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)

Another "Finish"

Well, I finished page 2 of Boulevard of Dreams, my first ever HAED - I've been tracking some statistics just because I'm a geek that way:

Some statistics (probably only interesting to me, but.....LOL)

Page 2:
Started - 7/8/11
Finished - 3/18/12
Days Stitched - 29 Days
Time Stitched (Page 2 only) - 61 Hours
Time Stitched (Project to date) - 140 Hours
Stitches (Page 2 only) - 7,546
Stitches (Total Project so far) - 15,386
Percent Completed - 7.33%

I don't normally keep track of my stitching time, but for this particular project I have an Excel spreadsheet that I open up each time I start stitching and track it.  I know when I'm done, people will ask, and I will want to know, how long it took me to stitch it!  LOL

And - by way of comparison - here is how much is done in relation to the whole project - YIKES!!!!!

A Quick Finish for my Niece

I stitched this up for my niece who is graduating from high school this year (obviously!  LOL).  It's a Bobbie G Designs pattern called, shockingly enough "Congrats".

It was a fun quick stitch - colorful, fun, and easy.  I think I finished it up in about 2 weeks or so.  I made a couple of changes (so what's new).  The pattern didn't call for outlining all of the letters (just some of them - which didn't make a lot of sense to me).  I outlined all of them, and also outlined the mortarboard and the stars.  To me, without any backstitching, the stars looked like blobs!  LOL

The pattern also didn't allow for the personalization - but I figured without it, there's no way of knowing it was made especially for her! 

My plan is to go to Joanne's and find some fun whimsical fabric that matches some of the colors in the picture (which shouldn't be hard - there are a BUNCH of colors in there, all fun colors!) and then a friend of mine is going to make me a tuck pillow to put it in.  I figured that way it can go on her bed or on a shelf.  I'm hoping she'll take it with her when she leaves for college in the fall - she's off to Brigham Young! 

Obviously, the actual project has her last name and the name of her school, I just hate to post that much info on the internet.

Thanks for checking it out - once the pillow is done I will post pictures of that as well.

Finished a Lizzie Kate Christmas Project

This was a really fun project to stitch. It was a travel project, so I worked on it at lunch time at work as well as at a stitching get together a couple of weeks ago. I did make one mistake - the bottom border is off one row. It sould have been even with the last little spot where things stick out on the side borders. I realized it when I got all the way across, but I didn't want to rip it out. First off, I didn't think it would REALLY make a difference (in fact it gave me room to put my name and the year - otherwise there would have only been one row in between the cardinal block and the bottom border), but more importantly, the red is a Crescent Colors red, and it's not colorfast. I was afraid if I took it out I would leave red color where I frogged. So I left it - and I'm okay with that!

Now I'm working on another Lizzie Kate - it's a Halloween design that says "Velcome" and has Frankenstein, Dracula and (I think) a ghost.....I'm not looking at it, so I'm not sure! LOL

Thanks for checking out my blog!