From the archives: Autumn

Blogging daily has its challenges ... one of which is finding something of interest to say every single day. It does not bode well that I am only one week into the process and am already resorting to the tactic of a photo essay. I suspect there will be several of them as the month goes on. Though wintry weather has made its appearance in my area [in fact, it is snowing and sleeting as I type], it is still Autumn ... in fact, they are predicting temps of a more seasonable 50F for tomorrow

So. today's photo essay will explore autumn stitching. I pulled together a few of the autumn/fall pieces I have kept though I can't seem to find everything I know I have. For instance I will really have to search out the framed Prairie Schooler Thanksgiving piece so I can display it during the appropriate season.

This is the Autumn Round Robin which I sent out last April, using a design from a Prairie Schooler Thanksgiving leaflet for the top panel and motifs from BH&G's 2001 Cross Stitch Motifs for the border. I am now anxiously awaiting its return with all the other participants' stitching. It is three weeks over due and I am getting a wee bit concerned. If I don't have it in hand by the end of the week, I'll be contacting the organizer and asking for her help in recovering the piece.

On the right is Liz Turner Diehl's contribution, Autumn , to a Stitcher's Dinner project from the old Hershey stitching conventions. It was meant to be a pillow band but I finished it as a bell pull. I did finish the others, Lori Birmingham's Spring and Stony Creek's Marilyn Vredevelt 's Christmas as the pillow bands they were intended to be and gave both pillows away.

These next two were a lot of fun to stitch and are now doing duty as seasonal decorations in my living room. The first is a Blackbird Designs fall sampler, I'd have to consult one of my old handwritten stitching journals to come up with a title. Stitched with overdyed cottons on a mystery linen, it is one of my favorites. I am very fond of the Blackbird Designs style. I am reasonably certain that the piece on the right is a complimentary chart from San-Man originals but, again, until I consult my old journals, I can't be sure.

This banner was part of a seasonal series within the Secret Needle Night series the last year I was subscribing to it. It was, in fact, the only one I kept from that particular series ... giving all the others to my niece and god-daughter for her special needs classroom. I am always seeing these Secret Needle Night kits offered for re-sale on message boards or ETSY and e-Bay ... and I just don't get that. I always stitched the kits up immediately upon receiving them and then finished them up into banners, pillows, tote bags and stand-ups for seasonal decorating and gift giving. A very, very few were framed ... most just weren't the sort of thing you would frame ... frankly fun with no pretensions to becoming heirlooms worthy of the cost of professional framing.

And Miribilia's Halloween Faerie stitched using all the materials provided in the kit.

Next up are a few Thanksgiving ornaments stitched using charts from a BH&G's 2001 Cross-stitch Motifs, using scraps of linen and odds and ends of floss left over from other projects. If you wish to see a few more Thanksgiving ornaments, scroll back to the post of Friday, 11/5 for a shot of my Thanksgiving Tree.

This is Spots of Fun by Debra Draper done in an Autumn colorway on Autumn Sunrise linen from Silkweaver in a wide variety of fibers, including wool, silk, cotton, bamboo, ribbon, rayon and blended fibers. I wanted it to be a true sampler, inasmuch as I experimented with as many different fibers in the same colorway as I could find in my stash. I had a grand time with this sampler ... stitching the different motifs was addictive ... I always wanted to stitch just one more before putting the piece down for the day. And, this last is another of Handblessing's Autumn bookmarks, stitched so long ago that I can't quite remember what this 28ct linen was called but I am fairly certain it was stitched using a Belle Soie silk though I can't remember the name. You can see the companion to this bookmark in Saturday's post [11/6]