Bee, Myself & I in November

I almost missed it! Got kind of distracted with finishing things and planning new things. 😉

Bee, Myself & I is for selfish sewing, created by Carla over at Granny Maud's Girl. It's an opportunity to be gently held accountable for any kind of sewing you want to do for yourself, not for someone else, and without any deadline other than one you might set for yourself. My selfish sewing tends to be of the needlework variety, embroidery or needlepoint. I've been filling in background around this Pumpkin Head design by Kirk & Bradley. I believe this is what it looked like at the end of October:

Now it looks like this:

Good progress! I've come to a point where I need to pay more attention so I can blend in a darker shade of purple. It's been very pleasant to pick this up and do patches of basketweave when I didn't feel like doing anything else. I probably won't get as much done in December between my sore sitter and Christmas preparations. But that's okay!

All of the cotton floss I used in this piece was hand dyed by Nancy Turner over at Victorian Motto Sampler Shoppe. The photos just don't do the subtle color variances justice. She'll be having a series of give aways to celebrate Christmas so if you haven't been over to visit her yet be sure to do so in the coming days. 😊

Uncomfortable Stitching

Wouldn't you know it, a week before I have a lot of handwork to do I take a short spill and land on a hard surface on my tail bone! Not a serious injury but painful to sit on. Or to avoid sitting on as the case may be. And most of what I'm working on has to be kept under wraps for the time being. I can share a couple of sneak peeks though.

Turns out there's nothing like a black binding on a dark quilt to pick up all the loose dog hair floating around.

I'm really looking forward to running this quilt through the washer and dryer once all the stitching is completed. That usually does a great job removing the remaining fur. I only hope I haven't stitched too many right into the binding!

I've started a little embroidered ornament too. Not quite sure what direction this is going to take however.

I dug into my perle cottons to stitch this outline. I think it was size 8. So part of the debate is whether to continue with the perle cotton or revert to stranded floss. And whether to fill in the heart with decorative stitches or a word or image. So many decisions!

For those of my readers who live in the United States, let me take this opportunity to wish you a warm and wonderful Thanksgiving. A lot of people spend the day watching football games. We'll be watching some of our favorite old movies before and after (and probably during) our annual feast. 😉

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Second November SAL

I may be one of the last members of this SAL group to get my post up this time around. I have progress to share though! 

When last you saw this pillow cover I've been working on I believe it looked like this:

Now it looks like this!

I am very close to a happy dance for completion. 😀Of course, with Christmas coming up this project may fall by the wayside between now and our next check in on 15 December. There's binding to be applied to and then sewn down on a gift quilt that has to be shipped. That may end up being my hand sewing for the foreseeable future. 

Getting those tulips stitched made a big difference in how finished this looks.

Oh! I missed one of the gold stars!
Probably missed its' counter part on the other half of the pillow too...

My biggest challenge with this piece has been to choose colors for the various elements. The cover is printed in a variety of colors but I found that more confusing than helpful. A couple of them were merely lighter or darker shades of the same hue. Once all of one shade had been stitched it was hard for me to know what the lighter or darker version was meant to be. And I've made other color choices along the way, using my own preferences over the suggested hues. Of all the versions of this stamped pillow cover that are stitched mine will certainly be unique among them!

To see what the other members of this Stitch Along have been working on - we all work on our own projects, not the same thing across the board - you can click on their names below. If you'd like the motivation that comes from being gently held accountable you can leave a message with Avis. 😊

Avis, Claire, Gun, Carole, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Cindy, 

Linda, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Hayley, Megan, Deborah, MaryMargaret, 

Renee, Jenny, Carmela, Jocelyn, Sharon, Daisy, Anne, Connie

Piecing and Stitching

Just a quick update on a couple of current projects.

For what is most likely to become a medallion quilt, more flying geese:

I have enough to go all the way around, I just have to make some decisions about which geese go where. I made an effort to use up a couple of the prints I'd used in the first round of geese. I succeeded in using up two of the yellow background fabrics. Now it's a question of achieving some kind of balance among prints and values. There may be a couple new Shoo-fly blocks for cornerstones too.

The other project is my fabric book for the Stitch at Home Challenge for the San Francisco School of Needlework and Design. This is one of those stretching projects we undertake from time to time. I know what I want to do, basically what I want it to look like, I just don't have confidence in my ability to pull it off. I'm sure whatever I manage to do will be fine. It's a matter of overcoming my Perfectionist tendencies.

I have these "pages" set up for the eventual book.

My plan is to embellish most of the pages, but maybe not every single one. Each page will represent the type of emotions or discoveries I've experienced through writing three pages in a spiral bound notebook every morning.  This is the page I embroidered today. (It has not been pressed yet.)

I back stitched over two of the words already on the fabric (adding my own exclamation mark) and then free handed the flowers and leaves. They are not meant to be any specific variety, just an indicator of happiness.

I don't want this project to get lost among the other projects I have going or to be sidelined by Christmas so I'm going to try to do at least a page a week. Y'all can help keep me accountable. 😉

Scrap Happy in November

On the 15th of each month Kate in Australia and Gun in Sweden invite us to show what we've done with our scrap materials, whether they're fabric or paper or something else altogether. My scraps are nearly always fabric. I turn them into patchwork blocks which then increase the inventory of my Parts Department. Every once in a while I delve into the Parts Dept. and produce a quilt. Since last month I've only added to the Parts Department.

I don't know how many of these mini Trip Around the World blocks I've made since last month but here are the newest six:

I need one more in order to make a 60" square quilt. I may not stop there though. Maybe I'll make 20 blocks for a 60" x 75" quilt. As there's no specific destination or purpose for this project yet we'll just have to wait and see. 😉

One day last week I went through the box I keep near the cutting table into which I put offcuts and remnant pieces. I managed to cut quite a few scrap patches that day. So far I've made these blocks from that cutting session:

These have been built between the seams of other projects I've worked on:

Those flying geese units have not been sewn together, they're just loose 3" x 6" (finished) units at this point.

The Eve quilt (see previous post) has been set aside for the time being as I work on one of those secret projects that come up at this time of the year. It's a pretty controlled quilt, which is making me want very much to break out and make a wild and crazy scrap quilt. Maybe for Scrap Happy Day in December I'll have put together a quilt top out of the Parts Department. 😀

Here are links to others who may or may not have a blog post up featuring their use of scrap materials. If you'd like to participate just leave a comment on Kate or Gun's blog.

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