Appleton/Green Bay Tiny Town is done

I finished my personalized Heart in Hand Any Town Tiny Town last week, and while my buildings would probably have fit better in a Medium Town, I am pretty happy with the result:

Here are the three buildings I replicated:

I have three Tiny Towns completed now that I want to send to my finisher, but unfortunately, I've already missed the cut off to have them done this year. By the time she'll be ready to take them I'll have at least one more town done (Harvest Tiny Town), and possibly more if Cecilia releases another one in a few months. Harvest will be my ninth; I'm glad I started these fairly soon after the second (or third?) one was released so I can keep up with them as they are released--such a fun series!

I decided to start on part 3 of Quilting A-Bee-Cs instead of Owlvira's house, since part 4 should be available at 123Stitch in two or three weeks; I don't want to get too far behind on a fairly large design and then have it end up in the WIP bin for years. I haven't made a lot of progress since I spent quite a bit of the weekend cleaning, but I'm hoping to get a lot done this week:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Autumn would be my favorite season...

...if it weren't followed by winter! I'm always a bit sad this time of year, knowing that we're heading for shorter days and colder temps; February is the shortest month of the year but I'm already dreading how long it seems to take to make it through to March. Not that March is noticeably better, but at least there's the tantalizing possibility of that first little peek of spring, and knowing that soon everything will be turning green and there'll be beautiful weather ahead for months to come.

We're actually having a mini heat wave here for a few days, hitting around 90F during the warmest part of the day, but we recently had some pretty cool days so I made use of them by getting most of the fall clean-up yard work done already. I'll probably do a bit more trimming on some of the bushes and trees, but it's nice to have the bulk of the work finished this early, especially since I'll be heading to North Carolina one month from today for a Mirabilia retreat that Nora Corbett will be attending. It's getting close enough now that I need to start figuring out how to pack so that I can just take a carry-on bag, and my flights have already been changed a couple of times so when it gets a bit closer I'll have to figure out if I need to change anything with those. I wish it was close enough to drive, but I know I would go crazy being in a car for that long!

I haven't been doing a lot of stitching because I've been busy outside, but I did finish part 2 or Erica Michaels' Quilting A-Bee-Cs:

Part 3 has arrived, but I'm not sure when I'll get to it at this point. I was going to work on it after I finished my Any Town Tiny Town, but Just Nan released another amazing 3D house design that I've already kitted up and that I'm excited to start:

The main part of the house is stitched together on one piece of fabric in a cross shape, then sewn together. The chart has every side being stitched in the same orientation on the fabric, but that means when it is assembled some of the sides will have the top legs of the stitches going in a different direction than some of the other sides. I think when I stitch it, I'll probably turn it as needed to make sure all of the sides have the stitches going the same way when assembled (since I'm just weird that way!).

First, I need to finish my Any Town, which I should be able to do tonight or tomorrow; I need to finish the flower shop, add a tree next to it and then go back and add some French knots and buttons:

I was concerned that the buildings I designed would be too big and they are, but I couldn't really get them any smaller and still make them look like the originals so I'm just not going to worry about it! Someday I'll probably stitch the town as charted, though probably not for a while since I still have Harvest Tiny Town to get to.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Almost time to stitch a Tiny Town

I received the Any Town Tiny Town chart a couple of weeks ago, but I decided to finish up the Hands on Design Polar Plunge and Gather Pumpkins pieces before I started it. I also still need to finish charting another local shop; I have the basics now, but I need to refine it:

This was going to be my next start, but then Cecilia released Harvest Tiny Town and Frill, and I think I'm probably going to start it when it arrives since I really love the color palette:

Right now I'm still working on part 2 of Erica Michaels' Quilting A-Bee-Cs, which I'm hoping to finish tonight:

Part 3 should be arriving at 123Stitch soon, so the plan is to start that after the Harvest Tiny Town. I have to say that while I'm enjoying getting some of these smaller designs stitched (and even fully finished!), I'm starting to get the itch to work on a Mirabilia design--missing the pretty ladies!

Finally, I was able to finish Amy Bruecken's Moonlight Magic last week, stitched with Classic Colorworks on PTP Crystal Haunted:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

My first Friendstitch

Friendstitch is an online retreat hosted by the designers of Heart in Hand Needleart and Bent Creek, which I hadn't heard of until recently. This year is the fourth time they've had it, and I think this is the first time that they've split it into two "pop up" events; this past Saturday was the Halloween PopUp Gathering and then there will be a Needlework PopUp Gathering in October. I received the box with the charts, supplies and miscellaneous goodies on my birthday, which made it even harder not to open, but they were pretty clear that we weren't supposed to open it until the Zoom event (and I am nothing if not a rule follower!):

So, I was good and held onto it until the retreat and it was a lot of fun to open and explore with everyone else. There was some candy in there (but not in the photo that I took today because it's already gone!), a little notepad and a couple of little Halloween decorations, a great tote bag and then there were the stitchy goodies:

This was also the first time that they had a special guest, and she was perfect because she has such adorable Halloween designs--it was Amy Bruecken, and she designed this sweet little chart for the retreat:

I'm hoping to get that pumpkin finished tonight (or, more likely, tomorrow), then I'll probably stitch the crow and leave the larger chart for last. I really like all of the designs and am happy that I signed up for this without knowing exactly what was involved. Now I'm looking forward to the Needlework PopUp in a couple of months.

