link to purchase if you’d like to stitch it yourself! The chart’s only $1.
Families Are Forever: Daily Cross Stitch chart
I calculated the stitch size using a chart from Yarn Tree that converts stitch size to inches depending on the aida count, which you can find here: Stitches to Inches. Figuring by the stitch size and knowing that the window was 4.5 inches by 4.5 inches, I needed a 16 ct. aida, which I ordered from ebay and got a few weeks ago. Then I measured and cut out my piece!
The aida had been rolled up and tied with a bow, so I had to break out the iron and some water to flatten it out before I started stitching:
This is my first time using the iron at the apartment!
And I wanted to change the colors provided on the chart to colors I already had in my stash. I changed the main words from light blue to black, and then I picked out some greens and reds from my stash as I only had one of the colors it suggested. I think the two reds may be too close together but it’s too late to change it now.
Here I am ready to start!
It was at this point, after an hour of work setting up the stitching, picking the colors, measuring and cutting the aida, ironing the fabric, that I realized I had made a mistake. I re-measured the window and realized the actual visual size is 3.5 inches, not 4.5 inches. So if I wanted to make sure the chart fit, I would need more like 20 ct. aida and not 16 ct. But it was too late now to change it. I decided I would fiddle with the chart by eliminating all the extra spaces and see how it looked.
So I quickly started stitching to see if I could make everything fit lengthwise if I got rid of the extra spacing between the stitches, as I knew width-wise some things would be cut off regardless, but that was all right.
So here is all the stitching I did to get to the top and bottom of the chart:
The center letter done.
And here is the top and bottom!
There is barely enough space between the top and bottom, but I stuck it in the album just to be sure and it BARELY fits. It’s so close the top stitch and bottom stitch are directly against the matte, but that doesn’t matter. It fits!
So I stitched a little bit more just to doubly make sure it fit:
Ooh, look how little space there is.
This piece is gonna be very tight. That’s what I get for making an error. But I can make it work!
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Progress Report is an update on all my stitching habits, from the kits to the stitching to the finishing process and more! Right now I am featuring one of my cat-themed projects and several of the mini kits I’m currently working on, along with other pieces I like to pull out and work on at random.
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