Another Holiday, Another Blog Post!

 First - an overall picture of where I am as of now on "6 Fat Men".  This one is fun to stitch - blocks of color, no fractionals, no backstitching to speak of (there are a couple of straight stitches - still to be done - on the windows on the house to create panes), and only a couple of French knots (the owls eyes - not done yet).

Here is one of the two blocks I most recently finished - I think I finished this one either Tuesday or Wednesday.

 This one I finished a couple of weeks ago - just hadn't gotten around to taking and posting a picture!  The owl will get black beads (in place of French knots) for his eyes so he won't look quite so possessed!

I have another "finish" - this time it's page 1 of my second HAED (both of which are WIPs) - this one is called "Wonders of Chicago" and is all landmarks from my FAVORITE city in the US!   This time I'm stitching tent stitches - 2 over 1 on 25 count.  The coverage (at least to me) seems about the same as full X's over 1 with 1 strand.  But the stitching goes MUCH faster!  LOL

Here is Page 1 in perspective in the whole project - page 1 of 24 pages.



And finally - my new start!  It's a Big Toe Design - it says "Remember - as far as anyone knows we are a nice normal family".  I was looking for a variegated blue to do the lettering, and while at my LNS for a stitching day yesterday I found this really fun thread (well, I think it's fun) that has bright shades of all different colors.  I figured for a kind of tongue in cheek pattern, the thread would be fun.  My next step with it is to change out the colors for the flowers that go with it.  The original pattern has the flowers stitched in rather subdued colors, which just won't match up with the colors in this thread.  So I'm going to try to pull DMC colors that match each of the colors in this thread and use them for the flowers.

Sorry this is so long - been two months so lots to show you!  Thanks for checking it out!

Finished first of 6 Fat Men

Here is my first of Lizzie Kate's Six Fat Men.  It's been my travel project (which means lunch hours at work, plus the occasional outside stitching session).  I didn't run out of thread on the vertical block, there is a snowflake that crosses over the line at that point.  The other square with the scalloped edges is only partially done - it was a time when I need some mindless stitching.

I'm going to put it aside for a little bit just because I have another project I've been DYING to start as well - it's a My Big Toe design that says something like "Remember, as far as anyone knows we're a nice normal family".....it just seemed SO appropriate for my family.

Thanks for looking!

Started Love, Quaker Style

For some reason, I've felt drawn to Quaker designs lately.  I found this pattern when I was in Las Vegas the last time, and decided to give it a shot.  It's almost monochromatic (mostly black) with a few splashes of gold and red in different spots.  It's an Aury TM Design.  I have finished page 1 plus a little - basically any motif that had any part of it on page 1, I finished off, even if it overflowed to the page to the right or the page down below (or both!  LOL).  I even started another motif on Page 2 before the week ran out.

I'm also working on Lizzie Kate's 6 Fat Men - had a stitching get-together yesterday and got a lot done on it.  I'm almost done with the first square - when I'm done with it, which should be in the next couple of days, I'll post a picture of it as well.

Thanks for checking it out!

Queen of the Needle is done!

Here is the full picture of Queen of the Needle by Just Nan - finished attaching the beads last night.  It was hard to get a good picture of the whole thing, so I've also posted some close ups of some of the details.

A close up of the verse on the picture.  The white line is a fan vault stitch, and the hearts are a darning stitch.

A close up of the white flowers with a floral satin stitch and some beading, along with the purple flowers with the eyelet stitch in the middle.

A close up of the beading in the white "lacy" area at the bottom of the picture.  There are pink "pearly" beads and some tiny white beads.

These were some unique stitches to make flowers that look like roses....they were interesting!  Also some satin stitches for the pale pink divider, and some daisy satin stitches to make the white flowers.

Just some beads as the centers of the flowers, and the blue line is something called a cashmere stitch.



First Ever Tuck Pillow

Well, I made my first ever tuck pillow - it's not perfect, but I was pretty proud of it!  A friend of mine tried to make one for me, but when I got it, the part where you tuck the stitching into wasn't deep enough.  So, I decided to try it myself.  I found the instructions on Cyber Stitchers.  The fabric has yellow dots in the middle of the flowers that are hard to see in this picture, and the Letter S is a yellow background with blue flowers with white centers, so it's kind of the inverse of the letter S.  I even found a daisy button to stitch on the top of it (I played with a couple of options - my first thought was a button on each corner, but that looked too busy, so I went with the top center button. 

And here is my niece at her graduation party after she opened it.  I didn't get a good picture of it after she took it out of the plastic bag!  Oh well!!!  She seemed pleased with it - I liked it because it wasn't stuffy like a lot of graduation patterns are.



Finished my Spanish Geometric Sampler

I have a finish!  The pattern is called "Spanish Geometric Sampler" and it is by "The Needle's Content".  It's hard to tell in the full picture, but it has a lot of purple and green beads (well, not purple and green beads...purple beads AND green beads).  It called for two packages of each color....as I was going along, I was REALLY worried I was going to run out of the purple beads.  So I called my LNS (which isn't SUPER local - it's about a 30 - 40 minute drive) to see if they had them, and then a friend who lives right near there....she picked them up for me because we were meeting halfway between our houses for dinner that night.  When I finished stitching, I had about 50 purple beads left out of the original two packages, so I worried for nothing!  LOL

Here are some closeups of the beading....it worked out really well because one of my online stitching groups (the same one who was doign the "blue" theme last month) was doing a purple theme this month.  So I worked on the beading all month long, and finished it last night.



If you've made it thru all these pictures - thanks for checking it out!

A month of BLUE stitching!

So.....one of my stitching groups is doing a monthly "theme".  And the theme for April was "blue" - the thought was you could interpret it anyway you wanted to.  In my case, it lent itself perfectly to stitching on my HAED pattern.  The pattern is "Boulevard of Dreams" and  right now it's a BOATLOAD of blue!  So, even though I normally would have put it away after I finished page 2, I kept it out and stitched on it all thru the month of April.  I had finished Page 2 on 3/20, and got the better part of Page 3 done by the end of the month.

The month of May's theme is "purple".  Again, I have a project tailor made for it - I'm working on the beading for my Spanish Geometric Sampler, and the beads are purple and green.  Every time I say that, it sounds funny - the beads are not purple and green.  There are purple beads, and there are green beads!  LOL

Anyway, thanks for checking it out......

And oh yeah, I also finished a "travel" project - my Halloween Lizzie Kate "Velcome".  Here's a picture of THAT (I don't think I posted one before...LOL)