Still Stitching Away ... slowly

Whoa - it feels like it was just April and here we are, very close to the end of the year!  I can't believe that I never showed off my finished EMS Antique Sampler, especially since I actually did finish it before the end of the year - as in 2012.  I even got a cheery cherry-red mat and a frame for her, but I haven't gotten a chance to lace her in quite yet.  If I get a couple of minutes to myself one of these days maybe!  I am not placing any bets on that though.

Since the arrivals of my precious "smalls" I really have not had a whole lot of time to do much of anything.  I mean, some days during my maternity leave at the beginning of the year, I was happy just to get in the basics, like a shower, food, drink and bathroom breaks.  Somewhere around week 6, the girls actually started to sleep in shifts, so there was absolutely no breaks whatsoever.  Getting back to work was a piece of cake - all of you stay-at-home parents; I have no clue how you do it!  Good job!

Since sewing often is significantly faster than stitching is, I did have fun with my sewing machine and my piles of fabric.  I found a perfect freebie pattern and tutorial for this adorable Tulip Petal Sun Hat and managed somehow to swing a coupe together for the girls.  The hats are good sized, so the girls will be able to wear them for a couple of summers, I hope.  (Pardon the fact that Little Miss O doesn't wear any pants below...)

This is little sister, Lilla L.

  I

Posing together!

I had a lot of fun fuzzy cutting out the fabric so that the birds would be lined up beak-to beak and tail-to-tail around the rims.

Other than that, not a whole lot of crafting going on at home.  I did start a new WIP the other day; Hillside Samplings Folk Art Sewing Roll.  I have finished the easy (and boring) border, so I get to start playing with colors now - yay!  I think that this will be a pretty quick stitch, but I am not sure here I'll find the time to do the finishing work...  :-)

I am still really lucky to have a group of crafty friends at work, so I do get to stitch for a while over lunch every day.  Earlier in the year, I finished up this Blue Jay Silken Wings kit from the Crossed Wing Collection.  They have a bunch of different bird silk & gauze kits available, but for some odd reason they are not displayed on their web-site.  I had no problem picking from quite a selection when I called Paula to place my order and she was happy to send them to me.  I am excited about stitching the other ones sometime in the future.  As always with Crossed Wing, the designs are just perfect - delicate, realistic and detailed.  The only drawback is that the mat-boards that the silk gauze has been pre-mounted to varies in color between kits, so they won't look like a unit if hung together.  I guess that it is always possible to mount on a different mat.

Lately, I have been stitching a lot of Scandinavian monochromatic designs. 

The Christmas bell-pull below was a fun stitch and is a Handarbejdets Fremme design.  I need to hem it and find some suitable bell-pull hardware, but that shouldn't take too long.  My favorite panel is the center one.  it reminds me of traditional Scandinavian embroideries on the ladies blouses back in the days. 

*Baby Break*

This is a recent new start for me - my very first wool penny rug.  This is a total cheat.. everything was pretty much pre-cut and ready to go in this kit.  The only thing I have left is to attach the pennies to each other and to the center piece and it's done!  Quick and fun!  Now I just need to figure out where I can display it where chubby, sticky fingers won't get to it... lol

These super-cute and small mono-chromatic Christmas pictures are from a Swedish hand-craft society.  They are pretty hard to come by, so my mom sent 15 of them as gifts.  The society gives out a new design each year and I believe that the first one was published back in the mid-60s.  The kits have the most generous amount of floss that you can ever imagine - you can easily stitch the picture 3 times over and I bet you'd still have lift-over floss.  So far I have finished 5 and I have started on my 6th, but I haven't kept up with my photography.  The plan is to make a red-and-white quilted wall hanging to hang in our entrance during the holiday season. 

The grand plan is that I'll finish (I guess I'd better start it first...) this kit I bought from French General, Mansion de Garance, and I'll hang that in the same spot during the rest of the year.  Grand plans, but a girl can dream!  :-)

Speaking of French General - I did also pick up a couple of Odile doll kits.  I have cut out all the pieces and embroidered my girls' monograms on the apron pockets.  One of these days I'll get the sewing machine back out - I can feel it!!!

Photo curtsey of Leslie Jane Moran blog.

Well, I'd better run, but before I do -

Happy Halloween everyone!

 

Happy Stitching,

My, Oh My - How Time Flies!

Hello and Happy Monday all stitching friends!  Time flies - it feels like the days have been shortened with a few hours.  There is less and less time to squeeze in all the fun stuff, if that makes sense.  (I already managed to miss my very first WIPocalypse post, so I guess that I am done with that... LOL). 

I have managed to stitch on a few projects here in the evenings, so I have a few pics to share with you.

First, I realized that we are almost in March, so my pre-stitching for the class with Patrick's Woods is due very soon.  I managed to slap together five pieces out of eight this past week.  I really enjoy the stitch, even thought there is a good deal of over-one stitching.  The colors are very pretty and much long-arm cross-stitching and hemstitching.  The hemstitching is a drawn thread stitch which I am very fond of; I finish all my bell-pulls and table-cloths with drawn thread hemstitching - it is so pretty - it looks like lace!

