Another rushed and harried Friday

Today is Sarah's wedding day ... as both my god-daughter and my oldest niece, she holds a special place in my heart ... though I try not to play favorites among my 16 nieces and nephews. Between the getting ready for the day, the practicing of my reading [the Love is patient ... passage from Corinthians], the travelling [about an hours drive North] and the event itself, I imagine the only stitching I will do will be on the drive up.

Yesterday, I did manage to get a bit more done on the Colon Cancer block for Donna's charity auction quilt. This is such a simple design [with precisely regular repeats] that it is stitching up rather quickly. I expect to finish it tomorrow and get it in the mail by Monday. I'll post a photo in my Weekend WIP report post on Sunday evening. Speaking of getting things in the mail, I was able to get this month's giveaway and a small present for a stitching friend in the mail on Tuesday. The giveaway is going to the other side of the planet, so I have no idea how long it will take to make the trip ... but the stitching buddy lives in Maryland, so that one should be arriving any day now if it hasn't already. I hope everyone likes their packages.

Well, I'd best get back to the business of the day.

Stitching For A Cure

There is a new fund-raising project on the Stitching For A Cure blog ... this time it is a quilt to be raffled off in the Spring. Apparently, the two Christmas trees were such great successes that Donna was encouraged to tackle another stitchery-related project. I am stitching the colon cancer block since that was the cancer that began my father's long battle with the disease culminating in his death in 1987 when the cancer metastasized and attacked the brain stem.

Esmeralda finally has a house

After nearly two months of stitching, here is the finished Esmeralda's House from Brightneedle. It was supposed to be finished well before Halloween and made into a wall hanging for the holiday. But somehow, that didn't quite happen, but then there is always 2010.

Weekend Stash Enhancement and A Very Little Stitching

The weekend did not include all that much stitching since Saturday was a long workday with morning and afternoon classes instead of just the usual morning sessions. Then on Sunday, I finally made the rounds to Joanne's and The Happy Quilter for fabric needed for holiday finishing.

I have very nearly finished stitching Brightneedle's Esmeralda's House, only half of the front parlor on the first floor to cross-stitch and all the French knots to add on all the floors. I am going to be very sorry to finish stitching this piece ... it has been so much fun what with all the little unexpected details. The first picture is the tout ensemble and the second is a close-up of the first floor ... which I have now been working on for nearly three weeks, sad to say. Life and work do tend to get in the way of stitching goals. But it really is time to move on if I am ever going to finish TW's Autumn Faerie in time to have it framed as a Christmas gift for Angela. I found the perfect fabrics at The Happy Quilter for converting Esmeralda's House into a wall hanging. The colors work very well with the overdyed Silkweaver fabric on which the piece is stitched and pick up all the autumnal tones in the piece itself. And one more picture of a Halloween piece. I decided to make up the Cherry Wood Design Studio Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet as an ornament instead of as a tote as originally planned.

These two fabrics were purchased specifically for Sue Hillis' Annual Santas. Though the metallic creates quite a lot of glare making it hard to see, the medium and deep roses in the bottom fabric match the colors of Santa's clothing perfectly. I have the first four annual Santas stitched and want to make them up as flange pillows, in time for this Christmas ... since I never got around to it last year. The pillow forms are taking up an awful lot of room in my sewing finish basket. Once the pillows are made and displayed on the couch, the basket will look nearly empty which will give me a considerable psychological boost even though there will still be nearly a dozen projects left to sew. I figure this will be my Thanksgiving Break project, along with the finishes on the LHN Seasons of ... pillows for which I already have all the forms and buttons. All I need to do is assemble these four pillows.

The fabrics pictured below are fabrics purchased without a particular project in mind, but I am sure they will come in handy during my Christmas sewing. I also picked up some mattress tickingto finish up Sailor's Jig into a book tote which I shall stuff with books as one of my husband's Christmas gifts.

Friday the Thirteenth

Not so very unlucky at all. I managed to finish a few more small pieces.

Using some scraps of banding, I made a small change purse just large enough to hold one of those credit-card sized gift cards for next year's Halloween treats for my grandchildren ... just need to sew on a snap closure. The design is from Cherry Wood Design Studios and is the hat from the Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet chart. I repeated the design on the front and the back.



I also stitched the Thanksgiving free chart from the Stitcherhood and finished it as a fringed pillow ornament. I stitched the front as charted and then stitched a back that is a very close negative image of the front ... a few adjustments had to be made in the size and placement of the letters in the word THANKS.

And, using another scrap bit of linen, I stitched the rest of the Cherry Wood Design Studios chart mentioned above. I will stitch this up as a Trick or Treat tote later on this weekend. I have been going through my stash pulling out all the ornament sized remnants from other projects to use for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas ornament stitching. Every so often I get into a mood where I re-organize, use up and recycle the odds and ends in my stash of fabrics ... it's part of the program to simplify my life and go green and all that other good stuff.

