Rotation Stitching Progress Photos

Just a small correction: People seem to have gotten the impression that my Irish Stitchery post showed recent finishes ... I guess since most of my March posts have been about sewing finishes.  In truth, the Irish pieces have been done over many years and were posted in the spirit of St. Patrick's Day.  I know I have really been heating up the old sewing machine but even during one of my most frantic finishing frenzies, I can only manage two or three items a day unless they are ornaments and then the number might jump to five or six.

I haven't posted any photos of my current projects since I returned to rotation stitching, so here goes:

Monday: Cedar Hill's The Berry Patch Rabbit:  You can just see the shape of the rabbit forming: a powerful haunch and hind paw, a front leg and the suggestion of a chest.  I had to do a bit of frogging here.  The chart called for the body of the rabbit to be stitched in a blended needle of DMC 3041 and 407.  I thought it an odd choice, mauve and medium brown, but I trust this particular designer and assumed it was one of those surprising juxtapositions of color that somehow worked.  It didn't take long to discover that that was not the case, at least to my taste.  I'd like to believe it was a typo but the description frankly stated lavender and mauve.  I kept trying to tell myself that this is how a rabbit would look if it was snuggled down in the shadowy underbrush.  But I just wasn't happy with it.  Once I substituted DMC 3031 for 3041, the piece began to look much more satisfactory.

Tuesday: Town Square SAL The Cross Stitch Shop:  I have begun working by outlininging the windows and doors and the over one sign first because the actual walls of the building are being filled in with horizontal straight stitches arranged to look like brick placement ... as you can see in the lower left corner..
Wednesday: Mystic Smalls Needle Book  No progress since I was not well enough to stitch  Wednesday before last and was preoccupied with finishing this last Wednesday.  I figured no progress would be better than the regression of stitching errors and the resulting frogging so I read and napped instead on the day I wasn't feeling up to snuff.

Thursday: Midnight Moogies.  Same deal as with Mystic Smalls, only substitute Thursday for Wednesday..

Friday, Saturday & Sunday: Back to TW's stocking.  .  Truth be known, I actually spent my time Friday and Saturday on sewing and assembly finishes rather than on the stocking.  I did get back to this piece on Sunday, though.  With all the confetti stitching in the snow and shadow, this may not look all that impressive ... but, trust me, progress has been made.

I have been enjoying the variety after the three and a half month stint of stitching Midnight Moogies exclusively.  I admit I miss the satisfaction of massive progress on a single piece but it surely has been nice to add a finish or two, however small to my  sewing finishes sidebar.  It was beginning to look quite bare for this time of year.  As this month continues, I hope to be able to add a few more finishes both to the Cross Stitch Finish and Sewing Finish sidebars.  This would be a real boost to my stitcher's ego.

And I am enjoying my blog again.  I am getting to write about a variety of stitching and finishing.  It would seem that my readers are enjoying the increased variety as well since the page views per day have increased rather dramatically, over 150 a day since I stopped concentrating on the cats.    Some of the posts actually garnered more than 250 page views per day.  Those are pretty high numbers for me.  And it's not like I have totally abandoned the cats; they will be getting one day of every week.  Of course, the day being Thursday, that translates to only one or two hours a week.  Thursday is a full work day, after all.

Just a Little Irish Stitchery

Heart in Hand Wee Bird: St. Patrick's Day

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A Tie Pillow

Secret Needle Night Shamrock

A very old free chart, provenance long since forgotten

Shamrock Bookmark

Celtic Knot Heart free chart

And a Few More Finishes

Finishing seems to be addictive.  I have worked on some form of finishing every day this past week.  And I am beginning to see some patches of bare wood on my dining room table.  To keep things organized in the future, I think I shall bring only three finishing projects down from the storage area at a time.  And once I eliminate The Berry Patch Rabbit from my rotation, I'll replace it with a formal finishing day in the rotation itself.  Who knows?  This may be the year I finally catch up on all my finishes!  Stranger things have happened.  The problem is that every time I think I have gathered all the pieces needing finishing in one place, one or two more always show up ... or I decide that something I intended to frame should be a wall hanging or finished in some other sewing fashion.

