Triple Hearts, Round Robin and Papillon Progress

First up, my Triple Hearts finish:

Heart 1:

Heart 2:

Heart 3:

All three together:

These hearts came from the lovely Every Time Hearts chart Minnie sent me for being her 50th follower.  I chose 2 of the hearts and stitched them as charted but using only the pinks and purples provided.  Then I picked a 3rd heart and stitched the outline adding the names and date to the middle.  I also used silver metallic for the dots rather than gold and added a few more than charted!

All three were stitched on 40count Newcastle using 1 thread over 2 and framed in this perfect white distressed metal triple frame from QD!!  They are currently hung on my conservatory wall until I know when I'm seeing the newly-weds next.

Next up is the latest instalment in the Band Sampler Round Robin, Laura's Celtic piece.  Laura rather over-estimated the amount one can stitch in a round and made her sampler 190 stitches wide!  Angi did a sterling job and managed the entire width with some gorgeous Celtic lettering in the middle.  It was then decided that I would baste two columns of 90 stitches and the remainder of us would just stitch one half or the other.  My piece is a another Northern Expressions Needlework design, Celtic Leaves.

And here is the whole piece so far:

I changed all the colours to co-ordinate with the green theme started by Laura and Angi.  Nicole's charts are really great to stitch from, nice, large and clear.  There are good clear instructions for the speciality stitches all written in a friendly chatty style which makes you feel like a friend is teaching you to stitch!  If you look at the Designs page on her blog there is alot of background information about the design process and inspiration for each chart.  Fascinating stuff.

And finally, here is my "cheat" to feel like I'm keeping up with Papillon's Around the World in 80 Stitches SAL.  I'm just stitching the outlines of each part LOL.  My cunning plan is to stitch the outline as soon it is released then do the filling in as and when I get time.  That way I can avoid the annoying "two stitches in one colour and nothing else" thing which is so time consuming.  If I do all the backstitch vines in each part then I can do all of each colour across several parts in one sitting.  That's my plan anyway!

Progress at 3rd August 2012