Delft Unexpected Visitors - A Finish!

 The last post on this blog was quite a while ago! It was also a picture of the back of this piece that is now finished -- a Christmas 2020 gift that felt quite appropriate!

This is Night Spirit Studio's 'Unexpected Visitors'. I was inspired to do the Delft/willow pattern colouring thanks to Calamity Ware's fun take on the usual floral patterns (we're big fans of Calamity Ware in our house). I think it came out quite well, though it took several tries to get the colours just the way I wanted them to look.

I didn't reinvent the wheel: I found a Joan Elliott piece in Delft colours that I liked, and used floss from that piece. The difficult part really lay in deciding which sections got which colours to make it look right, rather than all sort of blending into each other. The fence, for instance, was originally one of the lightest blues in the bunch, with a darker field behind it. But paired with the white fabric, the fence basically disappeared so it got pulled out and the colours reversed.

The only thing I did change from the original floss list was the addition of that bright, nearly neon blue that I used for the tractor beam and flames. It's a break from traditional Delft, but it does look so nice!

This is finished as a mounted flatfold. I had never done one before this piece, and I'm just over the moon at how nice it looks when finished. One note: I did not use tacky glue on this piece. I couldn't find any in the stores in the month or so leading up to December, so I used permanent iron-on adhesive found at Hobby Lobby on the squares covered in dark cloth, used school glue to get the folded corners to also lay flat (and to attach the ribbon on the base), then sewed the finished cross stitch down onto the front square.

There's another piece in the works that would go with this one, that I'm hoping to finish as a mounted flatfold as well. That'll be on the blog as well here soon! I've been really busy on my second (now main) blog & the associated Facebook page for the holidays, so it's nice to get back onto the original stitchy blog now and again. 😄

Floss list:

996 -- Fire, Tractor Beam, & anything that was red in the original pattern (except the barn)

UFO, Outer Border -- 336
Inner Border (surrounding the flowers) -- 312
Palest Inner Border & Snowflakes -- 3755
Flowers -- 3755 & 996; filled in the 'white' spaces w 3756

Smallest House (on the far left as you look at the piece)
Walls -- 3325
Roof & Windows -- 312
Hill -- 334

Barn (middle building, not on fire)
Walls -- 312
Window & Door -- 336
Edges (Roof/Door trim) -- 3841
Quilt Square (design above door) -- 3841 & 334
Field & Fence -- 3841, 334

Largest House (on the far right as you look at the piece, large flames)
Walls -- 312
Windows & Door -- 3841 (trim), 312 (panes, doorway)
Roof -- 334
Hill -- 3325
Pavers/Steps on the hill -- 334

In total, all colours needed: 312, 334, 336, 996, 3325, 3755, 3841.
I didn't stitch the final three rows of the outermost border, which would add a row of 996 & two of 336 if you wanted to add them.