Ever feel like a project is cursed?

After Christmas I was able to send back the models that were currently in the house (two Nora Corbetts and a Meridian Designs), so it was time to relax with my conversion of L&L Enchanted Alphabet. The little girl was all done, so stitching letters with a single variegated thread should have been super easy, but once again all was not well...

When I first started this project it was because I had bought the fabric and was looking for a good design for it, and EA looked perfect. Then I chose a great floss from The Thread Gatherer, which mimicked the colors of the flowers painted on the fabric and made it look like the letters were also growing in the garden--so far, so good.

Then the troubles started: first, after stitching three letters I became very concerned that I wasn't going to have enough of the limited edition floss to do all 26. Cece at TTG agreed to try to reproduce the floss, but earlier this month she returned the skein and said she couldn't do it. After a bit of panic, I went through my collection of Waterlilies and found a floss that was close enough that with some careful cutting of the "good parts" I would be able to make it blend. However, I did finish 13 complete letters and a small part of the 14th with the first skein of floss, so here's hoping that the remaining letters aren't any larger and that the second skein will be enough for all of them.

The second problem was when the white pinafore landed squarely on a patch of painted flowers, which made a large pink splotch in the white. A few buttons alleviated that problem enough that I can live with it, though I'll always see that splotch:

The third, and probably worst, disaster is when I realized that the 32ct fabric that I bought was in fact 28ct. On 32ct I was going to have 2" borders at each side, which was a bit tighter than I usually like but worth it to use this piece of fabric, but on 28ct I was now going to be over an inch short of fabric on the right side--ack!! After another bout of panic I sat down with some charting software and played alphabet Tetris until I was able to come up with an arrangement that fit all of the letters on the right side. I also rearranged some of the letters on the left to try to even out the two sides and so that I could fit the little bunny in the design:

He's now in front of the little girl, instead of behind her (and he has a fluffy white tail, though it doesn't show up very well!):

So, I now have eight more letters to do, and I am obsessively keeping track of floss as I go, so wish me luck!

I hope everyone has a safe and wonderful New Year, filled with all of the things that make you happy!

Can't settle down

This time of year is always stressful, as aside form the usual chores of cooking and cleaning you add in shopping for and wrapping presents, and putting the tree up and decorating. This is my husband's busiest time at work, which involves a LOT of travel, so it falls to me to "do" Christmas at our house. I'm always relieved when December 26th rolls around!

Speaking of my husband travelling, I have to share his latest "adventure": he was about an hour into a drive to Cleveland when a high-speed chase came up right behind him, and just as the driver of the car being chased came even with him the police threw down road spikes and all four of hubby's tires were flattened at the same time. He had to cancel the trip for that evening, but his customer enjoyed his story about the reason for it!

Here at home I'm having a bit of a hard time settling down with one project; the extra time needed for holiday preparations means stitching time is curtailed, and I seem to spend the time I do get waffling around from piece to piece without actually getting much done. I did finally decide on some buttons to use on Enchanted Alphabet, to help blend in the pink spot on her skirt:

Then I thought that maybe a smaller project would keep my interest, so I started Mirabilia's Portrait of Antique Vines using some Silk'n Colors to change out the pinks. Here is what the original looks like:

Here are the greens I'm using:

And here's the latest progress:

I was actually doing pretty well sticking with it, but then Joan Elliott released a new design and it really called to me; it's called Fairy of the Wind:

I ordered it last Monday as soon as it came out, and received it Friday afternoon. After a weekend of stitching here is what it looks like:

I'm changing a few of the colors out to make it a bit softer, so hopefully that will work out the way I see it in my mind; always fun to play!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week (or at least enough stitching to stay sane at this busy time of year)!

