Recent Wedding Stitches
It's been a little while since I last shared some recent stitch people portraits and since I've recently completed some wedding-related ones, I thought it might be a good time to share but also to give a breakdown of how long it actually takes me to complete pieces, since both of the ones shown [in detail] here are quite different from each other.
Then & Now: The Ryans
This was commissioned by the husband as a 2nd anniversary gift for his wife. If you didn't know, the 2nd anniversary gift is traditionally "cloth", so something like a stitch people portrait is a perfect fit for this. Husband of the year award!
A lot of time went into this piece, as you might imagine. Design time alone was a fair amount, since this was an unusual request for me. I wasn't able to just "duplicate" the husband and wife, since they had both changed over the course of 2 years! Plus with the additions of [dare I say, adorable?] identical 4-month-old twins, that makes the two adults more complex.
The only complex part of stitching this was the two floral arrangements and hair. Everything else was done in cross-stitching & backstitching -as usual- but don't let that fool you. That bushel of lavendar there was a solid day's work just on it's own..!
All in all, these are my time estimates:
Rough estimation
- Design time: 3 hours
- Cross-stitching time: 6 hours
- Embroidery time: 7 hours
- Extra time*: 2 hours
- Total: 18 hours
Portrait: The Smiths
A friend of the bride & groom wanted to give a sneaky gift for their upcoming wedding and what better way than with a stitch people portrait?
Wait, what's that? The wedding hadn't actually happened yet? That's right! I got a bit of creative licence on this piece because my customer didn't have any wedding-day pictures to send to me for reference. What a treat!
Wedding dress shopping day picture, using elements of other portraits I'd done for inspiration and sneaky Facebook stalking-pictures, along with some loose ideas of colouring and off I went. I came up with this design, included my explanation of the florals and she loved it instantly!
My goal was to get this completed before their wedding day, so I got stitching ASAP and UPS was able to confirm it arrived a few days before their nuptuals.
There was the usual complexities - the embroidered hair and flowers. Nothing I can't handle!
Oh and don't forget that gold section in the uppercase 'S'. Metallic thread is a biiiitch.
All in all, these are my time estimates:
Rough estimation
- Design time: 1 hour
- Cross-stitching time: 4 hours
- Embroidery time: 3 hours
- Extra time*: 1 hour
- Total: 9 hours
*What is 'extra' time? Well I have to factor in how much time I spend doing "other" stuff, such as contacting the customer, gathering materials and framing the piece. None of this time feels useful necessarily since it's time spent not actively working on the piece but it is absolutely important!
Anyway - I hope this has been a helpful and informative post! I get the impression people who have never dabbled in needlepoint realise the time it takes to create even such a small piece of artwork in this format. Just because it's little doesn't mean it doesn't take a lot of work!