DUCJC2015 Project #1 and New Year New Start SAL

Hello Everyone :) I am going to be doing several blog posts to get caught up on all the new starts for DUCJC2015 = Debbie's Ultimate Crazy January Challenge 2015 which means you can start either 31 projects for the month of January OR 59 projects for the month of January and February! I thought about doing the 59, but I think I will stick with 31 New Starts! I will wait until the 31st gets closer and take it from there. I included this project in with a New Year New Start SAL also.

Here is #1 for the DUCJC2015 started Jan. 1st, 2015:

This is going to be beautiful - at least in my opinion - when it's all stitched, but this kit gave me a fit! I had a time with it, and spent about 3 hours getting it ready. I have never had a kit give me such trouble as this one did!

First off when I was zigzaging the edges of the fabric I noticed a really bad spot in the weave of the fabric, so i thought I was going to have to replace the fabric, but decided to count it off knowing that some companies leave quite a bit of extra fabric around the project. So yep, I was able to salvage enough of the fabric to make it work while still leaving ample fabric around the edge. Then I looked at the chart thinking since the floss was already carded I would be ready to stitch, but nooooo! LOL! They had the floss onto card "A" and "B" and just the name of the identifying floss and the DMC numbers. Anyhow it's hard to explain, but I had to go look up all the DMC names and try and match them up to what they had in the kit. So by the time I got all this done, I had 10 minutes to stitch for Jan. 1st at 11:50 pm!