All Is Vanity

When I was growing up, we had a framed print in our house that fascinated me. It was a print of "All Is Vanity" by 19th century artist Charles Allen Gilbert.  Can you see it? It's called a "double image," or "visual pun," or maybe trompe l'oeil. 

I wish I could tell you why it fascinated me so. It still does.

Recently, I wondered if the image was available as a counted cross-stitch design. Googling revealed that it is. I purchased and downloaded the pattern from Etsy. 

This will be a daunting project. It's 131 by 199 stitches, so 26,069 stitches altogether. It is monochrome, although it has 21 different colors ranging from white to black. My friend says it's 21 shades of gray. Chuckle.

I thought I'd blog about the project and the progress I make.

So, the first thing I did was figure out the canvas. My first take was to stitch on 16-count fiddlers cloth, which is like Aida cloth, but beige. I cut off a piece, zig-zagged the edges, ran threads through the center, vertically and horizontally. I assembled all the DMC floss I need. Then I plunged in. 

The original 16 count fiddlers cloth        Everything assembled!          Progress, November 1. 

In no time, I had made serious errors. And I determined that backing out was too laborious, so I started over. This time, I used 14-count white Aida cloth. Again, I ran the cross threads. This time, I decided to stitch all the stitches on the vertical and horizontal center axis, rather than fill in all the, say, pale ice blue stitches near the center. This worked pretty well on the horizontal line. 

But when I started on the vertical line, I realized I had another weird error. For some reason, I was one row off. It took me a while to figure it out; apparently I had mis-counted. Fortunately, I hadn't made fatal errors yet, and I was able to rip out some of the stitches and redo them. I also decided to run white cross threads every ten spaces, vertically and horizontally. This is pretty tedious, but I'm convinced it will save me more fatal errors going forward. 

Here's my progress to date, November 11. The image on the left from a few days ago includes my colored-in chart that helps me keep track of what I've stitched. After 2,000 stitches, the image (on the right) is beginning to be clear. You can see the lower jaw of the skull, or, if you prefer, the bottles of cologne and makeup on the vanity table. 

             

So far, it has been fun. I still have that new-project enthusiasm, and I hope it lasts for another 24,000 stitches. 

Stay tuned. I hope all this effort won't be in vain.