Whiskers and Wings: Week 8

Well will you look at that, it's nearly finished!

I can't believe we've come this far! It seems like only a couple of weeks ago that I made the first stitch up in the top left corner, and now here we are. All three birds are at the bottom: chikadee, sparrow, and cardinal. I'm extremely pleased with how it's turning out, and hope to have it finished up by the end of this week. 

As this project ends, I have of course been thinking about my next one. I'll make a separate post all about it, as I've been racking my brains out about colors, fabric etc. But for now I'll leave you with some pictures of the stitching in my current WIP, which I'm particularly happy with. Almost a year and a half after having started cross stitching, I can see the progress I've made when it comes to even stitching and having a clean back:

As for the back, I remember that my first couple of projects were a knotted mess. I'm not saying my stitching is perfect now by any means, but I have come a long way:

I have been actively trying to get better at backs, and have carefully studied the backs of projects that people have put up in places like Reddit, where they explained that what they do is think of the back the whole time that they're stitching. Over the last few months that's what I've been doing, carefully choosing where to go down or up with the needle so that the back would be as neat as possible, and it's nice to see my efforts have paid off. It's nice to feel proud of something even if it's a "little" thing, don't you think?

How is everyone doing? I hope you're all well and have plenty of projects to keep you busy. I'll post about my next project this week if I can, and if not, I'll hopefully see you with a finished project at the end of the week! Until then, happy stitching :)