Stitching Update: 12/07/2017

Hat trick for this week:  My stitching update.

I have two finishes this month.  The first is for an ATC swap in the Cross Stitch Card and ATC group on Facebook.  I stitched this on a 25-count opal Lugana I hand-dyed myself using a limited edition hand-dyed floss from Colour and Cotton.

The pattern is from the 2016 Ornaments issue of Just Cross Stitch. This and a few other goodies will be shipping out to my swap partner this week.

I also finished the December block for the Lakeside Needlecraft Under the Sea SAL.  I stitched this on the custom-dyed fabric from Lakeside Needlecraft, which was a blue ombre' 25-count evenweave.  I used the called-for DMC threads as well.  Design is by Durene Jones. 

I swapped out the DMC Light Effects for a sparkly green blending filament I had, which worked MUCH better.  I also used small clear opalescent size 12 seed beads for the water bubbles (rather than just DMC stitches).  I have a frame on order for this which would hopefully be here next week!

For the rest of the month, I'm going to be working on 3 pieces.  First up, my Desert Mandala Chatelaine. Sadly, the designer of this piece, Martina Rosenberg, passed away unexpectedly yesterday - she was an amazing artist and she is definitely going to be missed in the community.  I had this on tap to work on this week anyway, but it's a nice little tribute to her design skills to think of her while I stitch on it this week. 

I have the center medallion done except for beads, and I've started working on the next ring, which are various cacti.  The colors are absolutely spot-on for the high desert!

Next week, I'll be focusing on the 12 Days of Christimas, with design by Jim Shore.  I only made a small start on it this year when I began it during Maynia, but it feels appropriate to work on it during the holiday season. It currently looks like: 

Finally, the Full Coverage Fanatics first quarterly SAL is kicking off on 12/21/2017. It's a winter-themed SAL that will run from them until the spring equinox on March 21, 2018.  I'll be working on my Winter's Encounter piece, with artwork by Linda Prindle and charted by Heaven and Earth Designs. 

I had also started this originally during Stitch Maynia, but I was unhappy with my fabric choice, so I restarted it in October on 25-count Easy Guide and like that much better.  I've only got about 500 stitches in so far, so I'll be working on the upper right-hand corner with all.that.pink for a while.

Stitching Wednesday: October 11, 2017

I've been concentrating on just a couple of projects so far this month.  I put in 5 days of work on my Desert Mandala from Chatelaine and finished up all the cross-stitching for the center medallion.

The only thing left to finish on this is the backstitching of the little pink flowers/cactus leaves, and of course the beading (which are the open/non-stitches spaces throughout), but I'll be doing that at the end.  I feel like I should be able to accomplish the backstitching in one decent stitching session in November, and then I can start section 2, which is the saguaro cacti around this center piece.

I then moved on to work on my Lakeside Needlecraft Under the Sea SAL, October block.  This is block 10 of 12, so we're in the home stretch!  I'm obviously not finished it quite yet, but here's my progress so far this month on the little scuba diver:

I need to finish up the cross-stitching and then backstitch this block (and whew! there's a LOT of backstitching in this one).  Once I get this block done, I'll go back to working on my Star Weaver from Heaven and Earth Designs for the end of the month - with one exception which is I'll be starting a new October/Halloween themed full-coverage piece this weekend: Witch Way.  I love the artwork (by Molly Harrison) in this piece!

Stitching Wednesday: September 27, 2017

Trying to get back in the blogging groove after our vacation mid-month.  I'm switching up a few things and changing my rotation for the next few months until the end of the year.  (If you are interested in more than you probably want to know, feel free to check out my YouTube channel - I uploaded a new plans/works in progress video this week over there.)

Essentially I'm going to move to a smaller group of projects to rotate through for the rest of 2017 so I can finish up a holiday gift.  I'm going to work on 2 other projects - my Chatelaine Desert Mandala and the Under the Sea SAL interspersed with the focus project - my Star Weaver storykeep from HAED.

