A week in stitches

Last week I was off work - we had plenty of holiday to take, and so we decided it would be lovely to spend some time pottering at home. We did spend lots of time in the garden, and took the opportunity to catch up with good friends, but it also meant I could focus on my stitching. I had 4 things that I wanted to do in my head: finish a quilt top that I'd started the previous weekend, start the quilt top made from the other half of the jelly roll (two quilts from one jelly roll - brilliant idea for a book!), finish the BBD Summer / Autumn / Winter and pull out fruit bellpull again - I think I managed 3.5 out of 4!!

This is the quilt top: 'Strip the Willow' made using half a jelly roll of French General's 'Papillion'. I have planned the colours and cutting for the other quilt (clues are in my last TUSAL post), but I didn't start cutting or stitching yet.

I finished BBD's Summer / Autumn / Winter, the Loose Feathers pattern from 2011. I had some 'fun' re-charting it to say 2013, and then somehow managed to screw up the placement of my initials and the date and motifs, despite lots of counting, charting and double checking. I moved the motif between the Z and the J twice - the second time only by 1 square, but it does look better where it ended up!!

I pulled out TW's fruit bellpull on Sunday afternoon, this is a before photo of the grapes block - I've stitched a bit more green since then.

And finally, a progress so far photo. I'd love to get this finished before I start teaching again in late September. Always the optimist ;)

Don't forget to comment on my last blog post if you'd like to be entered into my 300th post giveaway. Now, where did I leave that needle...

Happy stitching folks x

300th post!!!

Wow, I just logged on to do a run of the mill stitching post, and noticed my last post was number 299 - which makes this one number 300!! That erased my dilemma over what to call this post! I can't believe I have 90 followers, and have had 26,397 page views to date. I *think* I managed to turn myself off the tracking ;) That probably isn't much in blogger land, but for me it's huge, and I am amazed and humbled that people want to read my ramblings and look at my photos. So thank you all, lovely readers.

 So what have I been working on? The 2011 loose feathers design has been my main focus - I did frog and restitch the big white flower, and I am much happier with it now:

I then made a counting error in the alphabet, and had to frog and restitch 3 letters. But it's all sorted now.

I've just got the bottom row of letters to go. I need to figure out how to fit my wide initials into the available spaces, and change the 1 in 2011 to a 3 (I have worked out a 3, just need to think about the spacing). I'm not sure if it would be better to squeeze it all together, or to skip the half motif in the bottom right corner and have more space. Decisions decisions...

A little while ago (2 weeks?) I wanted to stitch a small, so I picked out this needle book by Little House Needleworks. I stitched it in DMC on a  scrap of unnamed overdyed fabric. I love the sheep - too cute :)

It's also TUSAL week - these are my orts. The white ones on top are from the recent frogging... And the background? Well that's something else I've been working on this week, which I will update you on later.

In honor of my 300th post I'm going to have a giveaway... No idea what, as I only realised this was post 300 about 20 mins ago - but it will be stitched by me. If you'd like to enter, please add a comment to this post. I'll draw the winner next weekend.

Happy stitching folks xx

Flowers and frogs

I'm still making great progress with the Summer, autumn, winter sampler by Blackbird Designs, but I think I've decided I need to be visited by some frogs...

The big white flower in the summer panel should be a lovely two tone thing:

BUT, due to the fabulous variation in hand dyed threads, mine is more of an amorphous blob:

I've had a good hunt through my stash, and I think I'll frog the middle of the flower (flax, on the right in this photo) and replace it with straw bonnet (left in this photo). The edges of the flower ate stitched in caramel corn (the floss in the middle) and I think the latter combination gives a much better contrast. So frogging it is...

Happy stitching folks xx

Summer weather, autumnal stitching,

I hope everyone (in the UK at least) is enjoying having a sunny summer for once. At times I find the weather a bit hot and oppressive, but I just have to think back to the last 2 summers and I immediately feel much happier! I just wish my office had air con...

I've been making great progress with the 2011 Loose Feathers charts - I've done about 1/2 of the final panel, autumn. I'm leaving the alphabet til last.

I hope everyone else is having a lovely stitchy weekend - if so, happy stitching xx

Birdies

I've been meaning to post some piccies of my current project for a while. In fact, I took this one (of the Autumn panel in the 2011 Loose Feathers series) absolutely ages ago:

So long ago that I've now stitched most of Autumn, and most of Summer! I'm planning on doing the alphabet in one go.

