Finished a fun design

Well, I finished a travel project I was working on.....this was SO much fun to stitch.  I made some changes to the pattern - it called for the lettering and the border to all be stitched in a subtly variegated blue, and the flowers were more subdued colors.  I started it stitching it the DMC equivalents, and made a counting mistake that.  By the time I discovered it, I was too far gone to frog, so I decided to start over.  When I was going to start over, I decided to use some opalescent fabric that I had bought from Silkweavers (their Facebook sale) and then when I was at a new LNS I decided to look at their overdyeds.  I found this really awesome one from Threadworx called Bradley's Balloons.....variegated with all all these fun bright colors!

So then I converted the flower colors to bolder colors (to try to match the colors in the variegated floss) and made the border a solid color because I felt it would be too busy if it was multi-colored as well.  I am happy with how it turned out....

Oh, and by the way, the pattern is from My Big Toe Designs, and it's called "Normal Family".  It cracks me up because My Big Toe seems to focus on more religious themed designs, and this seemed rather sarcastic for them.

Thanks for checking out my blog.....

It is one of those "kind of" a holiday holidays! LOL

So - inadvertently following my "if it's a holiday, it must be time to post" I have a blog update today!  (For those who don't know - tomorrow is Columbus Day.  I'm not off work, but some people are and the post office and banks are closed - hence my description of "kind of" a holiday).

My local stitching group got together yesterday at our "list Mom's" house. Some people actually went to a quilting show first - I opted to just meet them for the stitching portion of the day because most of my day today was going to be taken up with football.  I worked on "Six Fat Men" and got so close to finishing it, I decided to continue stitching on it last night and this morning at home (even though it's usually my "travel" project). 

For those who don't know the pattern, it's a Lizzie Kate - the six patterns are sold separately, and could certainly stand alone, but Lizzie Kate puts together the layout, the addition of the bird house, and the wording across the top and it's available on their website.  Each square has a small snowflake button for embellishment.  In a couple of cases the embellishment is just one more snowflake, but in other squares it's a doorknob, a bunny's tail, a knot in a scarf, or an extra flower on a hat.  This one was a fun stitch.  I changed up a few colors in the lettering - "Snow Day" and the wording at the very top (Snowmen Melt my Heart) were both supposed to be in white - but there wasn't enough difference between my tan fabric and the white.  Even though the snow and the snowflakes show up okay, the lettering didn't.  I am waiting for the six "Snow Belles" patterns to come out - I already have a matching piece of fabric to stitch those on!

And while I was stitching a lot of white snow on that as a travel project, at home I was stitching mostly black.....

Here is my progress so far on "Love, Quaker Style" - it's an Aury TM Design.  It's stitched on 30 count white linen and I really am liking the contrast.  It's the first Quaker design I've ever done.  I've been trying to complete one page at a time, but also complete full motifs if they crossed over onto other pages.  However, it was kind of time to quit one night, and I just didn't feel like pulling out another project in my rotation, so I violated my own rule.  I would say this is somewhere between 1/4 and a 1/6th of the whole project - I forgot to look how many pages it was total! LOL

Anyway - thanks for checking things out.  It will be interesting to see how my travel projects go the next few weeks.  I work two jobs (one M/W/F and one T/Th) and my travel project gets worked on during lunch at the two jobs.  This coming Wednesday is my last day at my CURRENT M/W/F job, and then the following Wednesday is my first day at a new one.  I'm not sure what my lunches will be like at that job to know whether I'll be able to stitch....time will tell!

Thanks for checking out my blog - I do appreciate it!

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.