Mirabilia's Botanical Garden

 I stitched this model last fall and today I can finally share! This is MD177 Botanical Garden:

I absolutely love her and am hoping to stitch her for myself at some point; it's not a huge design so I should be able to squeeze it in sometime, maybe as a project for the weekends.

I think she arose from this painting that Nora sold back in December 2019:

I just wish stitching wasn't such a relatively slow process--I have dreams where I can stitch a Mirabilia in a day or two and it feels amazing. Of course, to even those dreams out I have nightmares where I've taken a Mira in to be framed and the framer has cropped the fabric and framed it really badly (off-centered and with bunches in the fabric) so it can't be fixed--always good to wake up from those!

Feeling the need to add a note here now that this has been posted--I wrote this up on Saturday the 14th and saved a draft but didn't post until Sunday morning after the chart was released. Don't want to get in trouble for sharing before it was released...

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

21 years and two weeks

 As mentioned in my last post it took 21 years to start the Mirabilia ornament in the JCS Christmas Ornaments 2000 issue and then it took two weeks (actually eight days but with a break in between) to stitch it. I finished it last night and checked it over twice for any missed stitches before putting the magazine and floss away, then of course this morning I spotted three missed stitches right away! Those are now fixed and hopefully this is the completed ornament:

Luckily I only had to make up the 1 in the date, as any other number might have been a bit tricky. The fabric is PTP Cyprium Belfast, which looked fairly similar to the fabric used for the model. I'm thinking I might get this framed as I think it's the same size as Nora's Peace Doves ornament that I had framed and they would look nice hanging together as a set:

As a fun side fact the 2001 JCS Ornament issue listed the same designers on the front cover as the 2000 issue, and as this included Mirabilia I was very excited to see her ornament. I must have looked through the magazine four or five times before realizing that there was no Mirabilia ornament included, and I'm still bummed about that 20 years later!

During my break from the ornament I completed the Jardin Prive SAL Au Fil des Nichoirs, including going back and making a few changes to previous parts, and I am really pleased with the finished piece:

It's been a long time since I've been to my framer and I have several gift certificates that need to be used so I think I'll try to get over there sometime this week with a few pieces, including these two.

For now I'll be working on a Mirabilia model that I started last night, and next week I'll share some pictures of MD177 which should be released next weekend.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

It only took 21 years

 I've been a fan of Mirabilia designs pretty much from the start (within a year or so of the first chart--back then you had to go to a shop to actually see charts and I often didn't go for months at a time) so I was excited when Nora had an ornament in the 2000 issue of JCS Christmas Ornaments:

I've always intended to stitch it, but time got away from me so it is now 21 years later and I have finally taken the plunge! I started it last Monday and this is as far as I got until Saturday morning:

It will probably take another three or four days to finish, but the two SALs that I've been doing had parts released over the weekend so I've put this one aside for a few days; really looking forward to finishing it though!

If you're on FB I'm doing a give away connected to this ornament--anyone who stitches it by Christmas of this year will be entered to win Nora Corbett's Holly pixie chart. This is the group if you're interested in joining in the fun; would love to see you there!

The Cecilia Votta SAL part came out on the July 31 instead of August 1 so I stitched that one first and it only took a day:

So yesterday I made a start on the final part of the Jardin Prive SAL, though there's only some fence posts done right now so I won't bother with a picture. There are a couple of things on this one that I'm going to go back and change once it's stitched, but still hoping to have it completed by mid week.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!