Two of Phyllis Mauer's Kogin Christmas Tree ornaments.  I used hand made twisted cord [DMC Ecru] and beaded hangers on both ornaments.  I used a dark green perle floss to stitch these simple little ornaments.

And I made up a small pin pillow.  This is Papillion Creations' Moonlight Serenade.   I used a teal fabric that picked up one of the colors in an old Needle Necessities overdyed floss, trimmed it with a bit of cotton crochet lace and trimmed the edges with hand-made twisted cord [DMC 156, 210 & 211] picking up the lavenders in the stitching floss.

Some More Finishes

This has been a great month for finishing.  Not counting the totes on this post, I have managed to add 17 items to the sewing finishes sidebar just this month.  Admittedly, all of them must be labelled smalls: most are ornaments which aren't major deals when it comes to finishing.  But it is some consolation for not having a cross-stitch finish yet this far into the year.  With any sort of luck, I'll manage one or two of those within the next few weeks as well.  Midnight Moogies is fairly close to a finish.  The Mystic Smalls are moving along as well.  And the Berry Patch Rabbit is a smallish piece as well.  So, I have some hopes for listing some cross stitch finishes soon

I did finish up a few totes:

Jennifer Aiken-Smith [Dragon Dreams] Dragon of Compassion as a very girly tote for my very girly 3 year old granddaughter.  I figure since I think this finish disgustingly over-the-top fussy, Piper will find it adequate.

Papillion's Peacocks as a gift tote to be put aside till needed.  I am thinking I could use it for my Mom's birthday in April or for her Mother's Day gifts in May.

I also assembled the two Kogin Christmas Tree ornaments and made the cording to trim them and made and stuffed a small pin pillow.  All I need to do is slip stitch it closed and stitch on the twisted cord trim.  So, I should be able to add another three finishes to the sidebar tomorrow.

That brings the total for the month up to 19, with three more finishes looming on the horizon.  This pretty much clears my dining room table of all the accumulated small or uncomplicated sewing finishes of cross stitch pieces for the time being.  I do have several more cross stitch pieces awaiting tote finiishes and I have a few simple crafting sewing finishes left to complete as well.  But once those are done, I intend to work on the more complex cross stitch project sewing finishes that I have on hand and start to winnow those down at the rate of three a month.  I have nine pillows, one tea cozy and two pedestal style pincushions in my to-do basket.  It would be so nice to be able to catch up with all my finishing but that never seems to happen.  But, in this year of stitching mostly large projects [BAP WIPs and class projects], most of which will require framing rather than sewing and assembly, maybe there is some hope of coming close.  I won't be accumulating projects requiring sewing finiishes at the usual rate and will be able to deal with the back log.

One More Ornament Finish

This is a long overdue gift which I will be getting out in the mail as soon as possible.  It is Ink Circles Full Moon.  I stitched it for myself on the recommended cream colored linen but for this gift to an English stitching buddy, I thought I'd  go with this lovely purple linen to serve as a night sky background.  I love this particular design and may very well stitch it again should I ever need a Halloween exchange.  Keeping everything perfectly symmetrical calls for slightly tricky counting but the final effect is well worth the effort.  I used a tri-color home-made twisted cord for this version: three purples, one of which matching the linen.  And a beaded hanger using orange and lavender seed beads and gold bugle beads.    I backed it with a greenish black satin finish double knit fabric which, though a somewhat odd choice, actually worked very well.  All in all, I am rather pleased with the final finish and I hope Jo enjoys it once it is finally received.

And Yet More Sewing & Assembly Finishes

We had some snow Friday and into Saturday morning and I spent a cozy weekend, sipping tea and doing some ornament finishing.  Whenever I have to do some flat ornaments, I tend to wait until I have accumulated enough to make an assembly line process the way to go.  In yesterday's post I showed off the four Town Square SAL flat ornaments that I added to my collection: The Button Shop, The Book Shop, The Primitive's Shop and The Antique Sampler Shop.  But I also worked on a few more flat ornaments:

The Sweetheart Tree's Holly and Heart Christmas ornament.  I ended up using Weeks Dye Works Blue Spruce for making the Twisted Cord since I didn't have anything else on hand in the proper color range.

