Transcendence: First Post - Page 21

Okay, I think I should make a confession at this point, I love Fantasy.  It doesn't matter what it is, books, pictures, movies, castles, dragons, princes, princesses, I pretty much love it all.  And this picture has gotten my Fantasy bone tinglin'.  I just love how he seems to be stepping out of the picture, his cloak transforming into sparkling butterflies.

I have decided to either be lazy or make this guy look really cool.  This is why:  In total there are 288,900 stitches in this pattern, and 153,571 are black, that's over half of the pattern.  53.16% of the pattern to be exact!  There are six full pages of nothing but black!  So my plan is to not stitch about 95% of the black, only keeping the black that is integral to the picture, like his clothing/cloak, hair... bits here and there that should probably still have the stitches.  If my calculations are correct, I have eliminated just over half of the stitches needed to complete this project.  If I counted correctly, yes, I'm insane for doing so, the total number of stitches is down to 143,296 with 7966 being black.  So yay, I'm halfway done?!

As a drawback, I'm stitching him on 20ct Black Lugana Evenweave, and, as any stitcher knows, stitching on black isn't nearly as easy as stitching on white.  I'm hoping that not only will I finish him faster with less stitches, but that he will pop more on the fabric without the black background stitching.  On the plus side, if I hate the way it looks I can always go back in and add all the black.  I'll be cursing probably every minute of it, but it's always an option.

The original pattern says that it will end up being about 22.5" x 32.6".  I'm not sure what my plan will be.  Since I am not stitching the black, I'm just going to stitch him and when the time comes to frame him, I'll figure out how much black around him I want to show.

HAED recommends that you start with the first page and just keep going until you reach the end, which means starting in the upper left hand corner.  Now this is odd for me.  I was always taught, and have always, started in the middle, but with the size of these designs and the way the pages are laid out I completely understand, so pretty much all my other HAEDs are started in the upper left hand corner.  But not this one.  I bought a piece of fabric that will fit him perfectly, it's 36" x 27" so I get, almost, two inches around the sides and more than two inches on the top and bottom, which is the amount of extra fabric I like.  So to make sure he's centered I started in the middle... on his crotch to be quite honest.  Sorry, I had to mention that, I thought it was kind of funny, out of all the places I could start... why did it have to be there??

Anyway, moving on, here's what I have so far, about half of page 21 finished:

His...um... shirt is almost complete on this page, with just most of the cloak and butterflies left.  I also did all the green background which, for some reason, I think looks awesome even though it's just a mess of greens.  His belt buckle showed up a lot better in the image than I've been able to see in person, but that's probably due to the fact that I'm looking at it up close and the photo forces me to look at it from a distance.

Project Stats*:
Pattern: Transcendence
Original Artist: Adele Sessler
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: March 7, 2012
Fabric: 20ct. Black Lugana Evenweave
Floss: DMC 2 over 1
Percentage: 2.74% complete
Pages Stitched: 0 of 36 complete
Total Pages: 6 of 42 complete
Stitches: 3940 out of 143,296 complete
*Just a note, my project stats for this project will always refer to stats without the black background, if I decide to do the background I will update the stats on a post when I announce that I'll be doing the background. Hopefully that announcement will never take place.


I'm really tempted to work on him, but I'm watching my parent's house again so it's back to Magical Arrival, after I put together my mother's Ottlite since I left my portable one at home.  It never gave off enough light... especially since there's a FULL sized light in a box on the other side of the room!  I'll probably have an update on Magical arrival by the end of the week.