SewMuch2Luv!

Last Monday my custom bag arrived from Karen at SewMuch2Luv and I am thrilled with how it turned out!

The quality is top notch and I love the fabric choices Karen gave me to coordinate with the stitched piece and the retreat fabric. I now have a really special memento of a great retreat. This is the second time I've used Karen's services, with the first being this fun project bag:

I highly recommend SewMuch2Luv if you're looking for a well-made and useful finish for a stitched piece!

I've been making good progress on the second model lately, though I lost most of a day when Nora made some changes after seeing an area stitched--frogging and then restitching always seems to take so long, and then you're just back where you started! I am hoping to finish this one by the end of the year and then I'll just have one more to go and almost three months left to do it, so I'm feeling better about my progress now.

I've been having fun opening the 12 Days of Christmas goodies from Silks4U; the theme this year is gemstones:

Six presents opened, six to go...

Wishing those who celebrates it a very Merry Christmas, and to everyone all the best in the New Year!

Time to buckle down

I'm happy to say that model stitching is back on track now; I got an answer to a question about the first one, made the changes required and it has now been approved, so one is completely done. I received the revised chart for the second one and made good progress over the weekend, especially considering I spent a good part of yesterday putting up the Christmas tree. The revised chart for the third one should be arriving any day, and then hopefully things will go more smoothly for a while!

Last week while I was waiting for the chart(s) to arrive I spent some time charting out Nora Corbett's latest Patreon chart, Starry Starry Christmas Eve. It's another artist-inspired tree like last year's Klimt Tree, and it's going to be stunning!

I'm waiting on a skein of Sable Waterlilies, so it's not in the photo, and I couldn't figure out how to chart the bugle beads in the tree within the tree, but this at least gives an idea of what it will look like. I think I have an idea of how to do the bugle beads now, so next time I'll be ready; every time I work on one of Nora's Patreon charts I learn new things to use on the next one. I won't be able to work on this for a while, but hoping to get back to it once the models are done. If you've thought about subscribing to Nora's Patreon, now would be a good time; there are several charts from this past year that are still available until the end of this year.

Speaking of models, a Rosewood Manor that I stitched a while back has been released; it's called Dreaming of Violets:

The project bag that I had made from the Queen City Retreat project is finished and should arrive today. Karen didn't send a photo, so I'm excited to open the package and see how it turned out; tune in next week for photos.

Now that the Christmas tree is up, I'm going to spend part of today wrapping presents and getting an idea of whether I'm done shopping or if I need to pick up a few more little things. At this time last year, I was still waiting for biopsy results and feeling very scared and fragile, so I am especially grateful as I get ready for another Christmas.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Frustrated

While I love model stitching, it can be frustrating at times when I have a question (or several) and it takes almost two weeks to get a response. I had pretty much finished the first of three models but had to wait for a reply to completely finish it, then the reply was a bit ambiguous so I'm back to waiting to see if it's really done or if I need to make some more changes.

In the midst of that process, I decided to start the second model, but fairly early on had a question about it and was told that they need to redo the section I asked about and add something else that had been forgotten, so I need to wait until they send a new chart before I can get back to that one. Then it was on to the third model, which I started last Friday--until a question popped up right away and I knew there was no way I'd get a response until today at the earliest--sigh!

So, I decided to spend my weekend stitching time working on Needle Fairy, who now has her feet as well as her arms:

I realized that I had never shared the goodies from the Friendstitch Needlework Pop-Up event that took place in October:

Everything came in that great metal tin, and it was a lot of fun to open and explore the contents. The people behind these events (the designers of Heart in Hand and Bent Creek) do such a great job with them, and I am really looking forward to next year's event, which will be the fifth anniversary of Friendstitch.

I have another fun box to look forward to as well, which is a 12 Days of Christmas box from Silks4U:

There's one package to open for each day, starting on the 13th and ending on Christmas Day; I'm going to be good and not open everything at once, but it's hard not to!

