June Smalls SAL

The Smalls SAL is hosted by Stitching Lotus

This year I will be showing my Hallowe'en and Christmas SAL partworks and any other Smalls I may stitch.

Happy Hallowe'en by Imaginating gained a green frog and a green lizard for Something Green:

Witches by Oberlin Sampler became Itches:

A Goose was a-laying in Joan Elliott's 12 Days of Christmas:

And I completed, not one, but TWO Just Nan ornies.  Here are Christmas Hearts and Victorian Rose:

  

Here's where I am on Day 13 of the next Just Nan, Royal Blossoms:

And Day 181 of Spring in the Square, also by Just Nan:

I also made a card for a friend's wedding, the design is by Stitchrovia:

I also made some "small" progress on each of my WIPs and UFOs for The Longest Day Marathon:

That would actually make a good competition - spot the design!

Over to Pie; this month my focus piece was the Discworld Mappe with ten days of stitching.  It would have been a full fortnight but I fitted in my marathon and the wedding card.

Spending-wise, it's been a good month for Stitch from Stash.  

June
CS Sub	£8.72
Crazy sub	£3.00
John Lewis	£20.00
Total	£31.72

But magazine subscriptions are exempt and I used gift vouchers to buy the fabric so a zero SFS spend.  The first part of SFS has finished now and I have plenty of credit which is nice.  In "real" temrs I have spent £ 116.80 over six months which is just under £20 a month.  That does include gift money and magazine subscriptions.

Finally, we have a new Blogger of the Week, so don't forget to pop over and leave a comment.  This is our 19th Blogger of the Week and once we reach the half year mark (26) I will be doing a giveaway which will involve you having paid attention to the 26 featured bloggers.  You have been warned!

June's Stitching Spot WIPocalypse

WIPocalypse is hosted by Measi's Musings
Also linking up with 17 in '17

Each month we have to share the projects we want to complete before the End Of The World.  I have chosen my "17 in '17" which are the 17 projects I want to focus on this year.  You can see the full list on this page here.

This month I worked on ALL my outstanding WIPocalypse projects, thanks to the Longest Day Marathon.  You can see them all on that post but I will show the ones I worked on for more than 30 minutes here as well.

1. The Stitcher's Alphabet by Brooke's Books:

2. 12 Days of Christmas by Joan Elliott:

3. Witches by Oberlin Samplers:

4. Happy Hallowe'en by Imaginating:

5. Spring in the Square by Just Nan:

6. The Discworld Mappe by Lyndisfarne Designs:

Custom-dyed 32 count evenweave by Sparklies

I just love stitching on this project but today is the last day of the rotation and it's on to Enchanted Alphabet for the 26th tomorrow.

Following feedback from the Longest Day Marathon I have decided to put The Autumn Tree into the bathtime stitching slot and get it finished.  I am making excellent progress with the border on 12 Days of Christmas which was in that slot and I have no doubts about finishing it before the end of the year so a little rest won't hurt.

Measi always gives us a discussion topic:

June - Show is your stitching space!  Where do you sit, and what is going on around you while you stitch (TV, audiobooks, etc)?

So here is my stitching spot, at the kitchen table.  You can see the laptop with a rather familiar blog open.  The round red tin is my ORTS tin with a needle minder on top which is where I put my needle when I'm changing threads.  Next to that is the bag for my current project, then my stitching diary (with the cat's face), in front of that is the chart and my scissors.  And of course, the project!  You can see that I stitch in hand with the fabric rolled so the stitching is inside the roll and not being touched by my hands.

To the left is my bag of threads, this is a large brownpaper bag holding the five rings of Floss-away bags which contain the full set of DMC:

What is going on around me depends on who is there.  If hubby is at home then it will be Planet Rock on the radio as he's not keen on FlossTube!  If the boys are at home then it might be a YouTube channel called Good Mythical Morning or it might be carefully selected FlossTube videos.  The Large Boy likes Pepe, Jimmy FlossTube, Garrett, and Denkai's husband Mike.   He also likes Stitcherista and Tracy P and anyone with a cat.  He will quite often be playing on his iPad while I'm watching something.

Finally, feedback from the Longest Day Marathon also indicates a desire to have a Shortest Day SAL too!  So I have created an event on FB for 21st December the Shortest Day in the Northern Hemisphere.  It will be four days before Christmas, we'll all be working our socks off, up to our ears in mincepies and present wrapping so who has got time to stitch?  Find some time in your lunchbreak at work, the queue at the supermarket, while the mincepies cook, the Christmas Carol Concert or the part of the Nativity Play that YOUR child isn't actually in.  The challenge is to manage any stitching at all! 

Turtle TUSAL

Although there isn't actually a Turtle on here yet.  There will be eventually.

It's TUSAL time, the Totally Useless SAL where we all show our ORTS and link-up on Daffycat's blog.

