I fully finished something!

It doesn't happen often but I actually made myself sit down and finish a piece (actually three!) this past weekend. I finished the stitching on Hands on Design Gather Wildflowers Friday evening and was determined to not just stick them in a drawer for some "future" finishing (especially since the next set in the series will be shipping in April), so Saturday I got everything ready and went to work. The really nice thing about this was that everything you need to do the finishing was included in the kit (except for double-sided tape, a rotary cutter and cutting mat, none of which was absolutely necessary but which I actually already had), and Cathy's detailed instructions were very easy to follow. Here are the stitched finishes Friday:

And the fully finished pieces Saturday afternoon:

Of course, I can always see things I could have done better but overall I am really happy with how these came out. There are magnets on the back of the pieces that stick to the metal rounds, so you can change them out easily with the other seasons that will be released this year. Bring on the summer set!

As an inducement to finish these I told myself that once they were done I could start the newest Mirabilia design that came in the mail on Saturday called Camille in Bloom. Here is a photo of the chart alongside Nora's original art:

The black background within the frame is all stitched; I'm not a big fan of how black floss looks on light fabric since the fabric shows through too much, so I started going through my stash looking for a fabric that might work with the design. I thought about using plain black but it seemed like it would be too stark with the light-colored frame around the portrait, so I looked for a dark fabric with a bit more movement to it. I came across a piece of Belfast from Sweet Stash Fabrics called Medusa's Gaze, which wouldn't quite work with this design but it made me think of Lavender & Lace's Firefly Fairies, which I've had sitting around for 20+ years:

When I bought the chart there weren't hand dyed fabrics available; there are instructions included that tell you how to bleach your fabric to get that starburst effect, but of course that was always too scary to contemplate! Over the years I picked up a couple of pieces of fabric made especially for this design, HLCFabrics' Blue Clouds and Crafty Kitten's Starburst Blues, but I just wasn't in love with how "forced" the starburst effect looked on either of them:

Medusa's Gaze had a much more natural looking glow to it, and suddenly I just had to start this design! I could swear that I had pulled the flosses for this years ago, but after a fruitless search for them I decided to gather them again. I spent some time figuring out where on the fabric to start, and by Saturday evening I was ready to go:

The color of the photo isn't quite true, as it's bluer than it appears here. By last night I had a fairly good start; I had about half of the beads in the cap done, and I finished that area this morning:

This photo is a better representation of the fabric, and I am just so happy with how it's looking already! The chart photo does not do this design justice--there are so many pretty details and bling that don't show up in the picture. The entire top of her cap is beaded (which was not easy to do on 32ct fabric!):

My fingers are itching to get back to that sweet little fairy; hoping to get a lot of progress this week--maybe get close to a finish on the first fairy...?

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Blame it on Roxie

Last week I had said that I was hoping to finish Mirabilia's 2006 Christmas Tree before the end of this past weekend, but I couldn't quite make it--although if I hadn't had to spend almost seven hours with Roxie at the emergency vet last Monday I would have actually done it! This is how far I got by last night:

After several more hours of beading today it's all done, and it's so sparkly:

It's only taken me 17 years to get two of the six trees done, so in another 34 years the entire set might be finished. :D So far, the 2006 and 2011 trees are completed:

When I do start another one it will probably be either the 2007 or 2008 kit; I really like the doves in the 2007 tree but when I looked at the back of the kits I fell in love with the colors and bling in the 2008 kit. Such difficult decisions...

For now, I'm going to try to get the remaining two designs in the HOD Gather Round kit stitched up this week, and maybe even make an attempt at the finishing once all three are stitched--though that is a lot less certain!

And in case anyone is wondering, Roxie is fine. She had gastroenteritis and aspiration pneumonia; she has to have more Xrays done this Thursday to see if the pneumonia has cleared up (more Xrays in a couple of weeks if it hasn't), and she has to stay on the antibiotic for two weeks after a clear Xray so this could take a while, but she's back to normal otherwise. 

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Almost time for some reds

I spent most of last week working on the 2006 Mirabilia Christmas Tree, and I'm getting closer to the red skirt at the base of the tree--it will be a welcome change from all the greens!

I'm hoping to have this done by the end of this coming weekend but that might be too ambitious--a finish before the end of next week for sure, though. This will be the second of the six trees I've stitched and now I'll have to decide which one to do next, which will be a fun choice. Someone had asked for a picture of all of the kits so she could see which ones she had/needed, so here's a photo I took of all six:

The other one I've completed is the 2011 tree: 

I'm leaning towards starting the 2007 tree next as I love the little doves nestled in the branches, but I'll decide for sure once the current one is done.

I did take a bit of time to start Hands on Design's new Gather Round club design, Gather Wildflowers. This is going to be a set of four seasonal designs that are finished and can be displayed on the rounds that come with the kits (if I can ever make myself do any actual finishing!). I made a small start on Friday night because Cathy was hosting a Zoom meeting on Saturday morning and I wanted to stitch on the project while I watched. I made pretty good progress through the 3 hour meeting, so here's where I was after that:

I didn't get much more stitching done that day, but enough that I decided to spend a few hours finishing it on Sunday morning before getting back to my tree:

I'm going to finish the tree and then probably get back to these and try to get the next two in this set done before I start anything else. Cathy took a photo of the Zoom meeting while it was going, and while I hate photos of myself I figured this one was small enough that it doesn't bother me--I'm in the blue shirt towards the right side in the second row:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Lady of Ice is finished!!

Okay, she's really Mirabilia's Lady of Mystery but when I created this conversion for her I thought that anything she touched turned to ice so in my mind she's Lady of Ice. I'm so happy with the way she turned out and I just love how the Kreinik looks on the dark blue fabric (a one-off from HLCFabrics), though for some reason it's hard to get the colors to show accurately in some of the photos; the second and third photos come closest to the actual fabric color, and I adjusted the first photo to try to get closer to the actual:

I've added a page to my blog with the conversion notes, in case anyone is interested. I reached out to Rensel Studio last Friday after I finished her but I haven't heard back yet; really hoping I can send her to them soon. I imagine it will take close to a year to get her back, so the sooner I can send her the sooner she'll come home!

Saturday afternoon I pulled out Mirabilia's 2006 Christmas Tree, which was actually one of the WIPs I posted about planning to finish when I started this blog 11 years ago. I'm not sure when I actually started it, but it's probably been more than 15 years ago now; here it is in the last photo from January 2012:

And here it is as of last night:

There is so much green to stitch! I did some on Saturday, then Sunday I decided to add some of the bling so I'd have something pretty to look at as I worked my way down more layers of green; it took most of the day to add the beads and treasures and I love the way it looks now. This one is also on a fabric from HLCFabrics, but it's been too long and I don't remember the name of it anymore. I'm hoping to stick with this one until it's finished now, but we'll see what comes up...

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!