Faerie Autumn Glow is finished!

I finished this gorgeous lady last night, and I just loved every stitch using these amazing colors; it was like stitching flames! Only Nora could take purples and oranges and make them look like flowing folds in a dress:

I have now finished three of the four seasonal faeries, with just Summer Love left to stitch. However, I'm already behind on starting the model that Karen sent to me a couple of weeks ago, so it will be next year before I can start Summer. Oh well, that gives me time to think about converting some of the colors, as I just don't look forward to stitching so much green!

Here are the three completed faeries:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week, and for those who celebrate it, a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Best stitchy mail EVER!!

I am so excited that I can hardly gather my thoughts enough to write, but I wanted to post some pictures as soon as possible. Today I received my finished Pretty Little Things box from Judy Odell, and there really aren't words to describe how much I love it! I took a bunch of pictures, though nothing can compare to seeing it in person:

Judy, when you read this, you are the BEST finisher ever, and I can't thank you enough for the beautiful job you did; this has immediately become one of my most prized possessions! Also, thank you to Nora Corbett, whose design "Pretty Little Things" looks like it was made for this piece.

And thanks to those who take the time to stop in and read my blog, especially those who leave such wonderful comments. The only thing better than stitching is being able to share it with others who understand the obsession!

Best colors ever!

I have stitched quite a few Mirabilia/Nora Corbett designs, and I have to say that Faerie Autumn Glow has to have my favorite combination of colors, yet! So rich and vibrant and happy--and I haven't even gotten to some of the brighter oranges in the lower dress:

I'm hoping to be able to work on her quite a bit this week, and then I'll be at the Door Co. stitching retreat this weekend, so hopefully she'll be done by early next week. Karen has sent the next model to be stitched, which is added incentive to finish this one up quickly!

I got a very exciting email from Judy Odell yesterday, saying that her busy season has passed and that she will be finishing my Pretty Little Things box in the next week or two. You can be sure that I will share her finish as soon as I have pictures!!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

A new start

This past Saturday I finished the model I've been working on, which means I have a bit of free time until the next model arrives. To make the most of it, I immediately started Nora Corbett's Faerie Autumn Glow, on a piece of SMF Moon Princess Belfast (my last piece, unfortunately!):

I'm hoping she'll be a fast stitch, so I can finish her before I need to start another model. Then I'll just have Faerie Summer Love to stitch in order to have all four seasonal fairies completed. Autumn is definitely my favorite in the set!

I thought I'd also post another picture of Snow Queen, this time with the two additional treasures attached (they arrived the day after my last post):

And here's a cute picture of Gracie, demonstrating the claim that "If it fits, it ships":

Now it's off to the post office to mail the model, then down to my craft room to stitch and watch season 2 of Person of Interest on DVD. Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

I was bad, but it was worth it!

For the past month I have been diligently stitching on a model, which I started the day after my first stitch group meeting last month. Karen didn't want me to take her piece to stitch group, so I pulled Nora Corbett's Snow Queen out of the Bucket o'WIPs, where it had been consigned four years (!) ago; my previous post showed a bit of progress that I made on it at last month's group.

This past Tuesday was the day of my stitch group, so I once again worked on Snow Queen. It felt so good to take a small break from the model that I decided to work on it for the rest of the day. Well, it turned out that by the end of the day, I had completed all of the stitching, and all of the backstitching except for the doves; after a bit of work on Wednesday morning, it looked like this:

And, as any bling-loving stitcher could guess, I couldn't stop there! It wouldn't be practical to try to do the beading at stitch group, so I HAD to take another day off from the model so I could bling this girl out. So, yesterday I pulled out a bunch of beads, using whichever ones I thought looked good, and I finished her (except for two treasures that are currently in the mail). She's so sparkly and pretty:

Four years in the Bucket, and it turns out she only needed three days to be completed! Here are a couple more pictures:

For those who are interested in this pattern, it is in the Cross Stitch & Needlework: Cross-Stitch Keepsake 2010 Calendar.

Now I will get back to work on the model, which I'm hoping to finish within a couple of weeks; hopefully before the Door County retreat in November!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy weekend!

