A Practice in Patience

Only in the last year or so I have started to make note of how long it takes me to do the physical stitching of a project. Based on the 7 examples I currently have, every stitch seems to add about 18 seconds to a project, with the largest design I have recorded taking over 26 hours and filled a 5in x 6in rectangle. When I count my time I barely include time such as mounting, unmounting, cutting fabric & thread, etc. So far this looks pretty consistent, but this does make me wonder how this curve will continue to shift and what other factors like the number of unique colors (color scale) come into play.

Breadth of Color

My next curiosity was to characterize all of my original designs and the colors that define them.

I have used 145 unique colors spanning across roughly 27 original cross-stitch designs. These designs are compiled by 71,107 individually laid stitches, which I proudly stitch before publishing any piece. Based on the estimate above, that would be an estimated total active stitching time of 220 1/2 hours, not including the time spent on the actual drawing out and designing.

There is an interesting exponential rise of neutrals that is probably quite predictable. I will be the first to say that I dislike using black as it feels extremely synthetic to me, but most of these black stitches are coming from my Rorschach’s. DMC in fact has about 500 traditional satin thread colors, and since I own them all, maybe I should work to intentionally expand my personal scope??