And whatever else I have been up to…
Last night I started a new project; Moon Flowers by Mirabilia. I am stitching her on 16ct Aida Black Magic by Under the Sea fabrics. This fabric turned out exactly how I envisioned it for Moon Flowers. I am typically not a dark fabric kind of gal, but when I first saw Moon Flowers, I knew Black Magic would be the perfect fabric. And Leslie didn’t disappoint. I am so excited to start stitching on this one. What new project are you looking forward to getting started on?
Last night I completed section 11 on the Passione Ricamo Mystery SAL. Just in time for section 12 to be released on Monday. It will be more hair. We have already been given a sneak peek. I am so proud of myself for keeping up on this one. I can’t wait to see the mermaid come to life.
I have to share something my hubby purchased for me this week.
It is a beautiful trunk. He bought it at Joann Fabrics. And guess what I put inside??
FABRIC! Yep, all of my Hand Dyes by Stephanie, Under The Sea fabrics, Picture This Plus fabrics and a few Sunny Dyes fabrics and a couple of afghans and towels that can be stitched on. All of my Silk Weaver fabrics are in another container. I am so geeked about my new Trunk of Fabrics! And as you can see, I have room to grow 😉
What are you stitching on today?
I can’t believe it is already half way through January 2015! But so far I am doing well with my stitchy goals to work on finishing projects and keeping up with another. I just finished section 7 of the Passione Ricamo SAL #4.
I am really itching to see the mermaid appear on this one. The next section is due out on January 26, so I have some time to stitch on another project I have been working on:
Autumn Snowman! As you can see, I am getting really close to a finish here. I will pick him up tonight and work on him until he is finished. Hopefully soon.
Last weekend I visited my favorite Needlework Shop, Stitches N Things. I belong to the stitchy club there and get to have a 25% off shopping spree once during my birthday month. And since January is my birthday month, I just had to go shop. And boy did I shop. Here is what I actually brought home:
Lots of awesome goodies: Nora Corbett’s Fairie Winter Dream ,even though I have it in magazine version. The magazine pattern is a color pattern, which I am not fond of. I also picked up 2 more of the little witches, Ana and Mari. And the main reason for visiting the shop and using my birthday discount was for Mirabilia’s Christmas In London and the bead pack. This is a gorgeous, gorgeous pattern and I can’t wait to stitch it. I ordered a piece of 16ct White Aida to stitch her on. The latest edition of Stoney Creek magazine called to me because of a particular pattern that caught my eye while flipping through it.
The Snow Friends Collectors’ Series Afghan. I am a sucker for snowmen and I have been thinking about doing an afghan. I love working on an afghan during the winter months. Keeps me warm while I stitch away. So after I checked out at the LNS, and after ordering a bunch more stitchy stuffs (with birthday discout 🙂 ) I headed over to Michael’s to pick up the floss. And to my surprise, found the required afghan there also. It was about 1/2 of the cost of what the magazine wanted and I had a $5 off coupon so that made it even better. It looks like a nice, warm afghan, too. I thought that the first 2 blocks started with this issue, but when looking at the back of the magazine, I saw it actually started with the Summer issue, so I called my LNS and had them order it for me and it will be added to the bag that will be filled with goodies when all of the things they are ordering for me come in. It will be like Christmas again! I’m sure I will be starting this afghan soon, but not until I get a finish 😉
So that is my stitchy updates for now. I will be back soon with a Snowy finish, I’m sure. What new project are you itching to start on?
I finished the model stitch I was working on and it turned out beautiful! It was about a 6 1/2 month journey from start to finish. Now it’s time to get back to my personal stitching. I didn’t start Undine as planned, instead I picked up a piece that has been calling to me since I had to put it down; the Passione Ricamo Mystery Stitch A Long.
I finished section 1last night and had to unscroll it to show you. It is going to be a gorgeous, gorgeous piece! I am stitching it on 16ct Aida Nantucket Sky by Hand Dyed Fabrics by Stephanie.
Passione Ricamo has a new Mystery Stitch A Long starting on November 3. It’s Called “Under the Moonlight” and I am sure it will be another beautiful design. I am all ready to start that one, too.
