July WIPocalypse - Secrets revealed

I realize I'm a little late for the WIPocalypse check-in already, but I was at Felix' place again over the weekend and we were quite busy preparing and celebrating his birthday, so I only get back to writing now. On the plus side, I can now finally show you these secret projects I've been talking about all that time - so without further rambling, let's jump right into it!

First project I've been working on was a brithday present for a good friend of mine. She had send me a care package of home baked christmas cookies last year, so I wanted to make something for her as well, and as she loves to bake and cook and also loves cats in general and Pusheen in particular, I had just the right idea for her - an apron with baker-Pusheen stitched on it. I made the pattern myself using the .gif-version and gimp. At first I wanted to stitch this using waste canvas, but the apron I bought alread had a square pattern and I couldn't for the love of god get the waste canvas to align properly with those squares - until I realized I could just stitch on the fabric directly using said squares, and I could start to work and was quite pleased with the result.
My friend got/opened the present on the 4th of July, and she loved it and was quite happy which in turn made me quite happy, so mission accomplished here ^_^

Next up was a birthday present for Felix. I really love cloudsfactory and the patterns they offer, especially the Mini People. I'd like to stitch up just short of all of them eventually, but then putting a lot of those in frames and on your walls might get a little boring...so I decided to try something else and stitch them on a t-shirt. So I got a nice blue shirt in Felix' size, grabbed my waste canvas and started stiching Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Stitching with the waste canvas turned out much harder than I thought it would be (I had to check the backside constantly to make sure the stitches were still properly 'holding hands' on the fabric itself) so I got in quite a hurry to get it finished at the end, but eventually I made it - I was so very nervous right before pulling out the waste canvas, but everything turned out alright. Here is is, before and after removing the canvas (I put the backstitching and knot details on after removing the waste canvas because I was afraid they'd be to delicate to slight changes in fabric tension or something like that):

Also the proud owner, wearing the shirt on his birthday (he insisted I cut his head of before putting his picture on the internet...the head in the picture only of course, I can asure you that the original head is still safly attached to his shoulders!):

I think my 'prototype' turned out quite well, so I might be doing a few more of those in the future ^_^ It also was quite a funny moment when Felix' aunt was admiring his shirt and asked me how much time I had put into this - surely it must have been a whole two or three hours? She was quite shocked when I explained that it was more like 20 or 30 hours...it's funny how much non-stitching people underestimate the time those things take, but fortunately Felix has watched me stitch often enough to know how long it takes.

Another project I've been working on (mostly when Felix was here as he wasn't allowed to the his present of course) is my little Two kitties-kit. I already finished one of the cats, no I'll just need to do the second one and the green and flowers around them. This one is due in mid-August, so no big hurry yet.

And last but not least, as I was away over the weekend, I got a little more work done on my Game of Thrones-bookmarks and added the second half of the Arryn words - next time I'll be on to the falcon.

So that was is for my recent stitching - now on to July's WIPocalypse dicussion topic: It’s halfway to Christmas. Do you start your holiday stitching this early? If so, what do you hope to accomplish this year?

Actually, I do have some plans this year - I want to finish one big design for my grandma and I already started it because I'm not sure how long this will take, and as you can see with all the stuff that keeps distracting me it's probably a good idea as well (Teresa Wentzler's Angel of Frost, the beginning of which you can see here). Depending on how well I get along with this, I might consider doing a few smaller christmas-y projects as well, but for now I'm well booked out.

And I guess that concludes this month's WIPocalypse post, which has become quite long already, so everything else that might need discussing will have to wait until a later time :)