The pieces that are left will be a breeze, since I have already taken care of the "boring" part - the borders!  LOL

Here is a close-up of the pretty little bird that is back-stitched and filled with overlapping long-stitches.  I think that I rather packed my bird full with stitches, so it looks less primitive that the original does.

Here is a close up of the pretty hemstitched part of the design hat will be the side of the mattress style pin-cushion.  Isn't it beautiful with the blue ribbon woven through?

I did also get a chance to finish most of the EMS 2012 SAL sampler.  I say most, because I am not a fan of stitching half of a motif, since I am too lazy to restart all my threads.  I also feel that the sharp start and end within the same motif can be seen after the motif has been completed..  I'd pace myself and wait to get the next part before finishing the basket. 
Now I am trying to tell myself that I need to get cracking on the upper border - 5 more repeats to go.

I have probably mentioned before that we are a group of ladies who stitch at work.  We try to stitch at least once a week, but all of us have been crazy busy lately, so it has been a sparse gathering.
Last week I managed to finish this little piece, A Stitch in Thyme  from Little House Needleworks.  The kit came with the super-cute needle-book and tomato pincushion.  Unfortunately, I have lost them...  don't you hate that!?  I seem to manage that a lot...  Drives me nuts!  Anyway, maybe here in the future some day they'll pop up.  Then it is just a matter of finding the stitched piece again!  LOL  It is a very cute piece though.

Here is the fully finished heart needle-book and the little heart box painted by Liberty Hill that came in this limited edition kit from Hillside Samplings.  This was a lot of fun - a lovely stitch and a pretty straight forward finish.  There were some tricky parts getting the assembly done, but it all got lovingly forced together in the end.  Sorry about all the pics...
I spoke with the lady that paints the Liberty Hill treasures last week.  She is so sweet and friendly and took her time to talk with me - and we even discovered that she has visited my blog - I am thrilled!  Needless to say, I am looking forward to the 2012 prim club very much!

Speaking of primitive and clubs, have you seen this one, Prim Sister's Club!? 

Country Sampler, Notforgotten Farm, Primitive Bettys, and Pineberry Lane have joined forces to send the club-members a kit every other month.  I have signed up!


I bought as tiny bit of stash over the Superbowl weekend at Silverneedle's sale.  I was good and I only bought finishing materials and a Very Bradley organizer (I love the bold white, green and turquoise colors) that I wanted to keep coupons in.

 I have to share a close-up of this funny little note that came back in the package with you:

LOL!

I hope that all of you had a nice Valentines Day.  I had great plans - more than months in the making.  I got the idea inspired by this beautiful Valentines wreath made from reproduction vintage cards by Williams Sonoma.  Isn't it lovely?

Well, I found a few tutorials here and here and there are so many wonderful and generous web-pages full of images of fun and pretty vintage Valentines cards.  This site is my favorite! 

I did get cracking on the wreath and it would have looked grand, except for the fact that I ran into trouble with the Modge Podge - it never seemed to dry up and in the end, all the cards curled up, so I decided to give it a rest!  As you can see, I decided to go with the vintage reds and the cheesy greetings - they are too funny!  Makes me smile!

I added some glitter paint to make things sparkle a bit - it looked great (this was before the blasted Modge Podge!). 

 

 

I'll definitely give it another try next year - or maybe I'll try for the precious Easter wreath here in a few weeks..  Just have to rest up my tired scissors fingers and print out some fun Easter greeting cards first...  :-)

Speaking of Valentines - here is Rusty guarding his (?) nest-box with Pixie peaking out from behind.  We'll see if they lay any eggs.  That would be the first clutch for them, so it is exciting (even though I am hoping that there won't be - we don't have any more space here!).  Pixie and Rusty are different types of Greencheek mutations, so their babies would likely be quite unique.

 

This is Nibbler - also known as "Big eye", since his (?) right eye, the one that is looking at YOU right now,  is much larger than the other.  Soooo cute!

Nibbler almost died when he was a baby.  He flew into a window really hard and started to bleed into his beak.  He almost suffocated on his own blood.  DH freaked out, which helped keeping me much calmer than I would normally have been.  I took Nibbler out to the bathroom, held him upside-down while rinsing his beak with water.  I was sure that there was no chance that he would make it, but we were all very, very lucky!  It is hard to have loved pets die in your hands and especially that young.

I swear that the big eye is a memento of his near-death experience, while DH thinks that I am imagining things.

Nibbler's "big eye" is focused a lot on Scrappy.  Scrappy has a set of admirers that follow her (?) anywhere through the house.  It is a bit of an interesting situations.  Pebble and Nibbler chase after Scrappy, who goes "home" to Henny in the evenings, since they are cage-mates. 

