Plans change

I had the best of intentions to get back to my Simplicity Vintage piece once I got caught up on current SALs, but I just received a chart for a design I've wanted to stitch for a while now so last night I made a(nother!) new start. The chart is Sunflower House by Blackbird Designs, and I just fell in love with the design and colors; here is my very small start:

I bought it with the threads and fabric on eBay, and while the fabric wasn't labeled I'm assuming it's the recommended color even though it looks much darker than in the chart photo. Of course, the photos are often misleading, and the floss colors look amazing with this fabric so I'm going to use it and assume it's correct!

I started it after I stitched the next part in the Dragon's Blood Mandala SAL, which now has 17 of 25 parts completed:

And before Dragon's Blood I finished up Heart in Hand's Doodles: Halloween, which was a fun little stitch:

I need to get some cleaning done this week so stitching time will suffer, but I'm hoping to make decent progress on Sunflower House, so tune in next week to find out.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Getting Batty-er!

Last Monday the next two charts in Amy Bruecken's A Little Batty SAL arrived and I spent most of the week getting them stitched up:

It's such a fun design to work on that the stitching goes quickly and now I have to wait another two months for the final three charts to be released. If they go as quickly as these did I should still have time to get them done before Halloween.

On Thursday part 8 of Cecilia Votta's seasonal SAL came out, so after I finished Batty that afternoon I spent that evening and Friday getting caught up:

Then I should have gone back to Simplicity Vintage but I got distracted by the news that Heart in Hand will be releasing a new Tiny Town at the Needlework Expo next month, and it's the Halloween Tiny Town! Cecilia showed a sneak peek on a live stream she did with Fat Quarter Shop, and I absolutely love the design:

Since I was so excited but obviously couldn't stitch it yet I did the next best thing and started HIH's Doodles: Halloween which I had picked up at my LNS about a week ago:

I'm going to take two (or three) more days to get this done and then get back to work on the Simplicity kit--although I just remembered that the next part of the Dragon's Blood SAL will be released on Thursday so I'll probably do that first...

Also on the live stream they mentioned that Cecilia did a small free chart for the shop, which can be found here; it's a cute little Christmas ornament that would stitch up very quickly (you can actually see it in the screenshot from the live stream).

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Simplicity Vintage fun

I've now spent a week working on this Dimensions kit and am happy with the progress I've made. It's a bit slow going in places as I'm trying to smooth out some of the lines and not leave obvious blank spaces that seem to be a part of Dimensions designs since they don't use any partial stitches in their charts; this is how it looks as of last night:

Just for fun I took a couple of photos of the figure on the left before and after back stitching, because I always enjoy seeing the difference it makes:

I was a bit disappointed to realize that the fabric I chose must have been mislabeled--it says it's Edinburgh linen but it must be Belfast as I'm getting 16 stitches/inch instead of 18. If it had been Edinburgh the stitched design would have been very close in size to the paper pattern, but now it's going to be a bit larger; not a huge deal, but I might have picked a different fabric if I had realized this sooner. 

I did take a day to stitch part 16 of the Dragon's Blood Mandala so I could stay current:

The next two charts in the A Little Batty SAL were mailed last week, so hopefully I'll have them very soon and can get started--they'll make a nice break from the Simplicity piece.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

If I could only stitch faster!

There are just so many things I want to stitch and never enough time to do them all--the lament of stitchers everywhere! I would really like to get some of my current WIPs finished, but then the lure of a new start calls and I can't resist...

In this case I pulled an old WIP out of the bin that was originally started in 2008, then had a brief reappearance in 2014 before disappearing again for the last eight years; this is from 2008:

 Then before and after a week of stitching in 2014:

And as of last week after a few more days of work:

I am really enjoying working on it again, though the chart does not have darker grid lines marking squares of 10 so the counting is a bit harder than it should be. I was planning on making this my focus for a while in between SAL parts but then another project that I've had in mind for a few years started calling to me and I finally took the plunge and started it.

This is a Dimensions kit that is a replica of an actual Simplicity sewing pattern; when the kit came out in 2018 I started looking around for the sewing pattern with the idea that I would have them framed together. I did find a pattern but the cover wasn't in the best shape so I couldn't get too excited about it; then just by chance a couple of weeks ago I did a search for the pattern and found one in much better shape. Ever since then I've been excited to see my idea come to life so yesterday I pulled out the kit and made a start on it:

I am changing the gold dress to the original blue because it's supposed to show how you can get a "party-pretty look" by adding the "bouffant tie-on overskirt" to the simple sheath--I just loved the phrasing of that! So for now the plan is to work on this and the Witch Hollow piece in between SAL parts and see where that takes me for a while.

Speaking of the SALs, I am still current with all three (I finished The Rooky Woods but started A Little Batty so I'm still at three); the next two parts of A Little Batty should be out within the next couple of weeks and I am ready for them:

I'm stitching this one on 32ct linen Fragrant Lilac Collection by NicholasFlamelDesign on Etsy, since the called-for 20ct linen over-2 didn't really appeal to me. I also changed the checkerboard pattern from black and white squares, and then had to change a few other things to make that work.

