Serendipitous Jo and Her Amazing Technicoloured Theme-tas-Stitch Post

Theme-tas-stitch is hosted by Kerry

Each month Kerry gives us a theme to stitch to and we show our progress on the 21st of every month.

Monochrome May - Choose a colour and stitch on your projects that contain that one colour.

As you can probably tell from the title, I failed happily at this theme!  I don't have a single monochrome project to stitch right now.  We almost have a rainbow - we have Red, Gold, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet and Pink (instead of Indigo!)

I stitched on pink on Vickie's gift, Just Nan's Memories:

Some lovely blue eggs in Nora Corbett's Gathering Eggs:

Variegated Violet in Brooke's Books' Stitcher's Alphabet:

Red and Gooooooollllllllldddddddddddddd in Joan Elliott's 12 Days of Christmas:

And plenty of green and yellow for Gathering Honey by Jannlynn Designs:

I completed the whole of the bottom left hand corner and the words, top and bottom.

Despite my best efforts I couldn't quite finish the whole piece.  I have some extra bits to do around the lettering and some stalks to add to those floating strawberries.  And a tonne of French Knots on those two plants that currently look like thistles, plus the centre of the strawberry flowers and the blue periwinkle flowers.

Because it's a very loose weave fabric I will be going round the back and trimming all the visible threads, you can clearly see one behind that bee and there are plenty of others.  That will be the last job I do before framing.

So that's my unmonochrome May.  Thankfully, next month is garden themed so this will be perfect.  Except I will have finished it by then!  So it's a good thing I will still have this project on the go:

Day 141 of my Ten-a-Day project.  Just Nan's Spring in the Square:

Finally, in one month's time we will have reached The Longest Day and the nights will start drawing in!  Time for a stitching marathon.  Last year I stitched on every single one of my WIPs during the longest day, swapping projects every 20-30 minutes.  I stitched on a total of 21 projects that day.  This year I plan to beat that as I currently have 23 WIPs (excluding Gathering Honey which will be completed by then).  I have my work rota for June and I'm not working on Tuesday or Wednesday so Tuesday will be prep day and Wednesday will be Marathon Day!  Anyone care to join in?  If Wednesday isn't convenient, pick any other day that week!

Dearest Edward

What a surprise - four calling birds arrived this morning.  They are very sweet, even if they do call rather loudly - they make telephoning impossible.  But I expect they'll calm down when they get used to their new home.  Anyway, I'm very grateful - of course I am.
Love from Emily

12 Days of Christmas (Correspondence) - John Julius Norwich

Joan Elliott has gone for the modern Calling Birds (1909 version only) rather than the traditional Colly Birds (1700s onwards) which are blackbirds.  I expect she liked the blue rather more than black!

If you are interested in the different versions, check out this Wiki page - The Twelve Days of Christmas.  Two versions have Canary Birds, some have Coloured Birds and one has Ducks Quacking (1864), so Emily got off quite lightly there!

I have decided to stitch all the background parts of each block with just one strand so they don't overpower the main feature.  I also changed the French Knots to tiny over one crosses to make them more even.

Here is the whole piece so far.  I have stitched all the red on the second Angel and will continue the border this month.

Theme-tas-stitch is hosted by Kerry

Each month Kerry is giving us a theme to stitch to (or shoe-horn our existing stitching into).  We link up on the 21st of each month.  The theme this month is:

April Showers - What pieces do you have that contain water?  It might be rain, river, sea or lake - see how many stitches you can make!

We need a gigantic shoe-horn for this one, nothing watery at all unfortunately.  The first piece is my Just Nan So Many Stitches project.  I started this as part of March Madness for Theme-tas-stitch and then have continued to put 30 stitches per day into the project.  Today I added some Ice beads.  Ice is frozen water.

Stitched on 32 count Antique White evenweave

That was the small shoe-horn, now the large one.  What needs water to survive?  What do we always say when it rains?  "Oh well, it's good for the garden".  So here's a little garden:

This is Just Nan's Spring in the Square - Day 112.  So that's 1,120 stitches doing just Ten-a-day for the FB challenge.  Recently I've been adding lots of colour to the flowers.

Here's a larger garden:

This is Gathering Honey by Jannlynn.  Last time I stitched on this I completed the top left hand corner which was very time-consuming with all the colour changes and fiddly fractionals.  This time I have finished the entire border (yay!) and the top right corner.

I stitched the bees first:

And then added the honeycomb around them.  For the bottom left corner I will backstitch the bees after the honeycomb because some of their legs got a little lost doing it first.  The honeycomb is three strands of thread and the legs are only one.

Hopefully I can complete the bottom left this month and then focus on the bottom right next month.  That's more fiddly flowers.  Then there's some writing to add top and bottom and it's done!  So if not a May finish, then it should be one for June.

Finally, thanks to everyone who took part in the Easter Treasure Hunt Blog Hop.  The competition is now closed and I will be drawing and announcing the winner in my TUSAL post on Wednesday.  My Blogaversary draw will continue until the end of the month.  Don't forget, anyone who links up for GG gets an extra entry into that draw.  