I think I'm pretty much done with my Christmas shopping, except for picking up some little things to put in stockings, but I still need to wrap presents and put the tree up. It's always a relief to have those two things done so I'll probably try to do them this week, and then I'll be able to focus on stitching again. Can't believe Christmas is only three weeks away!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Nora's Christmas Stocking

Around nine years ago Nora Corbett designed a little stocking ornament for a charity stitching group on Facebook. I joined the group and saved the chart but never stitched it, and actually didn't even know what it would look like when it was done. Someone asked about obscure Mirabilia/Nora Corbett charts recently, and it reminded me of the stocking ornament, so I decided to pull it out and stitch it. I was thinking it would take a couple of days, but for a small design it's fairly intricate and it ended up taking about five days (though I haven't had a lot of stitching time lately). It's a cute little design, and I'm hoping I'll get the urge to make it into an ornament in the near future:

The fabric is an old remnant that I no longer know the name of, but it looks like it's 32ct opal Lugana. I messaged Nora about the chart and she had me send it to Wichelt so that it can be offered as a freebie in the near future, so keep an eye on the Mirabilia site if you'd like to stitch this.

I sent my Queen City Retreat piece to SewMuch2Luv on Etsy, and just received a photo with a rough idea of what the finish will look like:

I'm really looking forward to seeing the actual finish. If anyone is interested, the retreat design has been posted and can be found here. The Queen City Stitch Retreat has their own site now, and they announced that the guest for next year is Autumn Lane Stitchery. The plan right now is to have another Mirabilia retreat in 2025, so hopefully that will happen.

Three Nora Corbett models arrived while I was in North Carolina, so I've been working on the first one for just over a month now. Stitching time will continue to be a bit limited with Thanksgiving this week, and then starting some Christmas decorating, but I'm hoping to have a finish within a couple of weeks. 

I'm not sure why but this past weekend I had a sudden urge to pull out Nora's Needle Fairy and put a few stitches in. I haven't touched her since 2013, but after Saturday she finally has some arms:

She's the third in a series of six Stitching Fairies, and probably my least favorite of the six. I've completed Floss Fairy and Pincushion Fairy (my favorite of the six):

The remaining three are Linen, Bead and Thimble Fairies. I'm going to try to work on Needle Fairy one or two days a week, just a length or two of floss at a time and see if I can get some decent progress on her.

Hope those who celebrate it have a wonderful Thanksgiving this Thursday!

Absolutely amazing retreat!

I flew out to Charleston, NC at the beginning of the month for a Mirabilia retreat, and I am so glad I did as it was so much fun! This was the first retreat that the hosts, Maggi and Amy, have ever put on, but you wouldn't know it from how well it was put together. I definitely hope to attend more of their retreats, even ones with a different guest designer.

The hotel was in an area billed as a "walking community", so there were a large variety of shops and restaurants within walking distance (round trip within about 1.5miles), and the weather was beautiful, so it was nice to get some exercise in between bouts of sitting and stitching. My table mates were Debbie, Mindy, Rachel and Chris (from left to right, with me in the middle and Nora sitting at her meet & greet table), and it was a very nice group to spend a few days with at table 17:

How fun is a photo booth?!

Every person won a door prize (which is pretty amazing because there were almost 150 attendees); my table number must have brought me luck because I won the OOP Adia the Garden Fairy:

However, I already have two Adia charts so I gifted it to Rachel, who is a relatively new stitcher. It was so nice to sit with a younger stitcher and see someone at the start of their stitching journey, but also odd because I don't feel that differently than I did when I was the younger stitcher!

There was also a table full of prizes that were raffled off on Saturday night. Everyone got some tickets in their welcome pack, but you could also buy extra tickets at a rate of 5 for $5; the proceeds from the sale of those tickets were donated to a local animal shelter. The grand total raised and donated was $5213, which is absolutely amazing!

The brag tables took up one entire wall of the room, and pieces were still stacked up in piles because there wasn't enough room to have them all displayed:

Even knowing how much better these designs look IRL doesn't prepare you for the so much blingy beauty in one space--it was almost overwhelming!