Enchanted Alphabet progress

I haven't done a lot of stitching in the past few weeks as I had two colds back-to-back which really knocked me down for a while. I have a decent start on a model, but late last week a friend on FB asked me about my Enchanted Alphabet WIP and it gave me the urge to work on it again. This is the chart photo:

I'm using a Silk'n Colors limited edition floss for the letters, on a piece of Floral Watercolor Meadow from Sunny Dyes; here is where I left off a couple of months ago:

And here it is as of last night:

In a stroke of bad luck there are three painted flowers on the fabric where the white pinafore is stitched, and even using three strands of floss couldn't cover them completely. It also didn't help that some of the paint color came off on the white floss as I stitched, turning it slightly pink. I'm thinking of using one or two butterfly buttons to help cover the spot; I think one button looks better overall, but two buttons cover the spot more completely, so I'm torn:

I'm going to order some pink butterflies, and then I'll play around again and see how I like them. I'll have to sprinkle two or three more throughout the design, as well, since having them on just her skirt would probably look strange!

At this point I'm still waiting for Cece at The Thread Gatherer to re-dye some of the Pink Succulent floss I'm using for the alphabet, so I can't really do much more until that arrives; hopefully she'll get some time soon.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Framed Emi

I just noticed that I never shared a picture of my framed Emi, so here she is!

The frame is a dark blue-green, and the gold insert has a pattern on it that I thought looked like arrow heads:

Last Friday night I finished up the first of two models, so I spent some time on Lady Justice this past weekend. I've decided that I am going to use the DMC Golden Skein for the scales, so I changed out the gold beads in her hair:

I might play around with the gold beads in the dress as well, but I'll decide that when I have more stitched so I can get a better idea of what it will look like.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Some finishing and a new start

I decided to use the Victoria Sampler Halloween bookmark I finished a little while back to make a needle minder holder for some of my favorite Halloween minders, and it came out fairly well (though a tad crooked!):

These are really easy to make; I start with my finished piece (or just a plain piece of fabric) and a canvas from the craft section at Target (or wherever they sell them), and stretch the fabric over the canvas and glue the edges to the back side along the edges. Usually I try to have enough fabric so that the fabric can go all the way around to the back, but in this case it was a bit small on two of the sides so I had to glue those sides to the sides of the canvas instead of the back; here's what the back looks like:

Since the two "short" sides looked a bit sloppy like that, I used a ribbon trim to neaten them up:

I attached the sawtooth hanger to the back, added some of my favorite needle minders (using the magnets right through the canvas) and now I have a pretty and functional piece hanging in my craft room!

I received Mirabilia's Lady Justice last Friday, so I took the weekend to make a start on her; I'm using a piece of Sugar Maple Fabric's Heavenly Sky Belfast:

And here's my start:

I should be finishing a model towards the end of the week, then I'll probably take a week or so to work on this one; I'm thinking about using my DMC Golden Skein (floss made with a 24K gold wash) for the scales.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Mirabilia's Lady Justice

The newest Mirabilia was released at midnight today, so I can finally share pictures of her:

I really like this one, so I'll have to stitch it for myself one of these days.

I'm getting close to done with one of the two Nora Corbett models I currently have, so I don't have much stitching I can share right now. I did get all the way around the border of Bent Creek's The Haunted House (including the "Secret Lair" hidden down in the basement):

Thank you to those who left comments about my sweet Chloe. I was really going to try not to get another dog this time, but even with my cats it just seemed so empty in our house. We've had at least one dog for 25 years now, and I guess I'm just not ready to give that up yet, so meet Murphy:

He is a 3-year-old Miniature Pinscher that we adopted from our local Humane Association, and he is such a little lover. He follows me around during the day, sleeps happily in the chair behind my stitching table and burrows under the covers at night to sleep next to me. He is definitely easing my heartache.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Sad days

Two weeks ago this past Saturday we had our sweet Chloe put to sleep, and I'm still at a loss without her. We had her for more than 14 years, which was actually a lot longer than we thought we would have her when she was diagnosed with a rare blood condition when she was 3, and we have treasured every one of those years.