I did get the September block finished for the Under the Sea SAL from Lakeside Needlecraft. The September block gets us to the bottom left-hand corner of this piece with an uber cute sea turtle.  I think this block might be my favorite so far.

Here's the whole sheebang so far.  Three more blocks to go!  I'm stitching this on a custom-dye 25-count evenweave that was available from Lakeside Needlecrafts in an ombre-dye.  It's showing grayer in these pictures than in real life.  I'm using DMC floss as called for, and stitching this 1 over 1.

My focus project is my Star Weaver storykeep with artwork by Tom Cross, charted by Heaven and Earth Designs.  I'm stitching this 1 over 1 on 28-count Monaco. Here's my progress up to last night.

This piece is basically 3 full pages. Pages 1 and 2 are complete, and I've started page 3.  I've got about 6000 sts left on this one, so I'm going to keep plugging away on it because I really want to have it finished and framed for Xmas this year!

Stitching Wednesday - August 9, 2017

Good progress on Shoot The Moon (mini) this rotation.  I am almost finished page 5, and this means I started the ribbons in the fairy's hair. I have perhaps 50 or so stitches left to finish up page 7, and I'm through pages 1-3 completely, so I can move my scroll frame up a bit before I work on this next time - which will be September.  Pattern is charted by Heaven and Earth Designs with artwork by Lee Ann Seed.  Stitched 1/1 on 28-count evenweave I hand-dyed in a gradient colorway called Dusk.

I then worked on my Under the Sea SAL from Lakside Needlecrafts, with artwork by Durene Jones. The clue was actually pretty quick to stitch this time - and added a manta ray to the group. I had budgeted 6 days to work on this, but I finished it up in only 3.

This is being stitched on a 25-count evenweave from Lakeside Needlecrafts.  It's a printed ombre'd fabric in watery colors that was an exclusive for this pattern/SAL.  Four more blocks to go!

Since I have a couple of extra days in this rotation, I'm going to put in a few days' work on Star Weaver from HAED, and then Sunday I'll start back to work on my Chatelaine so updates on both of those next week!

Stitching Wednesday - July 19, 2017

This week I've been working on my Under the Sea SAL from Lakeside Needlecraft, and I started and finished up the July clue.

I made some changes to the original design of the mermaid.  I wasn't thrilled with her face - her eyes looked a little odd to me - so I turned her in profile so she's chatting with the cute little green fish and altered her hair to make that work. This finished up my 6-day rotation on this piece, and I'll be waiting for the August clue to work on next month.

I also have been participating in the Dog Days of Summer SAL through Cross-Stitch Finish Line for the last week.  The SAL ran 07/14 through 07/19 (today), and I worked for 30-60 minutes on different projects for each day to correspond to the themes/prompts.

07/14 - S: Seashore.  Under the Sea SAL. (You can see that above).

07/15 - U: Umbrella.  A Stitching Shelf.  I added in a few hundred stitches of confetti on this piece and no, you can't see the umbrella in the area I worked on, but there is one in this design further down.

07/16 - M: Design name beginning with M.  I started Mabon by The Primitive Hare.

07/17 - M: Munchies - something to do with food.  Welcome Autumn (which has a pumpkin).  See below also for R.

07/18 - E: Eternity - a piece taking forever.  I changed up my project choice and worked on the Under the Sea SAL since that's a year-long project (which feels like an eternity).

07/19 - R: Red - a project with the color red in it.  I also decided to stick with the Welcome piece since it had red in it and it was still on my Q-snaps.  I worked on the lettering this morning since that is in a pretty wine red color.

For the next 6 days, I'll be working on block #4 of Village of Hawk Run Hollow.  I'm hoping to make some decent progress on this block this rotation. Here's my current status on this piece.

Stitching Wednesday - July 12, 2017

I had a page finish for the Shoot The Moon project - which nicely closed out my 6-day rotation on that project for this month.

