Theme-a-licious Looking Backward & Forward VI

June was Jumanji June, birds and animals.  As I didn't have any pieces with either of those I stretched the definitions to the limit and stitched on two Round Robins and a guinea pig piece where I tested a chart out for a friend's new website.

Here is the second Round Robin I stitched during June.  This one is for the Band Sampler RR and this is Angi's piece:

The threads are all provided by Angi, it's like having a miniature needlework store in your home!  They were all different brands, not a DMC amongst them, it was great fun choosing.
The broader cross stitched bands are from the Antique Lace Band Sampler by Northern Expressions Needlework.  I won the complete back catalogue of Nicole's designs recently and was desperate to stitch one!  I changed the colours to suit Angi's palette.
The narrower speciality stitch bands are from Just Nan Summer Sampler which I just framed having stitched it about 10 years ago.
I put UK for my location as we don't have two digit county abbreviations like the States.

And here is the whole piece so far:

Here's the Just Nan Summer's Day the bands came from:

And some close-ups of the more delicate bands:

Those bead clusters weren't finished so I unpicked the first one and re-stitched it positioning the beads more neatly.

July's theme is 

Jolly July - It's a jolly holiday with your WIPs...you can concentrate on Christmas designs, ornaments, or even pick a different holiday to render in stitchy goodness.

Heather does point out it could be Hallowe'en as well as Christmas (or 4th July for Americans, which is something special about your country breaking away from the parent land like a lot of ungrateful children LOL).

In a perfectly timed fashion, through my letterbox today appeared the Christmas Ornament Preview issue of Just Cross Stitch magazine!  I love both the Second Day of Christmas designs by Praiseworthy Stitches and Plum Street Samplers.  I presume they both did Partridges last year?  I checked the actual ornament special issues (2010 and 2011) and they are not in there.  There is a random Monsterbubble 4th Day of Christmas in one of them so I'm thinking maybe I should do a mash-up of the Twelve Days with a different designer for each day.

Several people have commented on the number of finishes I have so far this year - 37!  It looks impressive but only one is actually a large project, the Dark Alphabet which took over a year to stitch.  I'm band on target to complete 75 projects the same as last year.  Stats-wise we look like this:

BAP - 1

Round Robins - 7 pieces

Small Freebies - 15 (including 5 for the Needlecraft Haven monthly challenge and 1 designed by me)

Cards - 11 (including 6 of the WOCS Flower of the month and 1 designed by me)

Small charts - 3 (2 of which were giveaway prizes I won and the other was my oldest UFO)

So my total stitching spend on charts appears to be zero this year!  My budget thanks the generosity of my fellow bloggers and the amazing range of freebies available on t'internet!

Finally the second postcard in the Summer Postcard Blog Hop is winging it's way to Mouse.  Head over to Tales of a Stitching Mouse to see what Jennifer has sent to Mouse.

There is still plenty of time to join in if you'd like to submit a stitched postcard click the picture below for more details.