Stitching Along in June

It's been three weeks since our Stitch Along group has posted their progress. That's the schedule for this group, every three weeks. We work on our own projects too, not the same one, so there's quite a variety of needlework to be seen. I tend to swing between embroidery and needlepoint. My current needlepoint projects have been designated for Bee, Myself and I posts at the end of each month. You can see what I've been doing on that front in this post. For the SAL I'm sticking to embroidery, at least for the time being. 😉

I still haven't started embroidering the second gingerbread house from Joy McDonald. To be honest, since I've been able to get back to piecing (finally!) my interest in embroidery has waned. One of the benefits of this SAL is that it gives us a deadline to work for. The pressure of this deadline motivated me to finish up the tea towel I've been working on.

Those who are paying attention will note that in my last post (about the quilt top I just created) I said I'm not generally one for pink and blue color schemes. So you can call me out for this essentially pink and blue tea towel. In my defense, I stitched this up with someone else in mind. On the off chance she might swing by here I'll not say more except that it will eventually be a gift.

This is a very simple design. I want to do more with those leaves and with the body of the butterflies but I just haven't been able to figure out what to do. If I satin stitch those butterfly bodies I'm afraid they will stand out visually given that everything else is just outline stitched. I welcome suggestions although I may just leave it alone.

I've also put some more stitches in this pillow cover from Sublime Stitching.

Most of the stars are now stitched, more of the lighter green leaves, and the orange decoration inside the large heart in the center.

This will probably go to the granddaughters when it's finally finished so I want it to be colorful and fun.

To see what the others have been stitching click on their names below. If you'd like this kind of motivation to get your needlework projects going again (or finished) just let Avis know via her blog. 😀Our next check in will be at the end of this month, on June 30th. Maybe I'll double up and show my needlepoint progress then!

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

F2F3 Revisited

You may remember that I used a handful of my blue and white F2F3 (Footsquare Freestyle round 3) blocks in this child's quilt:

I've recently finished sewing the binding down on that one but haven't taken it's picture yet. However, as I was stitching the binding I thought about the remaining F2F3 blocks. When it was finished I dug them out and put them on the design wall just to see what was left to work with.

I played around with all 20 blocks for a while, then removed four that didn't seem to carry the story I saw developing. That left me with these:

I don't normally like to do sashing but when I accidentally laid a yellow tone on tone print over these blocks I really like the way it looked. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough of that yellow to both sash and border the planned quilt top. Nor could I find a potential border print with that yellow in it. I even went to my local quilt shop to look! Instead I came home with a light, fresh pink (with touches of orange and purple in it) for the sashing and a blue digital print for the border.

The blue border has that pink in it as well as touches of purple. Now, I'm not one for pink and blue typically but this really makes me happy. I just wish I had a better picture of it for you.

Now I'm thinking I'll make the back for this, which will finish at about 60" square, by starting with the four leftover blocks. Or maybe I'll build a whole other quilt with them, who knows? 😉

I'm so happy with this I'm Whooping it up and linking with others over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. :-)

First Flimsy of 2019!

In January, shortly after I'd injured my shoulder but before I realized how serious the injury was, I'd sewn a bunch of scrap strips into rough blocks. The intention was to create a quilt for the Hands2Help quilt drive this year. 

And then I had to set everything aside to allow my shoulder to heal. 

I've not been completely inactive but I haven't been able to build a quilt top for a good six months. Lately my shoulder has been feeling almost normal again. Hurray! I figured the easiest, safest thing to do would be to get out those string blocks and piece them into columns. 

They all turned out too long in the beginning so there was some reverse sewing involved before I had a flimsy the size and shape I wanted. The most stressful part of this assembly job was tacking those long columns up on the design wall so I could judge for color and print balance. I really have to stretch to reach the top of my design wall, even without a compromised shoulder joint. Eventually I got all the columns to the same approximate length. I wanted a whole cloth border to finish it off visually and to keep all of those seam ends from coming apart when it was mounted on the long arm.

About 60" wide x 80" long

I feel like I lucked out when I found the black print in my stash. It has other colors in it but is dark enough to corral the colors and prints in the strings. Of course, getting those borders on wasn't without a hitch. I cut 2.5" wide strips and began piecing them together end-to-end for length. Then, without thinking, I went to the ironing board and started pressing them in half as if I were making a binding! Rather than undo all that work I went back to the yardage and cut new strips. There was just enough left to get all the way around the top. I doubt there's enough of the false-start binding to use when the time comes but that would be really helpful. I typically cut my binding strips only two and a quarter inches wide though, so I'll have to deal with that issue too. First up is to create a back for this top. A big ole piece of yardage would be the simplest way to go obviously. It would also be the easiest on my shoulder. I know I don't have anything like that on hand however, and there's still old yardage waiting to be used up somehow. That's a problem for another day. Right now I'm just going to bask in the glow of having finally completed another quilt top! 😁

Bee, Myself and I in May

I wasn't sure I would continue with the Bee, Myself & I project I'd designated earlier in this year. That was to be bead embroidered medallions for an eventual wall hanging. That may yet come to pass but for the time being has fallen to the bottom of the pile. Instead, for my own pleasure, I have been working on two separate needlepoint canvases. The first is this 40 year old project I unearthed last month.

You may recall that I had reservations about the choice of stitches I used for the background. There didn't seem to be enough wool to complete the canvas either. So I've been taking out those backgrounds stitches.

I'd forgotten about that Chinese character in the upper left corner. That may actually get stitched in this time (with cotton floss). I've also put in a a shadowing of tent stitches around the horses with a single strand of the wool I have left. I've had a thought about how to handle the background this time around but time will tell whether that works out or not.

The other canvas I've been stitching for my own delight is this Pumpkin Head:

This is a hand painted canvas. In theory that's supposed to make it easier to see where to put the colors of the design. The shading in Jack's head is so close I keep second-guessing myself about my color placements. I couldn't bear to have the background behind the bats stark white. Right now I'm not entirely sold on the pale gold I've chosen. I'm hoping once the whole design is stitched it will look better. I'd have used a pale purple but I think that's going to go around the image as an overall background.

Bee, Myself & I was instituted by Carla over at Granny Maud's Girl. For those of us who find ourselves making things for others most of the time this is a way to make sure we do something for our own pleasure! 

Hands2Help 2019

My life and the schedule for Hands2Help haven't coincided very well this year. Mostly that's due to the shoulder injury. However, I have managed to get a couple of small quilts bound over the last couple of months. They were both built last year, before I hurt myself. They still need to be laundered to fluff them up but I like to save that step for the very last to get - and keep - as much dog hair as possible off of them.  I've already sent one of my big quilts to the Carolina Hurricane Quilt Project. Specifically, my F2F quilt.

It was just too big to use comfortably on our bed. It was a wrench to part with, believe me.

Both of the most recent quilts were made with the intention of donating them to our local Hospice organization for their clients. That's basically the same mission as Mercyful Quilts so I'll be donating here in my own town instead of shipping them. I've christened this first one Pink Twinklers.

About 48" x 60"

Plenty there to keep someone distracted! James quilted this with one of his loose overall designs.

The second has a more masculine look. I think of it as a Farmer's Wife Churn Dash.

About 50" x 60"

James used a large feather pattern to quilt this one.

In the Pink has been waiting for me to finish up the other quilts so I can donate them all at one time.

That will be happening one day very soon!