A Winner and Some Sewing Finishes

I used an on-line randomizer, feeding in numbers 1 through 11 to choose the winner of the Sue Hillis chart package: # 3, Annette, aka stichinfiend. I e-mailed her for her snail mail address. And, since she responded almost immediately, she should get her package in the mail shortly. My thanks to all who participated in the giveaway. Check back on December 4 for my next giveaway which will be a finished Christmas ornament.

I had intended to spend most of today doing house cleaning and running errands ... well the house cleaning had to remain a part of the program but the errands, with the exception of some grocery shopping, have been replaced by some sewing. I really am just too tired to run around, driving hither and yon in a 50 mile radius getting all the errands done ... maybe I'll be up for it on Friday. We shall see.

In any case, here are the results of my sewing mini-marathon:

Some ornament finishes. First, The Prairie Schooler Christmas Tree. Second, the Have a Jolly Halloween ornament. Then, I finished Monsterbubbles' Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun into a mini wall hanging for my daughter, using a fabric that brought out the vibrant colors of the lettering

I also sewed some 32 ct scraps of linen together flea market style which I plan to use for a project featuring either Fall motifs or Halloween motifs or some old fashioned stitchers ... sampler style and with the sort of embellishments one sees on the Pin Tangle blog. I haven't decided just what I will do yet and will probably change my mind several times before I start the project. I'll probably finish the piece as either a pillow or a tote. As any reader can tell, I really like to keep my options open.

And then came an attack of startitis, beginning with Handblessing's Autumn bookmark and continuing with yet another Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet variation. This is from Cherry Wood Designs. I am using a scrap of linen that is not tall enough to include the charted hat above the lettering but I feel the design will stand quite nicely on its own feet. [Pun, pun ... you may all groan in unison!] I will stitch the hat, which is really quite cute, on its own, as a little pillow ornament. Finally, I made a lot of twisted cord to finish the ornaments pictured above ... some of which was made in the colors I actually needed ... Lesson learned: never choose floss for cord-making in a hurry and in poor light! I now have some blue grey/coral cord for which I will have to find a project. I was going for grey green/pale pumpkin. I ended up actually making a dark pumpkin/ecru cord because I couldn't find the exact colors I wanted in DMC ... unless I was willing to raid kitted up projects, which I most definitely was not.

Stitching While On Retreat [the religious kind]

I am back from a two day retreat [Sunday afternoon through Tuesday noon] for Certified [or certifiable] Coordinators and Directors of Religious Education. I brought my stitching bag along with me and worked on a few small unobtrusive projects during the talks, between taking notes. I listen better when my hands are busy, either with pen or needle. My gift of the framed piece quoting and illustrating Psalm 145 was well-received by Sister Joan, who does in fact appreciate the time and effort that goes into the needle arts. It was also ooohed and aaahed over by several others which didn't hurt my ego at all, at all.

Here are the results:

I finished this little Halloween ornament from Elizabeth Needlework Designs Have A Jolly Halloween ... I thought it came out rather well though I believe one strand would have been better for the vine and leaves than the charted two strands ... there didn't seem to be enough definition with two strands of floss lying so close to one another in the leaves and curlicues ... if I ever stitch it again, I'll make that change. I did switch out the suggested DMC to Belle Soie silks: Paprika, Creme de Menthe and Old Crow.

This next is as far as I have gotten on a free chart from The Stitcherhood entitled Give Thanks. Using Belle Soie Paprika, I stitched the first one exactly as charted. Using the same silk, I am stitching a second copy the reverse of the first with very few adjustments to the word Thanks to make everything fit. I'll finish it up as a fringed pillow ornament.

It was my intention to frog back to my error on the Peacock Biscornu and to work on Esmeralda's House as well but time did not permit ... so no joy there. I do have tomorrow off for Veteran's Day and hope to finish Esmeralda's House then ... after all I only have the front parlor on the 1st floor left to stitch as well as two spiders in the back hallway. But I also have to pick up some tulle for my niece's bridal veil and some rhinestones and a comb at the local JoAnne's which now requires a trip to the wilds of New Jersey since the local branch closed; drop off two pieces to be framed in a town at the other end of the county; and pick up some Christmas cottons at the quilt shop is still another area of the county. I am determined to get my Sue Hillis' Annual Santas 1-4 made up into pillows for this Christmas, hence the need for the fabric. For those of you about to suggest I save some time and pick up some Christmas prints at JoAnne's, I have this to say: the quality of the cottons at the quilt shop is far superior. Then, of course, there is the clean-up that invariably results from leaving my husband home alone for several days. He is the sort who can't find either the dishwasher or the clothes hamper without a GPS. I came directly to work from the retreat, so the condition of my home will be one more surprise in a day that has so far included the announcement that our office photocopier needs repair [some unidentified someone loaded the 8x14 tray with 8x13 paper which was clearly marked "for children's art work only" - resulting in major jams and total system collapse], that my secretary [daytime] and my assistant [evening] have been writing one another nasty notes in my absence, blaming one another for the glitches and failures to communicate. All I need is a messy kitchen, a coffee table piled with take-out remnants and a pile of dirty laundry in the bedroom to make my day complete.

So much for the monastic serenity I have been enjoying these past few days. Welcome back to the real world with a vengeance ... I think I'll just get back in the car and start driving.