And an old freebie featuring a cardinal singing its little heart out amidst some Christmas greenery.  I don't have the designer's name.

Sue Donnelly's Stitcher's Hideaway souvenir ornament for the 2012 Spooky Retreat.  I am rather pleased with the tri-color twisted cord I made for this ornament.  It took a few tries to get it right but it was worth the extra effort.  I also added a little Jack-o-lantern brass charm to the beaded hanger just for fun.






That makes a total of 7 flat ornaments so far and only three more to go: a Halloween ornament from Ink Circles called Full Moon and two of Phyllis Mauer's Japanese Kogin Christmas Tree ornaments  I only managed to prep the boards for these ornaments but I should have them finished over the next day or two.  In between bouts of finishing, I have been working on my rotation projects and will post photos of those toward the end of the week.

Some More Sewing and Assmebly Finishes

Since the darling children in my religious education program seem to have passed on the rather nasty stomach bug that's going around, I had an unanticipated day off yesterday.  And I spent some of it working on additional ornament finishes.  I seem to have accumulated quite a lot of cross stitched ornaments that required "some assembly."  So, here are some photos of yesterday's progress.

I stitched together and stuffed two more small pillow Christmas ornaments but have yet to slip-stitch them closed and add a hanger.  One is an Elizabethan design [a very old freebie that I finally stitched last Fall] and the other is a Japanese Kogin design, a bonus chart in the class kit of Phyllis Mauer's Japanese Kogin Tea Cozy from the old C.A.T.S. festival.  I also stitched a Kogin Christmas Tree from that same chart pack but haven't yet gotten around to the finish-finish.

And I started work on a gift tote I will use for my 3 year old granddaughter's Easter package.  Now my dear little girl is totally into girly frou-frou and pink.  As many of  my readers know, I detest pink and prefer the minimalist approach in most things.  Less is more is a truism I live by.  So it is an act of grandmotherly love to turn Jennifer Aiken Smith's Dragon of Compassion into a tote for my Piper.  I have been playing with possible trim placements for the front of the tote and have come up with this arrangement.  I think it is well over the top which means Piper will probably think it just makes the cut.  I will finish up the tote tomorrow.  Not only is Friday my day-off but we are expecting snow later on today with an accumulation of five inches or so by tomorrow morning.  I'll also spend part of Friday working on some flat ornament finishing which I tend to do assembly line style.  I have about 8-10 ornaments that need this treatment.  Maybe by the end of the weekend, I'll have another finishing post.

Rotation Stitching Progress:  Sadly, I neglected my Wednesday assignment, the Mystic Smalls Needlebook, in favor of reading for a while and napping for a while longer.  Stitching while ill is never a good plan for me and generally results in more un-stitching than stitching.

Sewing and Assembly Finishes

When I finally got around to replacing the broken needle in my sewing machine. I zipped through a few small finishes and stabilized the edge of some blue linen so that I could start my next Town Square SAL ornament and some Silkweaver Desert Sky linen so I could start the new piece in my rotation, Cedar Hill's Berry Patch Rabbit.  Then on to some actual finishing.  Some of these finishes were already in the works when that sewing machine needle broke so you needn't be overly impressed with my diligence.  

I stitched this candle mat last summer but only got around to starting the sewing and assembly finish last month ... and then came the infamous broken sewing machine needle incident ... but I have finally taken care of that and now am catching up on the sewing finishes

Tooth Fairy Pillow:  This was a Better Homes and Gardens kit inherited from my mother when she decided to clean out her stash.  The back is the same blue and white pillow ticking as the tooth pocket.  I'll be sending this to my rather precocious grandson who, at five has already lost a tooth.  But, with luck, he'll have it in time for the second one.

La-D-Da Cardinal ornaments:  stitched a veritable flock of these little guys and still have one more ornament cut in the proper color to stitch yet another.  I like to stitch these cardinals when I have a bunch of floss leftover from kits: I stitch the little scarves in whatever colors come to hand.  Waste not, want not.  And I have six more birds for my Christmas tree.