While I sat waiting to find out what was in the box, I worked on part 2 of Erica Michaels' Quilting A-Bee-Cs, which still isn't finished:

I've been stitching one color at a time for this part, and it's been fun to see it come together in this way. I'd say I'm about halfway done with this section, so not horrible, but I don't know if it will be completed before part 3 arrives. Must stitch faster!

My son has been subletting an apartment in Madison this summer, so my husband and I drove down there for a day to visit and tour the area; we had a really nice day, though it was about 90F and it felt good to get home that evening. It's about a 2-hour drive, so I took a Mill Hill kit (Kitty Treats) with me to work on in the car, and then I finished it a couple of days later:

And today I finally took pictures of the last two pieces that I got back from the framer recently; they are Dog and Cat Lessons for People by Lizzie*Kate, which I stitched back in 2011/2012:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

On a finishing roll!

I made steady progress on Gather Pumpkins last week, finishing the stitching on round 1 on Monday:

Round 2 on Thursday:

And the final round was completed Saturday night:

Sunday afternoon was spent finishing, and now the I have another set completed in the series:

It's hard to believe that there's only one season left. I'm thinking it's almost certainly going to be Gather Snowflakes, but maybe Cathy will surprise us!

Here are all three of the seasons to date:

Last week I also got back some pieces from my framer that I dropped off in March--this time they only took four months instead of eight! Just Nan's Frosty Hopes and High Hopes were stitched around 2003-2004:

And Frosty Forest by Country Cottage Needleworks was stitched in 2009. The fabric is Silkweaver's Karma Belfast linen; I used some Caron Waterlilies for the trees and border, and "lit up" the windows:

Now that I'm all caught up with the Hands on Design pieces, my plan this week is to try to get part 2 of Erica Michaels' Quilting A-Bee-Cs done:

I've gotten behind on this one; part 3 was recently released but I think it will take a couple of weeks to arrive at 123Stitch, so I'm hoping to have this done before then.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

It's a wrap on the Polar Plunge series!

I still haven't been doing a lot of stitching, but I did manage to get all six of the Polar Plunge designs completed last week:

Then I made myself work on the finishing, because I knew if I put them aside for a while there was a really good chance that they would sit around for a very long time (or forever!) in a drawer. Cathy made a video tutorial for this series, which isn't really a great medium for the way I learn--I much prefer written instructions with photos, but I was able to work it out and get decent results:

I didn't use the scrapbooking paper on the boards, as I like a cleaner look, and I used a different paint color, ribbon and cord. The paint is a dark teal, which is kind of hard to photograph accurately:

I have some silver jingle bells, so I might still sew one in the middle of each ribbon like Cathy did, but for now I'm just enjoying the sense of accomplishment on having these all done!

I also finished the little Mill Hill ornament I'd been working on; the marshmallow snowman is such a cutie!

I received the third kit in the HOD Gather Round club series last week, so I started that a few days ago:

This time I started with the middle chart, since it has quite a bit of over-1 stitching in it; I wanted to get that out of the way early this time, instead of doing it last. It took me several hours yesterday to stitch "gather", and I still need to do the word "pumpkins" as well as the pumpkins next to that. But it will be nice when this one is done, and all the rest of the stitching is over-2.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Too much "real life"...

...not enough stitching! The past couple of weeks have been pretty busy, so I haven't done much stitching; I was a bit surprised to find I completed as much as I did when I went to take some photos.

I added a sign to my second Any Town Tiny Town building (a photo of the original shop can be found in this post):

And I found another great local shop that I think will make a really cute addition/substitution:

Once the sign on the shop was done, I worked on Hands on Design's N is for Narwhal, which is just adorable!

I've made a start on Penguin Pair, will then work on Puffin Party and hopefully make an attempt at the finishing once all six are stitched:

I had to spend a few nights in a hotel, so I took a Mill Hill ornament kit with me since working on a small piece of perforated paper is so simple:

I think I'll probably just finish this before I go back to Penguin Pair, since it's over half completed. Hoping to get back to my normal routine soon; I'm such a creature of habit that disruptions of any length are difficult for me to deal with.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!