The Gettysberg Project ... Ressurecting the UFP's!!!!!

You'll remember that last year I tried (and failed) to make a concerted effort to complete all the un-finished projects in my stitch bag.

I suspect that most of them will probably never get completed, but there are one or two of the larger ones that really should be finished.

The oldest "UFP" in my stitch bag, was a design called "Gettysberg", that I featured on my blog about two years ago.  It  was a project that I started back in 2004 for my fiancé, who is into military history and especially, the American Civil War, of which he used to re-enact.

For those who've forgotten what the design looked like, here's a reminder:

...and here's what I had accomplished by February 2010:

In the ten years that I have now been stitching, this is probably one of the most daunting projects I have ever undertaken.  

First, the fabric provided is too small -- there's barely two inches either side so framing will not be easy and as you can see from the lower image, I've had to sew an additional length of fabric to the top so that I can work it on my frame!

Second, the fabric is 18-HPI, not a count I particularly like working on.  I find working on aida with the holes so close together quite frustrating, they're difficult to see in dim light, so it makes the project slow going.

Thirdly, the threads used, are manufactured by Dimensions themselves.  I can be quite wasteful with my thread (shameful, I know) and I always find myself running out of thread.  This is not a problem with other kits I've bought which use either DMC or Anchor threads, but not so for this one.  I wrote to Dimensions and they sent me a conversion chart, but it's far from reliable.

Oh, and did I mention, there's a lot of bloody tweeding on this design too!!!

That aside, I decided that for 2012, I was going to concentrate on completing this and then when this is finished, I can move onto something else.

So I've started chipping away at it again, and here's what I've accomplished last month:

As you can see, it's frustratingly slow going!

The plan is to provide updates on the last day of each month.  I plan to have a session on this over the weekend, providing other projects don't get in the way!

Well that's me done blogging for now.  I had planned to start proving a work in progress for my next blackwork project, Milotic, but she's almost finished now so it's hardly worth it!

Till next time ... keep Kalm and cross-stitch! xx