Bee, Myself & I

My Bee, Myself & I posts have been, and are going to be, rather hit and miss. The idea behind BM&I is to make something just for your own enjoyment. It was begun by Carla over at Granny Maud's Girl.  This time around I have a small beaded piece to share with you.

When I figure out how to finish the raw edges it will finish at about 4" wide by 3" tall.

I began with a fabric covered button sent to me with my F2F3 blocks by the kind Tialys. Then I surrounded it with beads from my stash. The heart beads were from my friend C~ at Christmas time. A bit of embroidery and sequins to complete the composition et voila! 

I have an idea for mounting this on a piece of watercolor paper for stability with some vintage seam tape and maybe more beads. But don't hold your breath to see the end product.  Or another piece like this at the end of next month either. 😉

Stitching Along in February

I'm probably a bit late to the party but I'm also virtually in the last time zone so I figure that gives me a pass. 😉 The participants in this Stitch Along stretch from Australia to the U.S., all around the world. We check in every three weeks to see what progress has been made on our respective projects. Unlike other SAL's we are not all working on the same project in this group. We have quite a variety of techniques in play on any given check-in day!

Last time I shared my start on the Winter Fairy embroidery.

Since then I've decided to set that aside for a time when I'm not distracted by the various pains that have been plaguing me recently. I needed something easier -- more soothing as opposed to stressful. Then along came Joy with a new block of the month embroidery series. We will be making a Gingerbread Village over the coming months.

I downloaded the first pattern and had my son trace it off for me. Then it was a matter of making color decisions. I still struggle with that when it comes to embroidery projects even though it's one of the things that comes instinctively to me in patchwork. My first thought, because of the name of the series, was to work in browns and red on my green background. You know, a little brown cottage in the woods. Since then I've decided to go for a cottage in the spring. We've had a long stretch of cold, wet, gray days. Can you blame me?

The floss I'm using is Nancy's hand dyed threads again. The house is backstitched in a peachy color and the roof and windows in a deeper orange. I'm toying with a turquoise for the door. I have an idea for using more of the peach on the house but we'll see whether that works or not. The next SAL check-in will be on the 17th of March. In the meantime you can check out what everyone else is doing by clicking on their names below. We're welcoming another new member this time around, Sharon. I'm looking forward to seeing what she's working on!

Avis, Claire, Gun, Carole, LucyAnn, Kate, Jess, Constanze, Debbierose, Christina, Kathy, 
Margaret, Cindy, Helen, Steph, Linda, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Hayley, Megan, Catherine, 
Deborah, Connie, Clare, Mary Margaret, Renee, Jenny, Carmela, Jocelyn, Sharon

A Year in Stitches Part Three

You may recall that I've been trying to avoid activities that would aggravate my shoulder injury and consequently picked up my Year in Stitches sampler project. You can see the first two blocks in this post. I put the final stitches in the third block today.

My original goal was to experiment with stitches I'm less familiar with. I also wanted to just stitch whatever I felt like at the time. All of the floss I used was Nancy Turner's hand dyed thread (she's having another give away right now if you want to have a chance at a free box of shades of purple).

I used rows of some of her variegated purple to make the herringbone stitch "rainbow." The yellow flowers in this upper corner were inspired by a plant in Kris Peterson's garden that she brought in recently for In A Vase on Monday. The red border is closed buttonhole. I'm freehand stitching all of this, no drawing ahead of time or using any sort of tool to keep things even. This is my continuing effort to overcome my innate perfectionism.

The butterfly's wings are done with a variation of a chain stitch. I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out. The cone flowers are colonial knots, lazy daisy stitches, and closed herringbone to make the leaves. I'm also pretty proud of those!

Now I'm going to have to cut some fabric to set up the next block for this ongoing project. Sad to say, I've already been pressing and cutting a little and I can say my shoulder isn't happy about it. 😢

Scrap Happy in February

Last month I showed the blocks I'd been making out of 8.5" cuts from my scrap strips.

I started with a basket of assorted width strips...

