Cross Stitch: Lonely Mountain

Here is a close up of Lonely Mountain from the Hobbit


Here is an in progress picture of the Mountian



Here is a picture with the lettering and the dragon complete

Here is a closeup of the lettering under the mountain

Here is the progress of the border.

Close up of the border

Finished

Chart of the border runes

This is a chart of the runes around the border of the map. The runes came from the front cover of the leather bound "The Hobbit". The runes can be translated. "The Hobbit or there and back again being the record of a years journey of bilbo baggins compiled from his memoirs"


I have always wanted to make a map cross stitch. But I have not found a design I like. I wanted it old world with sea serpents and monsters on it. I also really wanted to do something Tolkien-ish. The only thing in my mind to do was to take one of his maps and convert it into a cross stitch. Appeasing two desires at once. The easiest map to make was the Lonely Mountain. Even this portion of the map is not complete- it is a portion of the original.

I used cross stitch software, Digistitch 2000, to help convert the image. It needed extensive editing to get clean lines. I would say the sizing is always the hardest since the smaller you make it , it loses detail. But if you make it too big the cross stitch finished product would be enormous and take a year to stitch. I sized it to about an eight and a half by eleven inch paper. I completely redrew the lettering and details.

I also chose to make it sepia colored monotone to replicate a parchment drawing. The border has color in it, a dark green.

The border was never completely charted. Just the corner. I did the rest simply by looking at the book cover. I am too impatient to do all of that charting work.

It came out great and I love it. Next I have to get it framed.

Has anyone else had any experience with designing cross stitch? Was it hard to chose a size and level of detail?

This was done on linen over two with DMC floss.

Happy blogging!