Summer Basket Finish

My little doggie is recovering nicely. (Thanks so much for the well wishes for her :) ) And I have been stitching away.

This is my finish this month. I know its not real wintery...but I have been itching to start this since I got it. I started it very early in November and as I went stitching along I made a goal of finishing it by the end of the month. I made my goal by one day! Yippi!

It was a fun stitch...but I have to admit to not LOVING it till I was almost finished. So even though its a bit more pastel than what I have been doing lately...I do love it now.









I haven't done 1/1 in years. And I'm sure I didn't do it right the last time. So, I just winged it and and it seems to have come out ok. Sometimes the thread slipped under, but then I just used another hole instead and it worked ok. Not sure this is the way to do it...but I was too lazy to look up another way.

I did find my colors were more pastel then the cover leaflet colors. And I really couldn't figure out how one of the specialty stitches on the band was supposed to work. On paper it SEEMED pretty, but then the stitches just kept slipping under...and I just made my own stitch instead.

I also added 3 initials instead of the two. The letter "i" of my first name is alwasy too narrow and it looked empty so I added the third of my maiden name. Much better! And also...I had two Clover skeins and one was way too light. So I made sure I used darker pink sections as I thought the light would just disappear on that fabric.

Off to pick my next project. Can I do it....can I finish it before December is over????? I'm gonna try!!

Happy stitching!!

Edited to add: Woops! Corinnas comment made me realize that it sounds like I did the WHOLE thing 1/1. Sorry! Not that talented :) I only wish. It was done 2/2 but there were a few letters, (2 of my initials and X,Y, and Z) that called for 1/1.

The Patient

This is one of the reasons why I haven't been blogging.



Shes one of my babies. She also has 4 more days where she has to take it easy. No running, jumping, playing, chasing squirrels etc. I'm supposed to just let her walk for potty.

I have resorted to using the sedatives and waiting on m'lady hand and foot. Plus, I have a bad cold. ok....whining over :) Happy, happy, joy joy!!!

I'm stitching something new and making good progress....just need to ask m'ladys permission to remove myself from her side to take a picture of it to post my progress. :P

Till later! And HaPpy STitching!!

Shes been framed

Nataliejo is someone whos work I admire so much. Such gorgeous finishes! I absolutely adored her finish of E&E Millenium Sampler (loved it so much I have the chart coming to me). Her framing of it was fanastic. See it here.

When it came to framing my lady. I immediately thought of her framing of her sampler and decided to give it a go.





I used a 12x12 deep frame off the shelf from my local frame shop...Aaron Brothers Art Mart. I used some 12x12 scrapbook paper for the background. The manufacturer of the paper is 7Gypsies.

A couple things I would have done differently. I would have been a little way neater in cutting my foam core board. I left the edges a little ragged. I didn't realize how much this would show when I wrapped my fabric around it. I might have to redo this eventually.

And I found that I really needed some stability on all four edges of my "lifted" foam board other wise it kind of "rocked". I had a 3" square of foam board in the middle to lift the sampler but then when placing it found it rocked too much. So I had to tuck pieces under which was kind of a pain, but still worked out.

Thank you sooo much for all the nice comments. They are always appreciated. I haven't been as good posting to all your blogs though. One of my little doggies is recovering from leg surgery. Poor baby. This is her 3rd and shes only 6 years old. She has luxating patellas and has had the left done about 4 years ago then she tore her ligament in the same leg. Now the left patella really had to be done as she was starting to limp bad. Sigh..... 6 weeks recovery...oy.

Happy stitching!

Little Jumpers

I pulled these out of the "vault" the other day...aka. the rubbermaid container in the garage. I had a good laugh parading these for my 20 year old son and his girlfriend. He just laughed it off. Not embarrassed in the slightest. :)(hes cute that way).

He was 2 or 3 when he wore them. Got tons of compliments.

