Two Progress Photos

Well, I'm back to my "normal" rotation - so here's a picture of Frederick. I had him out for two weeks, but really only stitched on him one week. For some reason, I just didn't have my stitching mojo this past week. It seemed like by the time I got home from work, did whatever needed to be done around the house, I just couldn't muster up any interest in stitching. Might have been my car situation - which I will explain about at the end of this post. If anyone doesn't recognize it, it's a Dimensions pattern - Frederick the Literate. However - all I'm using of the kit is the pattern. I subbed out the floss for DMC, and the aida for black evenweave.


This next picture is progress on my travel project. It's not the typical travel project because it's not very small - but it makes an awesome travel project because the motifs are very repetitive and it only has five colors. It's not the greatest picture - I thought I took some with the flash and some without, but I don't think any of them had the flash on. The colors are purples and greens - three purples and two greens. This pattern is called "Spanish Geometric Sampler" and it's by "The Needle's Content". I saw someone else stitching it, and really liked it - wasn't easy to find, but 123Stitch was able to special order it for me.

And on to my car saga. We have (well, had) two cars - one is my Explorer, and the other was an 18 year old convertible that my Dad had given of us (because we had been sharing a car). Last Saturday, we were out for the day, and someone crashed into the convertible - the estimate to fix it is $13,000. Not likely to happen, since the high blue book value on the car is only about $2,000. So - now it's a matter of dealing with her insurance and my insurance....what a hassle!

And I did get to deliver the bingo picture and the baby sampler in the last week or two. My friend Diane LOVED the bingo thing - and she did notice her birthdate included in the picture. And yesterday I saw my niece and the baby, and gave them the birth announcement. Her hubby was sick, so I didn't get to see his reaction. My sister took a picture of my niece, the baby, and me, with the birth announcement. As soon as she sends me a copy, I will post it.

Thanks for checking out my blog!

Back from the Framer

I stitched this for a dear friend that we've played bingo with for more than 10 years. Her birthday was back in October, but right before her birthday her father passed away. So, her birthday passed without a bunch of fanfare (as she wanted it) so we bought her a gift card to a restaurant and kept things very subdued. But she's in a little better place now (with the birth of her first grandchild) so even though there's no occasion, I'm giving it to her now. I decided not to mat it because I didn't want it getting too big. We tried frames in every color that's in it, and the red just made the whole thing pop. It's a little set back so that the charms didn't hit the glass. I customized it a little bit by scrambling up the numbers so that her birthdate is included in it. It will be interesting to see if she notices!

And here is the baby birth announcement I did for my great niece. The framer agreed with me that a simple frame and no mat was best - the pink and blue checks make it look already matted (or at least I think they do). The only other frame I might have considered was pink, but they didn't have any pink frames - well, they had one - it was bright pink with glitter all over it! LOL

I'm happy with the way both of them turned out. It's funny, when I look at the picture of the birth announcement, the bottom of it looks a little crooked. I even went and looked at it again - it's not, it must have just been the way I took the picture!

And on a different note - the subject of blog comments came up on one of my stitching boards, and I realized I'm guilty of some bad blog etiquette. I am thrilled when people comment on my blog, but I'm not very good about commenting on other people's blogs. Part of that is because often I feel like all I would be saying is "That's gorgeous", and I feel like that's repetitive. But then I realize I like to hear that about my stuff, so other people probably do to. The other reason is I follow a lot of blogs on google reader. So I often don't even go to the blogs. But I have made a decision to be better about commenting on people's blogs - even if it's just to reinforce other people saying how pretty things are!

So....with that being said - thanks for checking out my blog - and if you have one, and if you post on one of my stitching groups are, odds are I will comment at some point! :-)

Finished the Birth Announcement

Well, I finished my great niece's birth announcement...my first finish of 2011. It's actually been the only thing I've stitched on since I started on it which is not my "normal" system. But I really wanted to get it done.