Which has now been reduced to this:

You can see that I've completely eliminated one stack of strips. There's not much left in the widest strip stack either. I have 56 "blocks" that range in length from 12 to 13 inches. What I do not have is the ability to set them into a top at this point. Maybe for Scrap Happy Day in March! Here are just a few of the more recent blocks:

Scrap Happy Day is hosted by Kate and Gun. Participants use their scrap materials from whatever medium they prefer, not just fabric, so there will be a lot of good inspiration to be seen. 😀

Kate, Gun, Titti, Heléne, Eva, Nanette, Lynn, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy, Debbierose, Tracy, Jill, Claire, Jan, Karen,
Moira, Sandra, Linda, Chris, Nancy, Alys, Kerry, Claire, Jean, Johanna,
Joanne, Jon, Hayley, Dawn, Gwen and Connie

Snowed In

Snow is an unusual event here in our pocket of the Pacific Northwest. It doesn't take much to bring the region to a standstill. Having grown up in Michigan I always get tickled over what a big deal is made over a couple of inches of snow. People want it in the mountains so they can go skiing but don't let it hit the roadways in the urban areas!

This is virtually the same picture I showed the last time we had any accumulation of snow. Unfortunately, it's the view I have that's the safest to share. About half of this melted away since the picture was taken and now we're getting a new batch on top of it. That makes two snowfall events within a week of each other which is what is so unusual.

Stepping out the front door this is what I see...

It makes for a pretty picture but we won't be going anywhere for a few days. I don't go much of anywhere anyway though so no big deal. 😉

I've been trying to be careful of my shoulder this week. I've done a lot of reading. Finally I'd had about as much inactivity as I could stand. Keeping the doctor's instructions in mind I sifted through all the possible projects I could pick up and decided to try a bit of embroidery. I'm not up to the Winter Fairy I chose for my SAL project though. I'm not sure I'll be continuing with that actually but we'll see.

Last year I started what was meant to be a series of embroidered squares, A Year in Stitches. I filled up two six inch squares, started a third, and then stalled mid-year.

The first sampler:

Page two:

This is how I started the third sampler page:

I don't seem to have intermediate photos. I added the leaves in seasonal colors (but not the sun or the snowflakes) before I got stalled.

You may be able to guess what stopped the progress suddenly. I wanted to acknowledge my cousin's passing but after I put in his name I couldn't do any more at the time. I added the dates and the awkward laurel wreath when I picked this up this week. After that came the snowflakes and the sun. Now I'm chain stitching in a tree, which will probably remain leafless. All this work is intuitive so I have no idea what I may do to fill in the black corners. I have to say, it feels good to be working on this again. 😊

Transitions

This notice showed up when I was reading through the comments left on my blog recently:

Following the announcement of Google+ API deprecation scheduled for March 2019, a number of changes will be made to Blogger’s Google+ integration on 4 February 2019. 

Google+ Comments: Support for Google+ comments will be turned down, and all blogs using Google+ comments will be reverted back to using Blogger comments. Unfortunately, comments posted as Google+ comments cannot be migrated to Blogger and will no longer appear on your blog. 

I never took full advantage of Google+ on my blog so I don't know how this may affect any of my readers. What I do know is that none of the Blogspot blogs I've subscribed to have been showing up in my Inbox. I assume that is connected with the changes that are being made in some way. I can only hope that will be corrected soon. 

I only use technology because I have to in order to stay in touch with the quilting/needlework world. Mostly I find it  confusing and overwhelming. Please bear with me as I try to cope with things out of my control. 

First SAL in February

Yup, there will be two Stitch Along posts this month even though this is a short month! I don't have a lot to show. You may remember I decided to start this kit from DMC called Winter Fairy:

It's a good thing I put in a few stitches shortly after that post.

Since then I've done something egregious to my right shoulder. There's been a lot of pain. All that cutting and piecing of strips (previous post) didn't help, I'm sure. I've been to the doctor twice. It's better but still not right. I'm now trying to avoid any activity that will further aggravate the situation and give the shoulder a chance to heal. {sigh} Sometimes you just can't win for losing.

I hope everyone else in this SAL has had a more successful three weeks than I had. We have another new member; Welcome Jocelyn! To see what they're working on just click on the names below. Hopefully I'll have happier things to report on the 24th of February. 😊

Avis, Claire, Gun, Carole, LucyAnn, Kate, Jess, Constanze, Debbierose, Christina, 
Kathy, Margaret, Cindy, Helen, Steph, Linda, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Hayley, 
Megan, Catherine, Deborah, Connie, Clare, Mary Margaret, Renee, Jenny, Carmela, Jocelyn