Snow Queen got a little love

A couple of weeks ago I went up to The Stitching Bee for the first meeting of the stitch group I joined. I decided to take my Nora Corbett Snow Queen WIP with me, because the model I'm working on for Karen is a secret. I can't believe that I started this four years ago already! It seems like once a piece goes into the Bucket o'WIPs, it is doomed to stay there for all eternity!!

However, this little gem has now been rescued, and is small enough that I should be able to finish it this year, even if I only work on it a little bit at a time. Here is what it looked like upon its release from the Bucket:

And here it is after a bit of love:

Okay, so it's hard to see much of a difference, but it's there!

Speaking of The Bee, Kendra is having her annual Door County stitching retreat the weekend of November 8-10; this will be her 10th year, and promises to be loads of fun. This will be my third time attending, and this time I'm bringing my mom along, so it should be even more fun for me than usual. My mom and I laugh like loons when we get together, though I suppose we'll have to try to tone it down a bit so we don't scare anyone!

For now I am off to work on the model; hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

It's done, it's done!!

The stitching for my Pretty Little Things box is done! I finished it up last night, and this morning I am getting it ready to mail to Judy Odell, so she can work her finishing magic on it. The wait to get it back is going to be agony! ;)

Here are some pictures of this little beauty:

The cluster of crystals at the bottom right in the picture above is what I'm hoping Judy will be able to use for the handle on the box top.

In other stitchy news, I have now received the next model for Karen, so I will be starting that later today. Unfortunately, I won't be able to share anything about it, and there is a time rush on it, so I may not have much to blog about for the next month or so.

I did go to my stitch group up at The Stitching Bee yesterday; it meets the third Tuesday of every month, and yesterday was the first one. I decided to take my 4-year-old WIP of Nora Corbett's Snow Queen with me, and made some progress. I'll post some before and after pics in my next post; it'll be interesting to see how much I can get done on a piece that I work on once a month for a few hours.

Hope everyone is having a great stitchy week!

Four down, one to go

I have finished four of the five panels needed for my box, and have started to outline the fifth one. Here is where I left off as of last night:

I'm thinking that I will put my name and the year in the top left corner of the panel at the top left of the picture. I have emailed Judy to let her know that I'll be sending this her way in a week or two, so hopefully she'll be ready. ;)

I was hoping to have this done by now, but I didn't do much stitching last week, as I lost my sweet butterball Sabrina on Tuesday. Her kidneys had been going downhill, and she had stopped eating for several days, so it was time to let her go. Even though I only had her for two years (her original owner gave her up after 13 years!), I loved her as much as any of my furbabies. I will miss her terribly, but am still glad I took her in.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Enjoying the process

I've continued to make progress on my Pretty Little Things box, and am just loving this project! I think a lot of the enjoyment is coming from stitching something without a strict pattern; I'm having a lot of fun choosing which items to stitch and where to stitch them. I even created a pair of earrings, because none of the charted designs would fit in the space I had remaining.

Also, once the larger designs have been stitched, I'm going back and adding some bling to fill in some empty spaces. Here is an example of that:

I had some crystals and beads in the upper left corner, but they snagged on my Qsnaps when I moved them, so I'll go back and add them later.

So far, I have two panels completed, and I have two more outlined and ready to stitch. Then I just need one more of the larger panels; it's looking pretty likely that I'll get this done before I need to start another model for Karen. Here are some more progress pics:

Oh, and speaking of models for Karen, here is one that I stitched that has just been released, called "Crosses of the Kingdom":

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Pretty Little Things progress

This past weekend my husband and son were out of town, so I hunkered down in my craft room with season 2 of Once Upon a Time on DVD and stitched until my vision blurred! ;) One panel of my box is almost done (I'm planning on adding some bead swirls to fill in some of the open spaces, but the main pieces are stitched), and I've started on the second panel:

A couple of close-ups, to better show the bling:

I'm really enjoying stitching each design, as I get a sense of accomplishment each time I finish one, and I still get to look forward to seeing the whole piece completed.

On the non-stitchy front, I caught a couple of visitors to our butterfly bush this past week. The first is a hummingbird moth, and the second is pretty recognizable:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!