Weekend Progress Report #50

Normally, I try to post my Progress Reports on Sunday night but I was just too tired last night. Well, I am still too tired but I wanted to share these two photos.

It's time to shut down the dining room sewing station and get the house ready for Christmas. I got absolutely nothing done in the way of sewing finishing this month so far ... my work schedule has included one 10 or 11 hour day after another for the past ten days ... Christmas is a very busy time in the parish ... but the Christmas break, all ten lovely days of it, may be another opportunity to catch up.

Stitching Progress: Here are the photos ... not much accomplished on this front, either.

Workbasket's Quaker Santa. Still plugging along nicely, I have reached the point at which I'll be adding the white for beard, hair and hat trim ... I'll probably use Belle Soie Icing ... it'll depend on whether it shows up as having a blue or a yellow undertone to the white when I lay the floss against what I have stitched so far in Cranberry. As I remember the color, it's a fairly true white with slight blue undertones ... but I have yet to pull it from my stash and lay it beside the Cranberry. I haven't decided whether I'll use a gold or black silk for the buckle and buttons or just leave both unstitched. Again, a floss toss will determine that. I am guessing this little darling will just barely make it to the tree for Christmas ... considering I still have to stitch a monogrammed and labelled back as well. The November Angel will be post-Christmas stitching but will make it onto the tree before I take it down on Little Christmas/Epiphany/January 6. That's a promise I have made to myself!

Town Square SAL: Wild Hearts Design's Fire Station. I had intended to use all these Town Square pieces to make a quilt, but as I go ahead with each project, I am finding that the different designers did not conform to the same scale. The jail, saloon, train depot and town clock will look all right together ... but this fire station piece is turning out to be ornament sized when stitched on 28ct like all the others ... I'll finish it up as charted and use it as an ornament ... but then I'll have to rechart it to fit the scale of all the other pieces. I left my John James Petite needle in place to give you a sense of the scale. I am kicking myself for not seeing this before I started stitching ... after all, the stitch count on the doors of the station as compared to all the other pieces should have clued me in immediately. As I have explained many times on this blog, I have little or no spatial intelligence ... I am all good on the verbal/linguistic and logical/mathmetical intelligences ... but spatial issues will always have to be worked out in real space before I even see the problem. But at least I have discovered a touchstone I can use before starting any other chart ... check out the size of the door as compared to the doors of the finished pieces before starting on a new piece as charted ... and make any adjustments needed before picking up a needle. See, that's the logical/mathmetical intelligence kicking in now that I've been hit over the head with a spatial problem. The solution will be simple: when recharting, I'll make the fire station [garage type] doors twice the height of the train depot door [normal house type] and then use a simple ratio equation to work out the proper width, comparing the height/width of the doors on original fire station chart with the height of the door on the adjusted chart to determine the new width.