Rotation Stitching Progress:
Monday: Cedar Hill's Berry Patch Rabbit.  I substituted Silkweaver's 28 ct cashel linen in Desert Sky for the recommended R & R Sea Fog linen and am using the recommended DMC colors.  I toyed with the notion of replacing them with silks but I didn't have the range in khaki tones that would have been required.  Since I wanted to get this into the rotation before Easter, good old reliable DMC will do quite nicely.  Not enough progress to warrant a photo.  That will have to wait till next week.
Tuesday: Town Square SAL The Cross Stitch Shop.  I substituted Silkweaver Marine Blue 36ct linen for the recommended Norden Flax 28ct linen.  The 36 ct is to keep it more ornament sized and the blue is to keep it consistent with the others in the series.  I have made a few other changes as well, substituting Crescent Colors Spinach for GAST Lexington Green so as to stitch from stash.  I also made the window boxes the same spinach green as the window trim to avoid having the flowers look like they are growing out of the window frame instead of out of the planter box and I'll be filling in the window glass with a pale blue, one strand over two threads.  And I'll be stitching the door in fawn and spinach and reserving the Indian Summer for the brick stitch instead of using the mulberry for the building itself.  Again, not enough progress to warrant a photo.  I only managed about an hour and half of stitching time before having to go to work.  Next week, I hope to have a photo for you all.

And on today, it will be back to the Mystic Smalls.

The Stocking SAL

First and Foremost:  Here is my progress on my TW The Woodland Angel Christmas Stocking.  I haven't worked on it since October 2012.  This is what it looked like at last sighting and the second photo shows current progress.  I am working my way around the bottom, a section of the chart at a time.  Even Teresa Wentzler herself admitted in a comment on my blog back in 2012 that the chart layout required by the limitations of the publishing program was somewhat baroque.  Getting my rhythm back for TW stitching is taking a while and I made very little progress in the last 24 hours.  I love TW designs but they require concentration and a good clear eye.  After so many months working on the very straightforward blocks of color stitching in the massive Midnight Moogies, I have had to shift gears dramatically to work with the confetti stitching, half and quarter stitching, blended threads, and general delicacy of the design.

As you can see in the second shot, I have made a good start on the toe section.  But unless you click on the photo to see it in greater detail, you won't be able to see all the confetti stitching of the snow though the shadows show up well enough.  I will continue to work on it for the rest of Sunday and hope to make a substantial dent in all the various shades of the snow.

I know that according to the SAL rules, the photo was supposed to be posted on 3/2/13 but by the time I thought of it, the sun was setting and the light was fading.  So, I hope my colleagues in the SAL will forgive this late posting.

Not a Cat in Sight

I thought I'd start March by demoting the cats to just one project in a five project rotation.  

So here goes:  

I have kitted up the next Town Square ornament, The Frame Shop ...

And I have kitted up Cedar Hill The Berry Patch Rabbit from stash, making a few substitutions as needed/desired.  I am determined to stitch primarily from stash for the next little while.  I have so much fabric and floss of all kinds that it seems pointless to buy more.  So things may not be stitched exactly as charted but at least I'll be reducing the amount of stuff my heirs will have to dispose of.

I have joined a Stocking SAL that meets on Fridays and posts photos every fortnight.  The next photo is due tomorrow, March 2nd.  So I shall spend the day stitching Teresa Wentzler's Woodland Angel Christmas Stocking in order to have something to post..  I may very well spend the entire weekend working on the stocking.  And next week I shall reinstitute a proper rotation. The cats will just have to wait till their turn comes up again.  They have monopolized my stitching hours long enough and shall now be relegated to just another piece in the current stitching bag.

So here's the planned rotation:

Friday, Saturday & Sunday: TW's The Woodland Angel Christmas Stocking
Monday: Cedar Hill's The Berry Patch Rabbit
Tuesday: Town Square SAL The Cross Stitch Shop
Wednesday: Mystic Smalls Needle Book
Thursday:  Midnight Moogies
Friday, Saturday & Sunday: Back to TW's stocking

I am giving the stocking the entire weekend because it is extremely complex and I want to have it finished well in time for Christmas 2013.  But that's not all: I want to start and finish another stocking for a second grandchild with the same Christmas 2013 deadline.  All the other projects are for me and I can be quite patient but the two stockings are time-sensitive.  My third grandchild will just have to wait till 2014 for his stocking.