Stitching Accessories

I am going to "cheat" again this weekend!  I have a perfectly good reason, I assure you (and myself....).  (And I have one of the riders + his horse complete.  The other one is half-way done....)

I have given a few people in my life small stitch sets, either because they like stitching or sewing or because they are related to me.
I made this small Assisi tin for my mom a few years back:

As you can see, it has magnets in the lid for needles and pins and I puzzled together her monogram in the cushioned bottom.

I also made the Littlest Little Sister a needle and scissors book with a seahorse a few years later.  Here I had even more fun designing a layout and picking lining fabric and ribbons.  It is made to hang from the back of a chair or a door-knob.  Note that Sweden is centered on the back of the heart as a symbol of me thinking of her.  The inside left hand panel centers the US, so that we can always be close.  (Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the inside of the finished book, but you probably get the idea from the finished panels in the photo below.)  The motifs were taken from a French book with all kinds of gorgeous hearts charted, I think that DMC is the publisher.

 

I made this one for The Barbarian at work a couple of years back:

I had equally fun running amok with finishing ideas for this one too.  The center on the front with her first name initial a free-standing pin-disc.  The back is patriotic and forms a simple pocket where she can tuck in scissors, needle books and anything that she needs to have handy.

As you can see, I have truly enjoy making these little gifts for people I love.  I have a long list of additional friends to stitch for, but most important is my Little Little Sister.  She asked for either a dragon or dinosaur design a while back and I thought that it was impossible to find.  Until - duh! - it struck me a couple of weeks ago that I need to stitch her "The Dragon of Hope" which is a sweet freebie from Dragon Dreams.  This purple dragon even holds the Earth in its front claws - how perfect is that!?  I am very excited!  I know that it will be a quick stitch and I have already picked out the linen to stitch on.  Hopefully, I'll be able to stitch it up before next week is over.
If you missed the Dragon Dreams freebies, here is a link to the chart: Dragon of Hope 2005 and a list of other goodies here, under Dragons.  Here is a link to a completed dragon - isn't she pretty?

So why the hurry to finish the Dragon of Hope?  Well, I received some sad news from my mother two weekends ago.  My grandmother passed away.  It is hard to be so far away from family when these life-altering events occur.  There is no way to hold anyone, no way to just sit in silence and think together, so much harder to be there for support and sympathy.  Distance sucks sometimes!  I told my boss point blank that I will go to Sweden for the funeral.  He, in turn, discussed "the rules" with his boss (that is what I suspect at least) and came back to tell me that I got all the days needed to get home and back with pay and without counting towards my vacation.  It didn't matter, I had already booked the tickets, so I would have gone either way.  I am leaving DH here in the States.  I will miss him, but sometimes it is good to go alone.  My family and I are then free to speak Swedish and do things that are not that entertaining to him - like sitting in coffee shops and talking for hours, shopping for clothes, taking strolls, reconnecting on a personal plane, watch TV or movies...
It will be good to see the family.  I wish that the reason would be a happier one, but I just need to be there.

Have a great Saturday Evening and talk more soon - I have to report on what Hip Hip Happy and I did this morning!