Free Heaven and Earth Design Pattern Earned

Heaven and Earth Design (HAED) has a challenge going in their Facebook group to earn a free chart. They are currently on their fourth challenge of six. There is still time to participate. This challenge does not end until April 7th. I discussed the rules for this challenge on my February 1 post. You can find it here. Now, I am happy to say that I have completed challenge #4.

She has an eye. Chart is Glowing Dreams by Selina Fenech charted by Heaven and Earth Designs. Now comes the hard part of the challenge. Waiting until it is over to see what chart they will be giving us.

Earn Free HAED Chart

Heaven and Earth Designs (HAED) has several ways to earn free charts. Today I am going to touch on one of them. For this way you need to be a part of their facebook group. If you are not already you can join here. Currently HAED is running challenge #4. Each challenge has a set of requirements that must be followed. The first one I did not know, but you had to work in 10X10 squares in a checkerboard pattern. The second one was going on when I joined HAED's facebook page. For it you had to do cross country. Unfortunately I came in at the end of it and didn't have time to participate. The third one was parking. Although I was working on a Heaven and Earth Designs piece at the time it did not have a full clean page for me to participate. Now they are on challenge #4 and I am taking part. the requirements are simple.

• Choose a clean page- Minimum 7300 stitches (must equate to a full page if you are doing an SK, Large Format, etc.), no min number of colors
• Runs January 1st and ends April 7th (midnight PST)
• Post your Email in the Sign up thread
• Take a photo Jan 1st of your blank fabric space and blank chart page(s) (Do not post until finished)
• Take a photo of your work at about the halfway mark (Do not post until finished)
• When you are complete - Post your blank fabric pic, blank chart pic, your halfway pic and finish pic in the Finish thread
• You may use ANY type of technique that you like
• Tenting is allowed
• Participants that complete the challenge will receive a prize chart!

It is that easy. One page with 7300 stitches anyway you want to stitch them. You don't even have to purchase a chart you can use one of their free download charts off the Heaven and Earth Designs website. Catch. Always a catch isn't there. You don't know what chart is the prize. It is a surprise. It has taken a bit but I have moved over to a clean page. All signed up in the correct thread, and I am finally there and ready to start. Here is the piece I am working on:

Glowing Dreams by Selina Fenech

Of course I am doing the no background. This saves months of stitching. While some will not look right with no background when it comes to water, sky, or solid type using a nice hand dyed fabric looks just as good if not better.

This is my starting point for challenge #4

My page will starts to the right of the dark purple.

What's next? and Storage System

The need to do math has gotten the better of me. Just had to figure out how many more stitches I had left, and how many hours per day I need to stitch in order to finish on time. Estimation is 16,200 stitches left until completion. Only have 21 days left instead of 22 because I have to go to court one day. Boooo court. My best guesstimation is about 7.75 hours per day. This is great down from the 9 hours per day I guesstimated last week. That means I am probably stitching faster than 100 stitches per hour that I was stitching when I started on Snow. Today I completed the ninth page, almost done with the tenth but my back needed a break, have partials on another five pages and one lone page that I have not touched yet. Darn mathematician brain that needs to do math. That's a lot of numbers in there. Here she is....

Snow by Maxine Gadd charted by HAED

 Already trying to pick out which pattern to do next.

Star Wars II charted by Mystic Stitch

Star Wars 23

The two above my husband and our youngest son would love for me to do.

Glowing Dreams by Selina Fenech charted by HAED

This one I have all the materials and hand dyed fabric for. Worried about how monochromatic it is. I am so tired of stitching grey.

Man of War by Ciro Marchetti charted by HAED

This one I have fabric, but only some of the tread for. This was a RAK generously given to me, so I don't have all the pages printed out. It is very colorful and don't have to worry about it being monochromatic and getting tired of just one or two colors in different shades.

Sacred Hour by Christophe Vacher charted by HAED

Ok, I really want this one on my wall. I absolutely love it. I have all the materials for it, but it is huge and also very monochromatic.

Lets talk about how I store all of my projects in waiting. Depending on what stage of kiting they are at depends on how they are stored. All patterns I have nothing for just sit in a pile of patterns organized by who published the chart. Next level of storage would be if I have purchased fabric for the pattern. Most of these patterns are stored in a gallon sized ziplock bag with the fabric. This makes it easy for me to remember which pattern I purchased what fabric for. For some of them either the pattern is too big or the fabric is too bulky for a ziplock bag. For these I use old salad containers. After my husband is finished eating all the salad I clean the container. Then I print out the design picture and tape it to the top of the box. 

Salad storage box

From here I can start adding thread to the kit as it goes on sale and I can afford it. Finally stage is to add a bobbin box to it.

bobbin box

A completed kit out of its container looks like this. Includes: Pattern, Fabric, Bobbin Box with thread, and bag of duplicate threads need in pattern.

Then they all stack together nicely in my craft closet. Where I hope my husband doesn't really know how may patterns actually have accumulated. Although he has seen them all individually.

How do you store your projects?