Almost made it

I was hoping to have all three of the Hands on Design Gather Butterflies pieces stitched by the end of the weekend, but as I predicted I wasn't quite able to make it. I came pretty close though (and my inner 5-year-old had a gleeful laugh at this photo):

I'll have the stitching done later this morning, and I think I might try to do the finishing this afternoon so I can get a start on some housework tomorrow. It's funny that I'll have the spring and summer sets of designs done, since apparently we're still in the midst of winter here:

My bleeding heart was just starting to flower, so I'm going to be pretty bummed if this kills off the blossoms:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week (and better weather than I do)!

Part 1 completed, on to part 2 (of a different SAL)

Last night while watching the final (finally!) episode of Sanditon I was able to finish part 1 of Erica Michaels Quilting A-Bee-Cs, using the recommended Classic Colorworks floss (except for subbing the dark green and adding a purple):

Part 2 will be coming out next month, though I don't know exactly when; hopefully I'll be able to finish Hands on Design Gather Butterflies before it arrives. I'm having a hard time settling down with my stitching lately, but I would like to have this done by the end of this month (or, more likely, early next month):

Also in May Heart in Hand's Seaside Tiny Town will be released, so of course I'll have to make time for that as soon as I get it! And there's another Tiny Town coming out in July called Any Town Tiny Town:

This was designed for the 25th anniversary of Keepsakes in Ohio; they had a pre-order on their site that ended on April 15th. Their shop is the white house to the left of the center, with their little black shop cat, 310, next to the door. The chart will be released to all shops next year, and the idea is to personalize it to look more like your own town. I might try to make the cross stitch shop look more like my LNS, The Stitching Bee, and there's a local flower shop that I would love to try to imitate:

I've messed around a bit already, and it isn't going to be quite as easy to translate into a "tiny building" as I had hoped, but I've got plenty of time to work with it and see what I can come up with.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Oops, made a new start!

I truly intended to work on Firefly Fairies until the next set of HOD Gather Round designs arrived, but I got distracted by a Market release from Erica Michaels Designs called Quilting A-Bee-Cs; part 1 (of 5) and the threads arrived last Monday and I couldn't resist making a new start. I had a piece of Access Commodities Heron Gray 38ct linen on hand, which is being stitched 1-over-2 with the recommended CCW floss (except for a substitute for the dark green and adding a purple):

Gather Butterflies is supposed to be mailed today, so it should arrive later this week. I'm going to work on this until then; the next set of blocks will be released next month, so I'd like to have part 1 finished before then. It's nice to have some small finishes along the way as the whole piece takes shape.

Rosewood Manor just released a design that I stitched the model for over two years ago, called Strawberry Wishes. I love the font in this, as well as the pretty colors:

I've been cleaning the windows and doing some other spring chores lately, which has cut into my stitching time, but it's nice to finally feel like winter is on the way out (even though it snowed a bit this morning). Still need to clean out the garage and get going on some yard work, but even doing those things feels nice when there's good weather to enjoy.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

More Firefly Fairies

The next Gather Round club kit was supposed to ship now, but it's been delayed for a couple of weeks so I'm going to keep going on Firefly Fairies for now. I haven't been doing a lot of stitching lately, but have made a bit more progress; here it is as of this morning:

I've always loved this design just from the chart photo and it turns out that it doesn't even come close to showing some of the details, which makes it so fun discovering and bringing them to life. It uses four colors of Kreinik braid, though I'm switching some of it out for beads of similar colors, which really makes it look like it's sprinkled with fairy magic:

Those little feet peeking out of what will be her underskirt have always been one of my favorite parts!

Since there's not a lot of stitching to show I'll share the final three framed pieces that I recently got back, all of which were Nora Corbett designs; this is Miss Moth, stitched on a Silkweaver solo:

Miss Dragonfly, stitched on SMF MacMillan (I think that was the name of the fabric):

And the Mirabilia ornament from the 2000 JCS ornament issue:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Not much stitching last week

I was able to finish the first three Polar Plunge designs from Hands on Design last Tuesday night, and now have to wait until May for the final three charts:

The boards that these will be finished on are arriving today and I already have the rick rack trim, but I'll probably wait until all six are stitched before I start the finishing; better to get it over with all at once!

That was most of the stitching I did last week as I finally bit the bullet and started clearing out the basement. Three trips to the dump and three trips to Goodwill later and we finally have a fairly organized space again! I still need to go through some of the individual plastic bins, but the worst part is over. Now when it warms up we'll have to tackle the garage--ugh!

