Finally I can tell you that our website is up to date. Hallelujah!! Changing everything has been a huge job, but now all of my charts are available to you as Digital Downloads!
I am in the middle of designing my 80th chart and thought I would talk a bit about the process.
Inspiration can come from anywhere. "Teardrops" started when I was playing on the computer, trying to graph "Pretty on Pink". I use PC Stitch for graphing and I drew a row of stitches, then rejected it for that particular pattern.....but I liked it so my mind went to 'what would happen if I repeated that line'. and so 'Teardrops' was born. The picture just shows a little part of the project. There are beads yet to add and a lot of stitching yet to do.
I have been working mostly on canvas for quite a while and had a hankering to work something on 28 count evenweave, so that is the fabric I chose. Initially The picture in my head was stitched in all the jewel tones, but when it came to stitching nothing seemed to look right, it just wouldn't come together. My next decision was to change the colour scheme to blues and greens. Now the colours would not flow the way I wanted them and I decides to make the chart 5 columns instead of 6. Now the graph had to be changed. So, I started stitching again, loving the colours this time. I worked the first row of larger teardrops, then filled on the centre of them and didn't like those stitches at all. What you can draw on the computer doesn't necessarily look good when stitched. Back to the drawing board! I decided to put teardrops inside the teardrops and now I am loving it. So, I re-worked the graph again, how many times is that?
As I have stitched , I have been taking pictures to add to the instructions. Pictures help explain where words alone do not. The actual chart comes next. The graph is done, I need to get a good picture...not my strong point! Now come all the stitch diagrams. They are done with a different software program, and often take more time than the actual stitching. Put it all together in a 'word' document, change it to a pdf file and it is ready to be added to the website for you to buy.
Now there is another idea I need to work on................