Theme-tas-stitch March Madness

Theme-tas-stitch is hosted by Kerry

Each month Kerry is giving us a theme to stitch to (or shoe-horn our existing stitching into).  We link up on the 21st of each month.  The theme this month is:

March Madness - Work on as many different projects as you can - you could do one a day or have a day when you see how many you can stitch on.

I have my set rotation which means I knew I would stitch on 7 projects in March already.  I also knew I wanted (and needed) to focus on M is for Mary this month so I needed a plan!  Here are the main 7:

1. Just Nan Spring in the Square for the 10-a-day challenge:

Day 80 - 800 stitches

2. Joan Elliott 12 Days of Christmas for the Christmas Ornie SAL:

and regular evening stitching on the thin red line to the right

3. Brooke's Books' Stitchers Alphabet for The Alphabet Club:

4. Imaginating Happy Hallowe'en for the Hallowe'en SAL:

5. Oberlin Witches, also for the Hallowe'en SAL:

6. Nora Corbett M is for Mary which is my focus piece for the month:

Wings and Bling to be added

7. Lavender & Lace Enchanted Alphabet Spooky Conversion:

To reach 31 projects for the 31 days in March I needed another 24 projects.  I didn't want to start pulling out other WIPs for just a length or two so I needed something small or a part-work.  I considered an Advent Calendar (24 days) or another Alphabet (the Erica Michael's one has 24 blocks) but in the end I went for something totally different - a Just-Nan-athon.  Over the years I have collected a lot of her small free charts and have stitched a few.

Here are a few more:

Most days I did one length of thread immediately after my 10-a-Day project before I started anything else.  The one in the middle got more done because I went to work that day and stitched during my lunchbreak.

They are, in clockwise order starting top left:

Christmas Rose

Christmas Star Ornament

Christmas Hearts

Victorian Rose

Royal Blossoms

Snow Forest

Lacy Diamond

Holly Knot

Have a Heart (centre)

Holiday in Ice

Butterfly Rose

Noah's Rainbow Painted Lady

I am just picking fabrics as I go, all 32 count to keep the sizes the same but sometimes the charted colour and sometimes my own choice.  I have 11 more to start for the rest of the month, one for each day and 2 on Saturday.  When I started these I wasn't sure how I would continue with them but Linda had a great idea in her recent post called "So Many Stitches a Week" so now my plan is to pick one and work out how many stitches I need to make each day to finish it in a month.  They average 40x40 but are not full coverage so there are probably only 800-1000 stitches in each one.  Which is roughly 30 a day.

So once March is done I am going to add one of these to the daily rotation and see how many I get done by the end of the year.

🌟🌟  Blogger of the Week   🌟🌟

Finally I wanted to say a Big Thank You to everyone who has visited and commented on the new Blogger of the Week Blog.  We have featured three bloggers so far and have more lined up.  I send a few questionnaires out at the beginning of each month to keep the answers fresh and current.  If you would like to be featured in the blog please do email me.  Also, could you talk about it on your blog to reach people I don't know!  I would love to expand my circle of blogs and I am sure that you all have followers that I don't know yet.

Theme-tas-stitch February Finish Focus

Theme-tas-stitch is hosted by Kerry

The cousin to Theme-a-licious, one of my favourite themed SALs and the birthplace of the stitching shoehorn!  Each month Kerry will be setting us a theme to fit our stitching into and then we link up on the 21st of each month.  Because there's a lot going on at the end of the month already!

Focus Finish February - 

Is there a WIP in your stash that you would love to get finished - then focus on a finish in February!

My current rotation is to stitch on my four monthly SALs and then focus on one project for the rest of the month with a view to making some major progress on some of my BAPs.  This month it was the turn of my Chatelaine.  A new start on Gardens of London.  Highly unlikely to see a finish there!   But here is my progress so far:

Day 1

to

Day 10 

stitched on 32 count Belfast Linen in Cotton Clouds by Crafty Kitten

I'm using a combination of the recommended DMC, some of the speciality threads (just started the Dinky Dyes silk) and my own conversion.  I've got a Jodyri thread lined up next.

This is absolutely going to be a long term project, we're looking at years rather than months but it's been a long time ambition so I'll just enjoy the journey.

I have also been looking at some Finish-Finishing this month.  So far we have a framed finish with a fabric border:

Just Nan - Counting Bats

A hand painted box frame:

Nora Corbett - Little Snowy Gray Cottage

A simple wooden frame from a charity shop:

The Workbasket - Fox Forest

A low-sew cube:

Amint Kipatten - Tiny Heart

and some scrapbook pages for my Hallowe'en scrapbook:

Witchy Stitches - Witchy Brew

and

Lizzie*Kate - Sampling Hallowe'en 

I keep my scrapbook finishes quite simple and I've left room for an additional pattern to be added on each page.  I am quite pleased with the variety of finishing styles I have used this month.  It was a deliberate decision so I would have something to show for this post!  Thank you Kerry for the incentive.

Finally, I've been ten-a-daying now for over 50 days which means I have over 500 stitches on my project piece:

Just Nan  - Spring in the Square

520 stitches.