First SAL in April

Yup, we'll have two check-ins this month! We post our progress every three weeks in this Stitch Along. We also work on our own separate projects rather than all doing the same thing. My designated SAL project is sort of on a hiatus as I wait for the release of the next pattern to embroider. I've completed my secret stitching project but I can't show it to you yet just in case the intended recipient comes to visit my blog. I've added some bits to my Year in Stitches sampler. This is what it's currently looking like:

I have no idea what it looked like the last time you may have seen it. Mostly this is a place to practice or try out new stitches.

Since I completed the secret stitching I've returned to a Sublime Stitching pillow cover I started over a year ago.

 
It's just back stitching so far. Nice mindless work for those occasions when my brain is broken. Sad to say, there have been several days like that lately.

I might get adventurous and decorate the pot in the middle of the cover. Maybe do some buttonhole stitching for those scallops under each fox. I'm using Sublime Stitching floss for this project too, not the hand dyed floss I've been using everywhere else.

More of these green lines have been covered since this photo was taken. At this point I'm not sure I'll stick to the color suggestions printed on the cover. The best part of this project is that once all the stitching is done I can wash it and pop a pillow form inside and it's done. 😀I enjoy stitching but not finishing.

There's all sorts of needlework being done by the members of this SAL. Participants live all over the world. You will be inspired by what you see as you make the tour. We'll be checkin in again on 28 April.

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

Scrappy Stitches in March

On the 15th of each month Kate and Gun host Scrap Happy Day. Originally these posts featured patchwork made with scrap fabric. Recently we've had scraps of other types being showcased. I'm going to take my cue from those other crafters this month. My shoulder is healing, but slowly. I'm reluctant to run the risk of a setback by returning to my sewing machine just yet so I'm going to share what I've done with some scraps of embroidery floss.

This is just a tiny section of my current stitch sampler. The petals of the violets were made with some strands of hand dyed floss leftover from another project. The French knot centers were also short lengths I found in my ort jar.

The half-circle  buttonhole scallops were also done with leftover strands. I think the rest of the stitches were put in on purpose with new threads. Nearly all of the floss has been from Nancy Turner. The snowdrops are the exception. I didn't have good colors for them and had to resort to DMC. Nancy is having another give away of a lovely collection of colors. All you have to do to enter is pop over and leave a comment. 😊

These 6.5" blocks are just a place for me to practice new stitches or to doodle with needle and thread. I'll save the other embroidery I've been doing for our Stitch Along post coming up in a few days (on the 17th). In the meantime, here's the list of those who may have done something with their scraps to share with us:

Kate (me!), 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, Connie and Bekki

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. 😢

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. 😊

Retail Therapy

I felt better yesterday than I have since I took that fall (two weeks ago now?). So naturally I used my better health to expose myself to fresh toxins. 😉 I find it hard to get creating again after a full stop like the one caused by my accident. I thought some retail therapy might help.

One of our local quilt shops is having a liquidation sale. 😢 My understanding is that they hope to reopen in a new location later this year. I don't get to shop there often but I don't want to see them shut down entirely. Every shop has it's own personality and therefore a slightly different selection of prints from others in the area. But it wasn't fabric that went into my basket first.

I thought this set of stencils might give my embroidery practice a boost. I also bought a chalk pencil and just the one skein of size 5 perle cotton. Couldn't resist that color!

I didn't have any specific project in mind when I went into the store so I ended up just buying yardage that appealed to me. The first bolts came from their Halloween shelf.

There's two yards of the orange batik (which did not come from the Halloween shelf) and a yard each of the spider web print and the orange below it. The two greens and the blue are half-yard cuts and  the rooster print is only a fat quarter. It will be interesting to see where these end up. At the moment I don't have a clue. However, the stencils had the desired effect.

This is what page two of my Year in Stitches sampler looked like before I injured myself:

Now it looks like this:

Remember, this is just a place to practice and play. I marked a few lines with the stencils, like for the snail shell and the twig below.

The hearts coming down the right side are pretty much freehand, each one created with a pair of offset fly stitches.

The first hearts I made (in red, at the top) were backstitched. I used Nancy's hand dyed floss exclusively on this sampler.

This sampler page might be done now. I think I can probably live with the negative spaces that remain. Which brings up the question of how to approach the next page in this year-long effort. I don't think I want to do another grid like I did for the first page. At least, not one that tight (2" square). I think I'd be more comfortable with some kind of structure over a completely blank canvas though. Watch this space!

Quiet Week

I was busy developing a third version of the Disappearing 9 Patch when the weather turned truly cold around here. That meant I had to set it aside for a while. My design wall extensions cover the heater unit in my studio wall, which isn't safe when the thermostat wants to trigger the heater. I need that extra space in order to arrange the parts to my satisfaction. So I'm going to hold off on that project until Scrap Happy Day in March (on the 15th). I trust things will have warmed up by then!