 

And this beautiful basket is what my "cage-mate" keft for me to discover after work.  He knows that I love bulbs and he really overdid himself - I am so spoiled by that man!  They are starting to bloom out, but I can't wait to dig these babies down in the ground and see what happens next spring.

This is what is going on right now - here in Kentucky, we are all very confused about the winter that never seemed to come.  We are all holding our breath and waiting to see if there will be any late winter-storms before the real spring finally arrives.  Some of us are less patient than others - my mini irises decided to take the plunge and they look happy.  It put a big smile on my face when I left the house Thursday morning and saw these brilliantly blue gems glistening in the flower beds. 

 

Henny says that it is time to get back out of the basement!  "It is cold down here, mom!"  Isn't she the cutest little thing?  Even though I clipped her wing-pens way too short last time.  No worries - it is like clipping hair or nails; they do grow back out, but it takes a few months.

Well, how can I say no to my special little hen?  Better get up to the warmer part of the house. 

Bubba says Bye!

 And I'd better say bye too - it is bed-time again!  Lots of wishes of many hours of lovely stitches!  I am (once again) hoping for enough time to visit all of your blogs this week!

WIPocalypse Report 1 and Other Updates

Happy Monday to all!  

After a long period of excessive stress, frequent sickness, and very low energy, I am finally feeling like myself again!  I have lived with periods of depression as long as I can remember and I generally just power through.  I have always assumed that people just aren't "happy" all the time, so I haven't really thought much about how things are, but this time my down-period felt unusually long.  Coming out of it again makes life so much easier and a great deal more enjoyable.  General chores don't feel like overwhelming tasks and I can enjoy everyday things again, like hanging out with the birdies, snuggling with bunnies, and I even took a walk for an hour all by myself yesterday - the weather is just too good here to pass any outdoor-time off right now.

Other things are making life pretty great too:

- Littlest Sis started her new job today and seems to have had a positive experience so far

- My mom and dad have bought tickets to come visit us here in KY in May

- I am taking vacation on Thursday and Friday to go for a loooong stitch weekend up in Ohio with a bunch of friends  (I have already pulled out the projects that I will bring to stitch on)

- We finally got to stitch over lunch today!  (I am almost done with Fresh From the Garden)

- I finished my first 2012 project this week - WIPocalypse was a good idea

- I bakes Swedish cinnamon rolls yesterday and they turned out all right!

Well, let's jump to it - here is the WIPocalypse update for this moon, the magpie from Madame Chantilly's Keys collectors.  The progress in the beginning of the year:

First I frogged quite a bit of the wing-stitches that I did not like.  Then I added blending-filaments to the dark blue wing feathers and the key ring - a pain to stitch with, but well worth the extra blood, sweat and tears.  :-)  The border had to be adjusted to fit the frame and I felt that a yellow rose was a better fit with the blue over-dyed linen than the original pink would have been.

And here is the finished piece.  I have collected key charms for a few months now - Michaels had quite an extensive collection of pretty keys.  The frame is a key rack from Sudberry house (for cheap from e-bay) and the hooks were bough at K-Mart of all places...  I love how it turned out, but unfortunately I can't hang it up anywhere, considering all the beaks and claws that fly around the house.

Here is a second finish.  The Swedish wool pin-cushion has finally been assembled.

It is much larger than it looks - it is huge!  Look at it hanging from my kitchen chair (yes, my kitchen table frequently becomes transformed into a sewing station).

And a third finish; I did manage to finally slap together the Mad Hatter black-work purse from Nostalgic Needle (it had been sitting in the finishing pile for 2-3 years).  It was a pain to find the right backing fabric for it and I am still not so sure that I picked the right one.  Once again, I tried to step out of the comfort zone and opted to go with a color cotton print instead of the black and white toile that I originally considered.  Oh well....   I am not planning on checking out the back too much, so I guess that it'll be all right.  Note that I covered up the entire edge using beads - I had bunches of fun finishing up this piece.  (I am planning on posting a tutorial on the finishing work sometime soon, if anyone is interested.)
I started stitching on the companion piece, Off With Her Head, a few years ago, so maybe it is time to dig that one back out again.

 

The latest start is the Folk Art Needle Box by Hillside Samplings.  This was one of the limited edition collaboration kits (number 6) that Hillside Samplings and Liberty Hill released together back in 2002.  This one took a few years and a bunch of luck to track down, so I am super-excited about finally starting on it.

Other than that, things are definitely all right.  After a very warm and sunny weekend, we got a chilly night.  This is how I found one of the flocks when I uncovered the cages this morning:

There are 4 small, cold parrots huddling together in the photo - see if you can find them all!  :-)

DH (doesn't he look evil here, kinda' like Dexter...) still claims that he is the Alpha-bunny.

 

The bunnies don't seem to agree...  Princess looks skeptical and Bubba looks terrified.

Well, that is it for this round! Time to get some stitching in before bed-time.  I am watching Back to the Future II on DVD while writing this - "Manure! I hate manure! " Good times!!! 

Good night and Happy Stitching in your dreams,