I made a few changes to the pattern - most noticeably in the center part. I didn't like the "fill in the blank" style of the center, I wanted it to look a little more "formal". So I wrote out the date and stuff. The other thing I changed is the original pattern called for the baby's first and last name - I did first and middle, since the last name is down below with her parents' names. And...since she's a girl, I changed the coloring of the lettering to a dark pink rather than blue.

There are a few other less obvious (at least in the picture) changes - the pattern didn't call for stitching the white background on the wallpaper around the clock, the clock face, the stars (nor did it backstitch around the stars) and one part around Mother Goose's apron. But I thought it looked funny to have floating dots on the wallpaper, and also that it looked funny when the rest of the picture area was solidly stitched.

On Monday, it will go to the framer, so I can't wait. I'm thinking of a white frame - I don't know if it will need a mat - I think the blue and pink squares will kind of act like a mat. We'll see once I get there and we play with mats and moldings.....

Thanks for checking it out!

Update on Fairy Tale Baby

First off, I apologize for the dark picture - I usually play around with taking some with and without the flash, but for some reason, I forgot to when I took the picture.

I didn't post an update last weekend because I THOUGHT I would be done with the stitching of the design (other than the border) by Monday, or Tuesday at the latest and I figured I would post at that benchmark.

Instead, I spent Tuesday evening frogging. The bottom left hand corner is about five or six shades of brown and tan for the ground. On Monday, I went in to fix one solo stitch that I had missed, and then, somehow, forgot which symbol the thread I was using matched up with, so I went ahead and started continuing with that piece of thread on the WRONG symbols. I got a little further along before I realized my mistake. And because there are so many color changes in that area, the threads get kind of interwoven with one another on the back, so frogging gets a LITTLE tough!

I finally frogged it, and finally finished off the stitching of everything except the pink and blue border...and the backstitching. After I took this picture, I started on some of the backstitching, and it does bring the picture to life.

Thanks for checking out my blog - I do appreciate it, and all your comments!

Sad News

The world has sadly lost a wonderful woman, a talented stitcher, and a good friend to many....

Rest in peace Rene LaFrog....you will be missed by many.

You are thought of with every stitch.

Update on Fairy Tale Baby

Here is my progress picture on Fairy Tale Baby - it's a fun project to stitch on, and it's been the only thing I've stitched on since I started it. The baby is 3 months old already (in my defense, her parents didn't pick it out until after she was born).

I've made a couple of modifications to it - the face on the clock and the white on the wallpaper weren't stitched in the original pattern. But I didn't like the "negative" space aspect to it. I'm not one who needs the whole thing to be solidly stitched, a lot of patterns obviously call for unstitched areas. But on this one since the whole frame area was stitched (except that area) I thought it looked funny. The other thing is the stars (which you can barely see in the sky because of the angle) are also unstitched, and I'm going to fill them in with white as well.

The other thing I'm going to change is the lettering in the middle (which will be the baby's vital statistics - birth date, time, weight, length, name, parents' names, etc) is supposed to stitched in blue. But since it's for a girl, I'm going to use a dark pink color. Stereotypical, I know, but since there are both blue and pink in the design, I think it will work.

Thanks for checking it out.

Birth Announcement

Since all my Christmas stitching was done pretty early, I've been focusing on the birth announcement for my niece's first baby.

The baby was already born (in fact, she'll be 3 months old tomorrow!) but my niece and her husband didn't pick the pattern out until after she was born. I had given them their choice of about 15 patterns at the baby shower. They didn't let me know until Payton was about two weeks old which pattern they had chosen. This is it! LOL

The middle will have the critical stats - name, date, weight, etc....

It's a fun one to stitch, I like the colors. But there are a LOT of fractional stitches, which can get a little crazy, but it's worth it for the effect. Also SOME blending but not a lot. The grass is two shades of green, and some of the sky is two shades of blue. Also, there are a couple of other areas that are blended...I'm hoping maybe it will be a 6 months birthday present!

(For those who might want to know - it's called "Fairy Tale Baby" by Bobbie G Designs).

Thanks for looking!