Nora Corbett did a meet & greet on Friday morning, then gave a talk on Saturday morning and the hosts did a Q & A with her as well:

She also spent time visiting tables and getting inspiration for possible new designs. Someone suggested doing Betsy Ross, so Nora spent some time with an attendee studying and sketching her hand movements as she stitched:

It was such a thrill to see her in action, after being a fan for so many (30!) years. And if Betsy Ross shows up as a chart in about a year from now, you read it here first! 

I took Silver Moon Tea with me, and spent Thursday evening working on her; basically, all I stitched was the teacup and the steam trails above it:

There was a chart designed by Nora for the attendees (which will be released a free chart for everyone at some point in the future), so I decided to work on that starting Friday morning. I bought a piece of fabric from Grace Notes Fabrics, who was a vendor in the room; it's called Melissa and it's on 36ct linen; this is how far I got by Saturday night:

I finished it last weekend, and am planning to send it to a finisher to have it made into a project bag using some of this great fabric that Maggi used to have notions bags made for all the attendees:

I had to laugh at this picture that Rachel took of Mindy and me scouring the floor for a bead that I dropped on the last night:

In my defense, it was a Magnifica bead, which are currently unavailable for who knows how long; I did end up finding it, as well as another bead that wasn't even mine, so I doubled the return on my time investment! I guess the person who dropped the other bead isn't as obsessive as I am...

On the trip home I had a 6-hour layover at O'Hare, so I improvised a truly portable stitching stand and spent the time working on a Mill Hill kit:

The time really flew by and I was sad to see it end, but I was pretty tired by the time I got home, and it's always good to see my guys and critters. Maggi and Amy will be announcing their 2024 guest in a couple of days, and I'm hoping to be able to get into that event set for next October--fingers crossed!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Hardly any stitching

In the past couple of weeks I have been doing some charting work, so my stitching time has really suffered. The only thing I worked on was Quilting A-Bee-Cs, and so far I only have one color from part 3 finished:

I've been charting a couple of things; the first was a hand drawn chart by Nora Corbett that she gifted to her Patreon subscribers:

Nora suggested that "hand" could be replaced with the stitcher's name, so I decided to do that (luckily the capital M had already been charted!), and I changed the single blue flower to pink because I just couldn't get past one flower in a different color:

Then, since I was already working with the charting software, I decided to test out an idea I've been pondering for a while. I've always loved the skirt portion of Lavender & Lace's Angel of Love (which was actually designed by Nora for her mother's company), but I've never really liked the top portion of the design. I was wondering if the top of Mirabilia's Angel of the New Dawn would look good with the Angel of Love skirt, so for the past several days I've been working on a mashup of the two. I still need to do some tweaking of the chart, and I'll be converting the beads from round to cylindrical, but I think I'll be able to make it work. Here are the two designs:

And here's a rough draft of the mashup:

I'll probably start working on it sometime after the retreat, which I leave for next Wednesday. Right now I'm starting to get everything together for the trip, and I'm probably not going to get much stitching done in the next week. It's been quite a while since I worked on a Mirabilia so I wasn't sure what stitching to take; I went through my WIP bin and found Silver Moon Tea, which was last worked on about 10 years ago--at a retreat, funnily enough! This is the last photo I found of it in my blog:

I might have done a bit more on it than this; if I did, I'll take a photo before the retreat so I can see how much progress I make. I like this one because it's fairly small in size, so I can take moderately sized Qsnaps, and it won't take a lot of room to work on at a shared table. There is also going to be a chart by Nora handed out, so I'm taking a few fabrics in case I decide to work on that instead, but it's hard to pick a fabric without knowing what the design looks like!

I'm also expecting Hands on Design's final Gather Round kit to arrive later this week; it turns out Cathy did surprise us (or me, anyway) by making it "Gather Pinecones" instead of "Gather Snowflakes". I think it might be my new favorite of the set:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

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!