That's a big dress!

I was so excited when I finished the wings on July's Amethyst Fairy, as the one wing is so large, and I used blending filament for the whole thing, which isn't the most pleasant thing to stitch with. However, I think the size of the wing drew my attention away from the fact that the dress is also pretty darn big!

I've been working on it pretty steadily, and it doesn't feel like I've made much progress. But when I compare the picture from this week to the one from last week, I can at least see progress:

I'm starting to doubt that I'll get her finished this month, but hopefully early in February. I guess she would be an appropriate finish for February, with her Valentine-y colors. 

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Ruby progress

I spent the weekend working on my fairy's dress:

Getting the wings done felt like such a big accomplishment, but now there's been a bit of a let-down to realize there is still a lot of dress to go. However, I will keep plugging away until I have a finish!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

A mini happy dance

Last night I finished stitching the wings on my July fairy, so I am now finished with the blending filament--woo hoo!

I spent Tuesday taking a break from the wings and playing with the bling, trying to choose bead colors. I'm pretty happy with the results:

Now it's on to the bottom of the dress; it would be nice to have this finished by the end of January.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy weekend!

Making ort-aments

For so many years, I threw away the thread snippets, or orts, that I ended up with while stitching. Then, a few years ago, I came across the idea of saving those orts and using them to fill a glass ornament. So midway through 2012 I started saving my orts, and at the end of that year I put them all in a labeled bag; I then did the same thing in 2013, and had a jar full of orts from 2014. I finally went out and bought some clear glass ornaments and some metallic pens to paint the year on them, and here is the result:

The ornament on the far right contains DMC labels, which I recently heard someone mention doing. I just wish I had flattened the labels before putting them in, so the insides didn't show so much. Otherwise, I'm very happy with the project. It was fun putting the orts in the ornaments, and coming across piles of colors from certain projects.

Another year-end task was to get my stitching journal up-to-date; I found out that I hadn't updated it since last March! 

While doing the updating, I realized that I had only stitched two Nora Corbett designs in 2014, Faerie Summer Love and Gigi. This, of course, made me want to stitch on a Mirabilia design right away! On Saturday night I finished a model for Judy Odell, so yesterday I pulled out Mirabilia's July Amethyst Fairy, which has been sitting in the Bucket o'WIPs for many years:

Having a July birthday, I remember being very disappointed when this design came out as an Amethyst Fairy, as my birthstone is ruby:

I set out to convert her to a Ruby Fairy, which wasn't easy! However, I'm pretty pleased with the result so far, so I would really like to finish her up before I move on to another project. I did just a bit of work on her yesterday:

I remember now why she ended up in the Bucket, as the wings are a blend of floss and blending filament, which is not great to stitch with (and the wings are huge!). But I am determined to persevere this time! As an added incentive, she is one of the original 20 WIPs that I set out to "slay" back at the end of 2011. I have gotten pretty far off from that original goal, but I do still know that the list is there!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Happy Halloween finished...

...and on its way to Donna. This turned out really cute:

The fabric is Silkweaver Mocha on 32ct Lugana, and it only used six floss colors (the chart calls for only three colors, but Donna wanted to add more color).

When I kitted this up for myself I chose PTP Haunted for the fabric, and I'm going to use over-dyed threads to add some more visual interest. The carvings will be stitched with a gold, so it looks like the pumpkin is lit up, and I've got a fun multi-colored silk to use for the border. I might even use some glow-in-the-dark Kreinik for the wording. Here's a picture of my supplies:

It will be a while before I can start it for myself, as I'm currently working on a model. Once that is finished, I don't really want to take on any more obligation stitching until after my trip to Italy in May. I really need to start getting prepared for that; it seemed so far away last May, and now it's only four months away! Actually, this design might be a good one to take with me, since it would be small enough to work on while traveling.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!