The fabric is another gorgeous fabric from Stephanie called Neverland Sea. It is also 16ct Aida and it is just beautiful in person! My specialty threads arrived from Stitches N Things last week, and my new huge scroll frame arrived on Monday from Stitcher’s Paradise. So I am all set to begin another adventure from Passione Ricamo. I am sure that I will be starting Mirabilia’s Mermaid Undine in the very near future, too.
So, that is what I have been up to. What are you currently stitching on?
In my time away, I actually had a finish.
I stitched Royal Holiday on Johanna’s Large Stitch Mira. She turned out so Regal and elegant. The entire piece is just gorgeous and I have to say that I would have loved to have kept it for myself. One day I plan to stitch this design myself. Here is the piece in it’s entirety.
Last week I received this in the mail:
So I designated yesterday as “Ella Day”. Here is a close up of the design and if you know me, then you know why I had to start stitching on her right away.
Yes, she has a frog! She is the Princess and the Frog and her name is Ella. My favorite Princess and frog 🙂 So yesterday I started stitching Ella on Stephanie’s hand dyed Pandora 16 ct Aida. Here is what I accomplished yesterday on Ella Day:
Not much. Lots of yellows. But I had been itching to start something new and now I have to put her aside. I am currently stitching on Rachel’s RR and I have a couple of other projects that I need to finish and work on. But when I get bored with a design and need a pick-me-up, I will be pulling Ella out to give her some love. Thank you for visiting me to see what I have been up to. What are you working on?
Hello stitchy friends. It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted and thought I would share what I have been up to. The awesome designers out there keep coming up with awesome new patterns, so I have so many projects floating around in my head. But let me show you what I have been working on:
You get just a peek as I am not finished her yet. She is Joan Elliott’s Lavender and I am stitching her on Karen’s Round Robin. I am currently doing the backstitching (hate it) and then on to the beautiful beads that will really complete it. I will post a full pic when I finish-hopefully in the next couple of days.
Last night I finally started Passione Ricamo’s Mystery Stitch A Long. The first block was released on Friday, but I didn’t get my email until late Sunday. So I sat down last night and measured and counted on my fabric for just the right placement for the start. Here is what I stitched:
I know it’s not a lot, but I wanted to get it started. I always start all of my stitchings in the center. With the SAL, the first block is in the upper left of the fabric. So it drove me crazy trying to decide if I wanted 3″ all the way around for framing or 4″. Or did I want to start in the center and count stitches over to the left side…NO! So I measured 4″ from the top, and counted stitches from the top center to the left. I hope I placed the start of my fish in the right spot. I needed to get some stitches on here so that I can put it on my scroll frame. My fabric is 26″ wide and I don’t have a split dowel scroll frame big enough to put it on. So out to the garage I went to dig out this:
My table top scroll frame. I haven’t used this frame in 19 years! And it’s huge! To give you an idea of how big it is, each of those white tiles are about 8″. The dowels on this frame have a piece of fabric attached that I am supposed to baste my cross stitch fabric to. That sounds too time consuming, so I am going to tape my fabric to the rods. I got the idea from Tracy’s blog. I hope to get it on the frame today and work on it this weekend. There is not much in the first block of the SAL, so it shouldn’t take me too long. I hear it’s a mermaid 🙂
And last but not least, I went to my local needlework shop and this is what I picked up:
Yep, all kinds of fun stitchy stuff! the Rainbow gallery threads and beads for my SAL, Just Nan’s Sirens of the Sea sampler, some threads for the Santa Village piece, a new Halloween project from Lizzie Kate that looks pretty cool. My friend that went with me wants me to stitch up the Wine piece on the Mushroom 14ct Aida and lastly, the latest issue of Just Cross Stitch magazine. See that tea pot in the corner?
My BSF (Best Stitchy Friend) stitched that for the magazine. She did a great job and I’m so happy she got the cover. You can see more of her beautiful stitchings and read more about this piece at Elegant Stitches. That tea pot is on my to do list. It’s a tea pot (love them) and it’s patriotic. Oh and you can also see my mermaid scissor fob. This is my first scissor fob and guess what? It doesn’t fit on my scissors 😦 I guess I will have to dig up another pair of scissors. Or better yet, LouAnn at Stitches N Things showed me a pair of Dovo scissors and OMG they feel like they will cut like buttta! I’ll have to save up for a pair of those. I guess they are way better than ginghers.