I'm on holiday in Skye this week, and brought this with me. The only issue is that I've almost run out of maple syrup - I'll have to stitch the final bird when I get home :)

Happy stitching folks xx

May Madness

Hello!!! It's been a while. Once again work has been busy, and I'd rather spend my spare time stitching than blogging (sorry guys, but I DO miss you all!).

I had a fabulous trip to Knoxville. I took along Conchiti Drummer (NP Designs), which I started on my trip to Pretoria last August. Aida and simple colours are prefect for planes!! When I got back I carried on stitching it, initially because I was jet lagged and the thought of a TW was terrifying, but after 2 days it was because I couldn't put it down, and then it was too close to finishing to put it down.... So I achieved an unexpected happy dance:

This piece was a gift from Avivah, to say thank you for posting her tea bags - isn't he cute?

I have also picked up that flipping green cardigan (aka, the bane of my life). I undid the sewing up and unpicked the left front AGAIN, and last night I finished knitting it for the third time. You will not believe how often I checked it against the right front! Anyway, the good news is that it actually matches now and I've almost finished reattaching it to the rest of the cardy. Initial trying on suggests it might have worked this time. I really dislike cardigans, I think I'll stick to knitting scarves....

Dani asked if I made it to the LNS in Knoxville - of course I did! I found a fellow stitcher at the conference and we bunked off for a morning. Luckily I phoned to double check their opening times and found they had recently moved to a new property. I'm so pleased I bothered to phone them, and that I skipped out on the conference to go - it's probably the nicest LNS I've ever been to. Everything was laid out so prettily, with lots of stitched pieces for inspirations - lots of smalls in baskets and displayed on shelves and dressers throughout the shop, as well as the usual walls of framed pieces. I took a billion photos, and I will share them in a follow up post.

The bad news is that my credit card had to be sent off to ICU after the visit, and it's still in recovery. They had a SALE on. Oh yes! There were about 8 boxes of charts for $2 each. What is a girl supposed to do??? I also picked up a BBD (Autumn) that I've wanted for a while, a few Stacy Nash Primitives, some lovely fabrics and some overdyed threads that I needed to complete some pieces in my stash. So what did I buy? Well here we go:


Autumn - Blackbird Designs
Blackbird sampler - Hand in Heart
Spring cottage - The Prairie Schooler
The fox and the grapes - The Prairie Schooler
Celtic Birds II - The Sunflower Seed
Tulip Tree Sewing Book - Stacy Nash Primitives
Peacock Sewing Roll - Stacy Nash Primitives
Birds of a Feather - Stacy Nash Primitives
Gem Show #1 6 - Courtney Collection
My Stitching Treasures Accessories - Jeanette Douglas Designs
Stitchers Accessories Rose Fantasy - Dessins DHC
Rune Sampler - Dracolair
Mackintosh Roses - Art - Stitch
An Emblem of Love - With Thy Needle
Bad Hare Day - Bent Creek
The Curse of the Raven - Carriage House Samplings
The Raven's Roost - Carriage House Samplings

Two large pieces of pale beige overdyed fabric, which I manged to loose the names of already...

And some offcuts of fabric:
36 x 11 of Angel Hair (30 ct) by Weeks
12 x 26 of a lovely un-named sage green (32 ct)
12 x 12 'echo' (28 ct)

And about 30 skeins of weeks / GAST / Crescent colours.

(Shown on the other bit of beige fabric, ready for my new start as soon as I have posted this and cooked our dinner!)


I was rather chuffed. Bank manager less so....

Right, I'm about to start Blackbird Designs Summer / Autumn / Winter, on one of the pieces of un-named beige fabric. I'll conveniently forget that I needed to order Summer and further threads online when I got home...

Happy stitching folks xx

Greetings from Knoxville!

Well I made it across the pond on Saturday, and spent yesterday acclimatising to the lovely warm weather and pootling around town - KX is a lovely city, it felt really relaxed and family friendly, lots of street cafes and parks etc.

Before I felt I managed to finish the quilt I started and I did most of the large leaves on the grapes block of Fruit Bellpull:

I also took a pic of my ORT jar for the TUSAL today:

Trying to work out if I can get to a lovely-looking cross stitch shop today, before my conference starts. It's 7 miles out of town and I don't have a car.... So tempted to take a taxi ;)

Happy stitching folks x