Interim Progress report

I have been concentrating on ornaments, to the exclusion of all other projects lately. I am determined to catch up to my goals in this area by the end of the month. I am up to 37 stitching finishes and 23 sewing/assembling finishes for the year, way down from previous years when I seemed to stitch much more. In addition, the majority of my finishes this year have been "smalls": ornaments, fobs, pin cushions. I have stitched a few medium sized pieces and have been plugging away at my BAP. I have to figure I am either slowng down with age or just don't seem to devote the same amount of time to stitching as I have in the past ... and yet I do stitch almost every day.

This is what I have accomplished over the past few days:

The Quaker Fruit Basket [my own design using an amalgamation of Quaker motifs appropriated from some Workbasket's charts in my possession] which is the June entry in the Bride's Tree SAL series. This is a bit different than the design I charted in a recent post ... I made the top of the basket broader and reconfigured the handle as well as adding a broader base to the basket. I am pretty happy with the final product.

The Quaker Fish [the July entry in the Bride's Tree SAL] ... So far all I have stitched is the outline ... I am still working out the rest of the design on graph paper. I believe I have worked out a rather Quaker-ish pattern of scales which I will stitch tomorrow. I visualize working the head of the fish in solid cross-stitch using a negative space [unstitched] Quaker motif for the eye. I still haven't worked out the design for the tail but it will probably be the upper half of a Quaker diamond motif, turned on its side. I am toying with the idea of working the scales in black and adding an outline of cross-stitches separated from the current outline by one space all around, also in black. The head and tail would be worked in the same salmon I have used for the primary outline.