Here is the Cecilia Votta SAL, into the summer months now:

And the final SAL, Dragon's Blood Mandala at part 15 of 25:

Last Friday I received the revision for the Mirabilia model and got most of it done on Saturday--just had to wait until today for a question to be answered. Now I have an answer and will be finishing it up today--hurray! Always a great feeling to send it off and have no current models in the house.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

The Rooky Woods SAL is done!

The final part in the Rooky Woods SAL came out last Thursday and I was able to finish it that evening:

Very happy to have kept up with this and finish it "on time", and I rewarded myself with a new start on the Amy Bruecken A Little Batty SAL that I talked about in my previous post:

I have the chart for the words in the center that I plan to work on this week, then on July 20th the other two characters in the top row will be released so I'm hoping to get the middle section done before they arrive in the mail. I did change the colors in the checkerboard pattern from black and white to a more colorful option, which means I'll need to make a few other changes so elements don't get lost in the new colors, which is always fun to do.

The Dragon's Blood SAL continues, with 14 of the 25 parts completed as of now:

I am relieved to say that I'm now confident that three skeins of the Waterlilies will be plenty, so I don't have to worry about dye lot issues becoming a factor at the end--phew!

Today I should be able to finish part 7 of the Cecilia Votta SAL, then I'll have over three weeks until the next part comes out:

I did finish the current Mirabilia model back on the 17th but Nora has decided to add to it so I am waiting for those changes to be sent to me, possibly this coming Friday. Hopefully the changes won't take more than a few days, then I can send it on it's way.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Mirabilia Tea

Mirabilia Tea (MD182) has been released so I can share photos now. I enjoyed working on this one with all the pretty colors and textures--I really like the effect the Waterlilies create on the table:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Hoping for a June finish

I'm happy to say that I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on the current model and am hoping that I'll be able to finish it by the end of this month. I will be sad to send it off, but also relieved and ready to spend a bit of time starting a new Amy Bruecken 7-part SAL called A Little Batty:

I received the first two charts this past weekend and I have floss and fabric ready so now I just need to free up some Qsnaps and some time.

The three other SALs I'm currently doing are still going well; Cecilia Votta's seasonal SAL is now halfway through and ready to move into summer:

And I was right (for once!) that the partial leg in part 5 was from a little girl on a swing.

The Dragon's Blood Mandala has had two more parts released since my last post and I finished those up this past weekend:

We've reached the center and since it's a mandala I could technically stitch the rest by reversing previous parts, but that would be WAY too much work so I'll continue to do one part every two weeks.

The Rooky Woods has two more parts remaining, so we'll get one this Thursday and then in two weeks we'll be done (so that'll free up those Qsnaps I need for A Little Batty!):

The last Mirabilia model I stitched should be released on the 15th this month, so I'll probably post that next Wednesday--stay tuned...

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Took a small break

I've been focusing on the model lately but this past Thursday through Sunday I took some time off from it to catch up on the two SALs I've been doing; I thought if I get behind on them now it will be that much harder to get and stay caught up again, and they would probably eventually disappear into the WIP bin so it was now or never. First I did part 17 of The Rooky Wood, which is now in the final row:

The border along the bottom is really pretty so far, though it doesn't show up particularly well here--I'll have to take a closer photo next time.

Then I worked on part 11 of Dragon's Blood Mystery Mandala, which is the first part of the middle row of this chart. This time part of the design reminded me of dragon scales so I pulled out some Kreinik to add some sparkle to them:

I am still a bit concerned about having enough floss of the same dye lot to finish this piece as well, so adding some Kreinik and using beads as I can might help me squeak through.

I finished that up late Saturday afternoon so I decided to take the rest of the evening to make a start on Heart in Hand's Round Red Sampler. This will be displayed in the red Heartware bowl that Cecilia offered at Market this year, so I went through my stash looking for a red floss that went well with the bowl. I landed on Forest Berries Silk'n Colors, which is one of my favorite "Christmas" flosses. I made good progress on Saturday, and then I couldn't sleep after about 4 on Sunday morning so I picked it up again and had a quiet few hours to work on it before the critters got up and needed to be fed and walked. By that time I realized that I could finish it that day if I kept at it so that's what I did, and now it's ready to send to the finisher whenever I get one more piece stitched:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Another Tiny Town finish

Yesterday I finished HIH's Blooming Tiny Town and I think it is so cute--every time I stitch one of these it becomes a new favorite and this one is definitely no exception! And on 40ct linen it is pretty tiny, coming out at 1.5" high by 8.8" wide:

I'll be sending this to Faye to finish into another drum, but I'm going to do a couple of small round HIH designs first that I can use with the red Heartware bowl I bought and send those at the same time.

Yesterday I got caught up with the Rooky Woods SAL; I was able to change the word "for" to "to" without any trouble so now the quote is as it should be:

Just four more parts to go on this one, so I'm looking forward to a finish.

For now I absolutely have to make myself get to work on the model. Normally I would already be done with one after three months, but the last couple of months have been kind of tough so I haven't been running at full capacity and it's only about half finished. And now there's a bunch of yard work I need to get ready for, so I'm going to have to budget my time much better than I have been--tick tock!

Hope everyone has a great stitch week!