Wisher, over at Pretty Little Things in a Box, has nominated me for a couple of blog awards that I haven’t gotten around to passing along. She nominated me for the (online) next door neighbor award. Isn’t that sweet! You’ll have to pay her a visit and see what neat stuff she is up to. So, I nominate Wisher and everyone else who has visited my blog, with the on-line next door neighbor award. Bloggy friends are so wonderful!
Well, that’s what I have been up. Hubby bought me some stitchy stuff of a different kind this past weekend and I will post those next time as well as an update on my cross stitch progress. Happy stitching!
Yesterday I celebrated my 49th birthday! Wow, where does the time go? I celebrated by stitching all day in my jammies 🙂 Here is what I worked on:
I know it doesn’t look like much, but I did a lot of confetti stitching yesterday. Once I finish a bit more greenery, I can move on to adding to her tail. Here is another photo along with the pattern of how she will look when I am finished; I am stitching her sideways as she is wider than my scroll frame.
I am stitching her on 16 ct Feather Blue Aida. And I have to tell you that I have had a time with this fabric. On the back along the bottom rod, I got this stain. WTH? I’m thinking I must have picked her up one day to put a few stitches in while wearing my black jeans. Some of the dye must have rubbed onto the fabric while on my lap. I’ve washed those jeans about 7 or 8 times now and the dye still seems to be coming off. So, I took her off the scroll, washed mainly the bottom half and removed the stain. The next morning I could see water lines where I only washed up to! AAAACk! So I ended up having to wash her 2 more times. Yesterday morning she looked good as new and I was able to continue stitching on her. I thought I was going to have to pitch her and start over. I already had a new fabric picked out for her, too. I will keep that fabric in mind for a future mermaid. I would love to get this one finished in about a month. The word out in the blogging world is that Nora Corbett is releasing a new mermaid on February 15 and I would love to be able to have Emerald finished before I start a new mermaid. I doubt that I can finish her in a month as I am not that fast of a stitcher, but it is good to have goals, right?
Hubby and I spent most of the weekend re-organizing. We started in the “man-cave” where we cleaned off the book shelves and got rid of things no longer needed. Then we ordered 2 new shelves with doors to accommodate my 54 (and growing) scrapbooks! The shelves that they are on now are too narrow and the books hang off of the edges by several inches. And only the 2 middle shelves of the 2 current book shelves can be used for 12 x 12 scrapbooks. We will pick up the new shelves on Thursday and hubby will have to put them together. So then what did I organize??
I took all of my cross stitch patterns out of 2 banker boxes and made new files for my filing cabinet that has been sitting empty for a year now. I made all the labels with my brother label maker-LOVE that thing. Above is drawer 1. Here is drawer #2:
This drawer is full of my Mirabilia, Lavender & Lace and Joan Elliott patterns. I even tore apart my “kitted” Mirabilia’s and added the Krenik threads and beads to my collection and just left the pattern with the fabric. I started on the top 2 drawers for my stamping and scrapbooking, but that will be another weekend. I still have 2 bins out in the garage full of cross stitch “stuffs”, but that is mostly bulky things like afghans, pillows, kits, towels, borders and such. I would like to bring them inside and put them on the shelf where the bankers boxes used to be. That too will have to wait for another weekend. It was fun looking through all of my patterns and seeing what I have that I had forgotten about. The only draw-back…I want to start a ton of new things! I did get a little stitching time in this weekend and worked on Erin’s RR. Just started putting the beads on and I will post that when I am finished. I also added a few stitches to August Fairy and here is what she looks like now:
I know, not a lot added. I really love the colors.
I will add another post in a bit and show you what hubby made for me over the weekend!
Well, it seems I haven’t had much stitching time lately, but here is my progress with Angel of Grace:
She is coming along and without the frogs, thank heavens. I did put her down last week and gave some love to this fabulously pink table topper:
This lovely pattern is from At home with Needlework. I can’t tell you the issue, it seems I have misplaced it. It is from a few years ago. The fabric is 11 ct Zweigart Ready-Made Oktav Table Topper in a beautiful shade of pink. I didn’t get a good photo of the color, but believe me, it is pink. I finished the outline on this design and now I have to repeat 3 more times.
Here is a closer look at the design in full. I do have to zoom in on that butterfly and it’s special stitching.
Well, that’s it for my progress this last week. I received my next RR in the mail and started it this weekend. It’s gorgeous and I will post a photo when I finish my block. Thanks for visiting.
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