Monday, October 27, 2008

Weekend stitching

I continued to work on my main October focus project, the Miribilia Halloween Faerie, and did some more work on the Little by Little 2007 JCS ornament Merry & Bright.
Progress on the Halloween Faerie: most of the outline of the butterfly wings is complete and I did a bit more work on the face and mask. I'll take more photos when I am further along.
As to the Merry & Bright ornament, all I have left to stitch are the stars and the ampersand. I'll be stitching the stars in French Vanilla Belle Soie silk. I am thinking of stitching the ampersand in either the dark green or the mauve though the chart calls for the same off-white used in the stars. I am afraid the ampersand might just fade into the antique green fabric, otherwise. The stars have enough mass to stand out from the fabric but the ampersand is just a single stitch wide throughout.
Late Sunday afternoon, my daughter dropped by to have me sort out a problem she was having reading a chart with a lot of quarter stitches and outlining ... it was the eye of a Siamese cat. She also needed help starting her long narrow wolf pack chart. She only started cross-stitching in August and I am very pleased to see how beautifully she is coming along ... though she joked that I shouldn't look at her backs. True, they are not perfect but they are really quite neat for a beginner ... just a little bit of travelling and a few slip knots caught beneath other stitching. I showed her how to start at the center of a large chart. I do find though that I am "lending" her an awful lot of my stuff: Q-snaps, scroll rod frames and the like. Ange is good about returning things [she brought my sterling Celtic thread cutter home last night - borrowed for a flight to the West coast] but this wolf pack project is a BAP finishing up at approximately 18" x 9" and she'll be needing my scroll frame for several months, if not considerably longer. When I finish with the Halloween Faerie, I will be giving her the chart and leftover Crescent Color floss and some fabric from my stash on which to stitch it. I'll need to buy three or four skeins of CC. There is a small part of me that is actually glad that Ange is about to learn the full value of all the stitched gifts she has received in the past ... although to do her justice, she has always been most appreciative and I can tell by the way my work is displayed in her home, that she treasures the pieces she has ... and with money getting tight, even I can't continue to frame pieces as extravagantly as I did in the past. I am practicing blocking, pinning and lacing techniques on small pieces so that I can graduate to framing. But I am betting my frugal daughter who doesn't share my power tool phobia will probably become a better framer than I'll ever be ... if she decides to learn ... and then I can send my stuff to her for framing. But more importantly, I am delighted she has started stitching because now we have another interest to share.

4 comments:

Eva said...

How lovely to share this hobby with your daughter! Both of my daughters stitch, as well as my daughter-in-law. The only downside to this is when they go "shopping" in my stash!

riona said...

So far Ange hasn't needed to "shop" in my stash because I have voluntarily shared ... even to the point of purchasing the first kit that caught her eye and two more that caught mine. I have moved on to kitting up projects I know she will enjoy from my own stash ... again this is all initiated by me not her. I have accelerated her transition from Aida to linen by giving her the small Plum Pudding Blessed Be to stitch kitted up with some antique green 32 ct linen. Her first three kits are all stitched on Aida. I imagine I'll have gotten over the novelty by the New Year and will stop showering her with freebies from Mom. In any case, what with her Wolf Pack, the Cats sampler and the kitten kit she has plenty to work on for well into the new year.

Suzanne said...

How great that you can share your hobby with your daughter! My mom stitched some and I remember how fun it was to go to stores with her and watch her be so enthusiastic over finding patterns that she really liked and wanted to do. Unfortunately she went blind in one eye and had to quit, but I will always cherish the things she stitched for me, and the ones I got after she died.

Suzanne

Stitcher said...

It's great when you can share this hobby with a family member but it certainly can bite into your own stash! I've taught my step daughter and initially, her wants/needs were small but lately they've grown quite substantially and I can't keep doing it. I don't know what I'm going to do as I'm her only source for stash (she's 12 going on 30),lol. The hard part for me is seeing her make stitched items for Mother's Day (for her own mother), Father's Day and other relatives but she doesn't make anything, even a little thing, for me. Maybe I'm being a little childish and pouty but I'm starting to feel like I'm just the "go to gal". Oh well.