In the meantime I've been embroidering. Not on the Hobbit caravan, although I need to finish that up. Susan turned me onto an embroidered block of the month program over at Daysfilledwithjoy.com. When you sign up for that you have the opportunity to download another pattern free of charge. I'm always up for a free pattern! And following the lines already drawn by someone else was just the ticket for the end of this week. I've been in recovery mode for the last couple of days after toxic exposures.

Joy designed this pattern and calls it Fruits of the Spirit. You get to choose your own color palette. Naturally I've chosen to use some of my floss from the Victorian Motto Sampler Shoppe.

I sure wish I could get a more accurate representation of the colors for you. My ground fabric is a quilter's cotton that is a pale mottled yellow. The word 'Love' is a deep, dark red. I'm looking forward to using one of the more distinctly variegated skeins for the line that frames the body of the design.

I've also been adding to my Year in Stitches sampler. I've been working on page two:

We've had snow flurries off and on all week, which is unusual for this area, so I added the snowflakes. Above them are tear drops between the hearts to mark the unexpected passing of a friend from my local quilt guild. I have some short strands left over from the Fruits of the Spirit panel I could use on this piece, I just have to figure out what to do with them. It's a struggle to decide whether to mark other events in the news on a piece that is otherwise purely personal or experimental. I'm tending toward not including them at this point. I prefer not to dwell on the violence and darkness in the world. 

Year in Stitches Update

We have a stitch along (SAL) check in coming up on Sunday, 11 Feb. I need to begin a new travel trailer for my Sketchbook Project between now and then so I have something to show. 😉 In the meantime, I thought I'd share my progress on my Year in Stitches sampler project.

The Year in Stitches is a group on Facebook. You're free to embroider anything you want. It was begun over a year ago with the intention of encouraging participants to stitch every day (or every other day or every couple of days in my case). Some of the participants are in their second year, others of us have only just joined. I thought it would be a perfect way to try out new-to-me stitches and for indulging in the hand dyed flosses I've been buying from the Victorian Motto Sampler Shoppe.

Isn't this a delicious box of color?!

My year in stitches sampler is going to be a series of "pages" that I hope to assemble into a book format eventually. The pages will be about 6" square when finished. I started the first one on a length of muslin that I'd already used for practice stitching. I'm hoping I'll be able to separate it cleanly when the time comes.

You can see that I divided that 6" block into nine little 2" squares. For the next page I drew a 4" square and surrounded it with a one inch frame.

Can you see the faint pencil lines? I've started to outline of the overall square with leftover pieces of floss. That's why you see partial lines along the left side and bottom.

One way or another I plan to number each page. Obviously I went for a simple treatment this time! I wish you could see the variation in the colors. The number two and the embellishments in the herringbone border are actually two different hues. They look the same to me in the photos though.

There's lovely variation in some of the strands of floss too. That green under the butterfly turns to rust in places. Just yummy!

On the quilting front, the Halloween Disappearing 9 Patch (see previous post) has a back now. We're just waiting for batting. I've begun another D9P, and have a third one in the wings. I've never been a big fan of nine patch blocks but I'm sure getting mileage out of this particular variation!

Wallowing in Color

The floss I hoped to get for Christmas was finally delivered the other day. 😁 Because there was so much in the shipment I've had to let it off-gas longer than my usual shipments of a measly six skeins. Not only did I get the 1,000 yard package I wanted for Christmas, I won a free floss club shipment in Nancy's 12 Days of Give-aways. That's over 50 skeins of floss in one box! I've played with them enough to have mixed the current floss club shipment in with the others to the point where I don't know which is which anymore.

I do enjoy trying to arrange them according to color families...

There always seems to be a wide variety of greens coming out of Nancy's dye pot.

I was especially pleased to add more reds to my collection. There's one card in this bunch that has 27 yards on it of an especially wonderful red. Color me happy!

I've been adding to my Year in Stitches sampler every other day or so. Needless to say, as soon as I could safely use some of this new floss I did so. The last time you saw this sampler I think it looked like this:

Now it looks like this:

The spiral square in the lower left has been stitched with the leftover bits of color I've used elsewhere. Same goes for the little circles at the other side of that bottom row. The big daisies or chrysanthemums above that were fleshed out with a bit of the newest floss. I'm going to have to set up a new page soon.

I declared this sampler as my selfish stitching for Bee, Myself and I last month. I think I'm going to go in a different direction now. I'll keep working on this sampler but for my selfish stitching I think I'm going to set up a new project. It's still in the planning stages at this point so you'll have to check back to see whether it comes into being or not. 😉

And if you're still with me, and a regular reader/commenter, let me offer my apologies for not responding to your latest comments. This is just a difficult time of year for me I guess. I'm lucky to be doing any stitching or piecing, much less dealing with the written word.