I was very happy with my progress on this piece this month.  The project has 12 pages in total, so if I can try to get one done every month's rotation thru the end of this year, it'll be half finished.

I also snuck in a small finish.  I've been working up the set of Celtic festival inspired freebie patterns from The Primitive Hare, and Lammas is coming up on August 1st. These only take a couple of hours to stitch up, so this is already finished!

I stitched this using a scrap of hand-dyed 28-count linen from my shop (colorway Time Traveler), using a hand-dyed variegated cotton from Ship's Manor for the letters, and a limited edition Gentle Arts colorway for the stalks, and then Oxblood, Winter's Wheat and Dark Dune hand-dyed cotton threads from Colour and Cotton for the rest. I backed it with some neutral cotton fabric I had in stash. I love how it came out!

Starting July 7th, I began the next 6-day rotation working on Star Weaver, which is a storykeep sized (aka bookmark) piece charted by Heaven and Earth Designs with artwork by Tom Cross.

I finished the first page last month, and I've been working on page 2 of 3 (and a wee bit extra) this rotation.  I just started the very peak of his pointy hat yesterday.

This one will get a few more days of focused work (through the 12th) and then I'll rotate on to my Under the Sea SAL.  The July clue was released at the beginning of the month, but I've opted to wait to work on it a bit so I can use the project for another SAL being hosted by Cross Stitch Finish Line for the Dog Days of Summer. The idea is to pick one project a day for 6 days (the 14th thru the 19th) that fufill the criteria for S-U-M-M-E-R.  I've picked:

07/14 - S: Seashore.  Under the Sea SAL.
07/15 - U: Umbrella.  A Stitching Shelf.
07/16 - M: Design name beginning with M.  Mabon by The Primitive Hare.
07/17 - M: Munchies - something to do with food.  Welcome Autumn (which has a pumpkin)
07/18 - E: Eternity - a piece taking forever.  I'll head back to work on Star Weaver a bit.
07/19 - R: Red - a project with the color red in it.  Solitude ornament.

Next week, I'll have photos of those projects and hopefully an update on the Under the Sea project too.

Stitching Thursday: January 12, 2017

Last week, my New Start for the New Year piece, Village of Hawk Run Hollow was up in my rotation to be worked on.  I started this New Year's Eve, and worked on it pretty steadily for the first week of the year, to get me to this point on block 1.

My plan was to try to stitch up one block a month from this piece (there are 12) over the year, but this is one of the simpler blocks and I wasn't able to finish it, even with a lot of focused attention, in a week, so I may have to rethink the plan for this.

This week for my rotation, I opted to work on my 2 SALs - Lakeside Needlecraft's Under the Sea and Tempting Tangles Welcome mystery SAL.  Under the Sea started on January 2nd, so I had the pattern downloaded and ready to go.  This month's motif is a little octopus chasing a fish.

I'm using the called-for DMCs, except I substituted a handpainted cotton from Colour and Cotton for the lightest green, and for the backstitching color.  I also added a blending filament in with the DMC for the seaweed vine to give it a bit of sparkle.  This block is essentially done.  The only thing not completed are some little white "bubbles", but I think I'm going to place those out with clear or white/pearlized size 11 beads.  I'm going to wait and see what the other blocks look like before I decide on that.  I can always go back in and add those.

For the rest of the week, I plan to work on the Tempting Tangles SAL and get caught up on that.  (I've already got clue 9 and clue 10 releases on Friday.)  If I've got time left then between now and Saturday, I'll go back to working on Village and see if I can get that finished up before rotating on to my Decorating the Wreath project.

One thing that I have decided to do is personalize the Village piece.  I am going to be changing out the names of things in the Village to match names of my grandmother's family in their little area of central Pennsylvania, including changing things from Hawk Run to Moose Run (as that's the creek that runs through the area, and the name of the road they lived on).  So I need to plot out the changes for block 2 to customize that before I get there in February.