For once even stitching hasn't provided the solace that it usually does, though I have been doing some off and on. I have a couple of Nora Corbett models that came in a few weeks ago that I need to get back to, but right now I don't really have the concentration for "work". Last night I spent several hours in the mindless task of cutting about 300 yards of silk into usable lengths. I had bought this hank from Silks4u about 4 years ago:

And now it is in about 300+ yard-long lengths ready to use:

I've been thinking about getting Long Dog Sampler's Death By Cross Stitch, and this might be the perfect floss to use with it.

It seems like a long time ago now, but I did get Lady Mirabilia back from the framer, and am very happy with how she came out:

Some of the stitching I have been doing is a Halloween bookmark SAL that was handed out in four parts in the Victoria Sampler Chat group on FB. Part 4 was released last Friday, and as with a lot of VS charts it had some Hardanger at the bottom; since I have yet to learn how to do that, I just added some other stitches and called it good:

I've also started a Bent Creek design called The Haunted House:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week, and if you have a fur baby please give them a kiss or pet in memory of my precious Chloe.

Just finished today

I was hoping to finish Nora Corbett's Emi this past weekend, but at 11 last night I still had the black beads to attach so I had to give up on that idea. However, a couple of hours work this morning and she was done!

I love everything about this design--the colors, her sassy stance and those amazing boots! And I think the fabric (Sunny Dyes Woodland Fairy Lugana) makes it look like she's deep in a forest somewhere giving Robin Hood a run for his money!

It's now been exactly two weeks since I dropped Lady Mirabilia off at the framer, so I am anxiously awaiting a call any time now. I think I'll take Emi in when I go to pick up Lady M...

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Going bold

A while back I bought a piece of Sunny Dyes fabric called Woodland Fairy because I fell in love with the piece they posted for sale on their FB page:

I didn't have a design in mind when I bought it, I just loved the colors in it. Last week I was going through some of the fabric I've bought recently and came across this again, so I started to think of what would be good to stitch on it and I landed on Nora Corbett's Bewitching Pixies because it looked like a good background for a witch.

Of the 12 in this series I decided on Emi, because her colors mesh very well with the fabric:

A bold fabric needs a bold design, and so far I think I made the right choice:

Before I started Emi I did complete one of the Three Amigas, and I plan to start the second one once Emi is finished:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

No models in the house!

Last Friday I sent a model back to Karen, and for the first time in a long time I don't have any models in the house; I feel so free! :D

I celebrated by making a new start on a chart I recently won on eBay, Three Amigas by Prairie Moon. It is part of their Crypt Club series, which unfortunately I didn't discover until after they were OOP and therefore fairly expensive to buy. I'm hoping to be able to trade the ones I finish for others in the series, so fingers crossed!

For the Amigas I went stash diving for some brighter colors--just because they're dead doesn't mean they can't be colorful!

I started it last Friday and made some good progress over the weekend, using PTP Haunted Edinburgh:

In other Halloween stitching I finished the hardware shop in Spook Town Square; here it is before the back stitching:

And after:

Saturday I finally got around to applying a sealant to the silver charm for Lady Mirabilia, so I was able to attach it yesterday and I'll be taking her to the framer today--going to be a long 2-3 weeks!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Lady Mirabilia is done!

I stuck with her through that "hard to push through" phase and now she is done and I couldn't love her more (well, until I get her framed)!

I really love the symmetry that this one has with the first Mirabilia I ever stitched, Villa Mirabilia. They both feature elegant ladies, arched borders, banners at the bottom and even have Mirabilia in the name:

I finished Villa around 22 years ago (before I kept track of things like finishes!), and I still get as much joy stitching Nora's gorgeous designs as I did then; pretty amazing, as I generally get tired of things after a period of time.

The butterfly charm used in Lady Mirabilia is silver and apparently might tarnish over time, so I need to seal it with something before I attach it. I've ordered a metal protector, so I will take it in for framing once that is completed.

Speaking of framing, I got Nora Corbett's Miss Solar Ellipse back and I absolutely love her, as she's so bright and cheerful:

I'm planning on getting back to my barely-started Rosewood Manor model this week, but I took the weekend to work on my neglected Spook Town Square by Glendon Place. I was hoping to be able to finish the hardware store, but couldn't quite make it:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!