I did do a little bit of stitching on Firefly Fairies this weekend, and am getting close to finished with the greens in the first fairy:

It seems like some of the greens in this just shouldn't go together at all, but the shading is so clever that they all seem to work as a whole. I'm planning to work on this one until the next set in the Gather Round club arrives, probably in two to three weeks.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Almost finished

I'm still working on HOD Polar Plunge and hoping to have all three of the current releases finished by tomorrow night. The Field of Greens floss finally arrived on Saturday and it is a really pretty color; I like how it pulls some of the greener patches of the fabric together into the whole design:

The fabric is Song of Sirens on Belfast linen from Nicholas Flamel Design on Etsy; I originally bought it thinking it would look good with a Mirabilia mermaid on it, but I really like it with this series. I don't know when the next three will be released, but I'll be ready to go when they are.

Last July I took six pieces in to my framer and I've been getting them back for the past month or so. Last week I finally picked up the last one, Jardin Prive's Au Fil des Nichoirs:

I like how the blue frame picks up the blue in the design and in the variegated floss I used to stitch the border. I also had Madame Chantilly's Cats in the Rain done:

And Blackbird Designs America:

I thought this frame was fun with the design; it comes in white, red and brown. It used to come in blue but that's been discontinued, which is a shame because I probably would have used that if it had been available.

When the woman called to say the final one was finished, she said the owner said to tell me that framing should be getting back to a more normal time frame and to bring some more over so I took five more in (I still have a backlog of gift certificates that my wonderful husband has given me); we'll see how long these take to get back.

For now it's back to work on Polar Plunge, and then hopefully I'll be able to get some more stitching in on Firefly Fairies; I'm trying very hard not to keep starting new projects and then putting them away for years at a time.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Taking the plunge...

...the Hands on Design Polar Plunge that is! I've been excited about this series ever since I watched Cathy's Market preview FlossTube and I ordered the first three charts as soon as they showed up at 123Stitch. They arrived Saturday, so after I finished A Honey of a Tiny Town I put all those supplies away and pulled what I needed for a new start, and this is where I am so far today:

My old skein of Tartan Plaid doesn't look anything like the chart photo/DMC 3768 reference so I'm going to use Chesapeake Bay instead, which is almost a perfect match for 3768. I haven't found the new floss color Field of Greens in stock yet, but I'm hoping 123Stitch gets it soon, and I'm really happy with this fabric that I had in my stash. I'm enjoying every stitch and looking forward to the final three designs--if I remember correctly they will include puffins, penguins and a narwhal. 

Yesterday I finished Heart in Hand's A Honey of a Tiny Town with A Honey of a Frill added to it, and it turned out really cute:

The fabric is probably a little light for the white in the design, but overall I'm happy with the way it looks. Now I have to wait until May for the Seaside Tiny Town, and then I'll send them both to the finisher so they can join my Tiny County:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Everything must stop for a new Tiny Town!

Last Friday I was happily stitching away on Firefly Fairies when a surprise gift arrived in the mail--the new Honey of a Tiny Town by Heart in Hand Needleart. As this is one of my favorite series of designs, I promptly finished the thread I was stitching on FF and set about pulling floss and fabric for the Tiny Town. So, after a week of work Firefly Fairies looks like this:

I'm still really enjoying working on this one and I look forward to getting back to it in a week or so, but for now it's time to create a Tiny Town. I started it Friday evening but I didn't do a lot of stitching this weekend so I've only gotten this far:

The skein of Whitewash that I have that was used to stitch the house has a bit too much beige in it, so it kind of blends in with the fabric, which is PTP Crystal Legacy on 36ct linen. Instead of changing the fabric I've decided to use Snowball for the rest of the design, as it's a nice, bright white and should show up better. There's also a Honey of a Frill chart that I'll be adding into the Tiny Town as I did with the Halloween town. Speaking of which, last month I received the Blooming and Halloween towns back from Faye Riggsbee, who did another beautiful job on the finishing:

And in another exciting piece of news (to me anyway!) Cecilia has another town that will be released this May, a Seaside Tiny Town:

I think this might be my favorite of the seven so far, just so cute! 

I have the Honey Frill and a few colors of floss on order that I'll need to finish the Honey town; hoping they'll arrive later this week and I can have this almost done by next Monday. The weather has been getting a bit better here in Wisconsin and I'm trying to get back into a walking routine, which always cuts into stitching time. My husband officially retired on February 28th (even though he made one more customer visit on March 1st), so he's trying to figure out what his new routine will be. We're hoping to go through 20+ years worth of stuff in the basement and garage this spring, so I'll be less productive stitching-wise for a while, but it will be nice to have a good clear out.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

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!