I was able to make them so cheaply (not much of a budget back then). A little bit of broadcloth, a little bit of aida, some cheap buttons from the fabric store...tada!!! Cute Sunday outfit. After these I learned how to smock and stuck to smocking for quite a while.





You know what I love best about these?? Is they look brand new. They were washed multiple times and the stitching held up beautifully! Love that.

The CS patterns are ones for baby bibs. I can't recall where I got them from and the books are long gone. They worked wonderfully. I basically just adapted a simple boys jumper pattern for the CS insert and for the blue jumper did add some piping to the insert before adding it into the jumper.

I've got a girl version too which I'll post soon too.

Thank you for stopping by! Happy stitching!

P.S. I framed my Lady...shes super cute! I'll try and add pixs of her later this week.

Glad Tiding Finish

The blob (turkey, poodle, some kind of bird) is no more. I replaced it with the bird found on another BBD pattern.

I did have to do a little trimming of some bird feathers because the tail was going to hit the border so it ended up looking more like a duck...but I can live with that.





Thank you for stopping by everyone and HAPPY STITCHING :)

I don’t do blobs

I've been holed up in my little stitching hole stitching merrily along on my Glad Tidings. The more I stitch, the more I can't ignore the obvious. There is a weird object in the lower right corner of the chart.

It is a black blob, which is obviously of some significance to someone, but no matter how hard I squint or how hard I try to relax my eyes (remember those optical illusions that looked like nothing but it you relaxed your eyes you would see Marilyn Monroe or some other object) I can’t see a thing.

The closest thing it looks like to me is a poodle with no back legs. Can you see what I'm talking about?

At this point even if someone told me what it was I couldn’t stitch it since I pretty much look at that blob and think “poodle”.

So I’m going to look and see what replace the blob with and finish this baby up this week since I’m finding that I suddenly have an inability to start anything else without finishing this one. I really did try though…but I find that I’ve suddenly developed a little stitching OCD (this is a new thing, believe me…I never had a problem with this in the past). I’m sure I will get over it, but in the meantime I am so close to finishing I might as well go with it.

Here's my progress so far...

There also were a couple of questions from comments I wanted to answer:

Sandra asked about the colors of Glad Tidings. If I used what was suggested. I used pretty much what was suggested. I didn't use the fabric suggested which I believe is more of a mustard color. I think the photographer must have used a flash on the cover photo because the flowers look pink and all the other colors are off. I only changed the border color in my version. I'm using what was suggest for the mysterious blob because the suggested color was too near the basket color and I didn't like it. I 'm also going to change the butterfly wing colors because the color suggested is too close to my fabric color. Those are the only two color changes I'm making.

Jennifer asked if BBD Summer Garden is still in print. Jennifer it isn't. But, I know every once in while I see it on ebay, so you could check there.

Jane asked what type of camera I have. Jane, I have a Nikon D300. For most of my pictures I use a 24-70mm lens. Sometimes I use a 50mm lens. I shoot in manual mode. So, I change the settings depending on how fuzzy I want the background. Some compact cameras allow you to shoot in manual too so you can change settings that way. It really depends on your camera. Try shooting shooting in "Portrait" mode. That will change your settings (or F-stop) so what your camera doesn't focus on will be fuzzy. I hope that makes sense.

Better get going...Glee is on!!! Anyone else obsessed with Glee??

Happy Stitching!

My Quaker Lady Finish...

I finished her in the wee hours of the morning last night. Couldn't wait to iron her and take some photos this morning. I tried my best to get some Ohhs...and Ahhs... out of my daughter by showing her off...the best I got was "Shes pretty"....I guess that's good enough :)

Now to find a frame for her. Well, I need two frames because I'll eventually do the Gentleman.

Back to work on Glad Tidings and finish that up. But, I'm going to start a couple things as a reward for finishing up The Lady.









Couldn't resist adding a photo of my dahlias. They are in full bloom right now and as pretty as can be!

Thank you for looking and your lovely comments!

Happy stitching!