Here is my TUSAL with the current project:

Here's a close-up of the main project which is this month's focus piece, the Discworld Mappe by Lyndisfarne Designs:

And here's the cover photo with a circle around the area I've been stitching:

You may also have spotted a fully-finished object in that photo too.  It's the fourth of my Just Nan Ornaments, Victorian Rose, stitched on 32 count green linen which looks more blue in the photos!

The reverse

I couldn't find a suitable backing fabric at all so I simply finger-pressed the edges and folded them over.  Whip-stitched the folds top and bottom and then whip-stitched the central seam together with some small bugle beads I had in my stash.

Here are all four together:

 L-R: Christmas Rose, Christmas Star, Christmas Hearts and Victorian Rose

Finally, I got some very exciting news this afternoon.  One of the local artists who supplies our shop with cards, fridge magnets, prints and bookmarks is branching out into cross stitch!  She has a deal with Bothy Threads to convert four of her designs into cross stitch to be released at the beginning of next year.  Here are the four they have chosen:

and here is a link to her website where you can already purchase the cards, prints and other merchandise - Love Country UK.  I am so excited for her and can't wait to see the finished pieces.

Longest Day Marathon 2017

This time last year I had the fun idea of stitching ALL my WIPs and UFOs on one day.  I chose the Summer Solstice as the Longest Day for the most stitching hours.  You can read all about last year here.

This year I decided to invite FB friends to join me live as I posted and several people did so.  Quite a few are stitching today as it is the actual Solstice today.  I was out of town so I had to do it a day early.  Kaye in the Southern Hemisphere stitched on just one project as it is their Shortest Day.

So where did I start?  By getting all the projects out and putting them on the bed:

You can see that I like to keep my fabric rolled in tubes, the long ones are wrapping paper tubes.

The first project was my 10-a-Day, Just Nan's Spring in the Square:

Followed by my 30-a-Day, Just Nan's Royal Blossoms:

Then I moved onto my 30 minute rotation.  Each 30 minute slot included getting the project out, photographing the before picture, stitching, photographing the after picture and loading onto Facebook.  So there's less than 30 minutes of actual stitching on each one.

Here we go with Project 3 at 9.00am:

Happy Hallowe'en by Imaginating

Stitched the L

Project 4 at 9.30am:

Witches by Oberlin Samplers

Started the W

Project 5 at 10.00am

The Stitcher's Alphabet by Brooke's Books

Stitched the border for X

Project 6 at 10.30am

The Enchanted Alphabet by Lavender & Lace

Started the M

Elevenses!

Project 7 at 11.00am

Gardens of London by Chatelaine

Stitched some background

Project 8 at 11.30am

The Discworld Mappe by Lyndisfarne Designs

Stitched some land!

Project 9 at 12.00 noon

Little Snapdragon by Kustom Krafts

Stitched some wing

Project 10 at 12.30pm

Dragon of the Winter Moon by Dragon Dreams

Stitched some Kreinik spines

Lunch

Project 11 at 1.30pm

Mermaid by Joan Elliott

Stitched an arm

Project 12 at 2.00pm

Gathering Eggs by Nora Corbett

Stitched more sleeve

Project 13 at 2.30pm

Memories by Just Nan

Stitched some pink flowers

Project 14 at 3.00pm

Faces Mystery SAL by Joan Elliott 

Stitched more ribbon and some leaf

Project 15 at 3.30pm

My Lovely Sewing Tools by Marie Suarez

Stitched some cream border

Project 16 at 4.00pm

Coffee Fairy by Yiota

Filled in some coffee

Project 17 at 4.30pm

Art Nouveau Head by the Craft Collective

Stitched some brown 

Project 18 at 5.00pm

Bande des Dragons by Dessins DHC

 Stitched some red scroll

Teatime, forgot to take a photo!

Project 19 at 7.00pm

Spring Sampler with motifs from The Samplermakers

Stitched some green leaves

Project 20 at 7.30pm

English Transitional Sampler by The Scarlet Letter

Some Holbein Stitch 

Project 21 at 8.00pm

Around the World in 80 Stitches by Papillon Creations 

Stitched some green border 

Project 22 at 8.30pm

NOEL by Ernie Bishop

 Stitched some more of the O

9.00pm - Storytime with The Large Boy, reading Science of the Discworld III

Project 23 at 9.45pm

Autumn Tree from an old Yahoo Group 

Stitched five eyelets just to say I worked on this one!

Project 24 at 10.00pm during the Small Boy's bath

12 Days of Christmas by Joan Elliott 

Stitched some green leaves in the border 

Apologies for the poor quality of some of the photos.  Some were from my iPad and some were just "point and click, move on to the next one".

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Today is the posting day for Kerry's Theme-tas-Stitch too, which is:

Jardin June - Venture outdoors and put some stitches in a piece which has a garden or floral theme.

Several of my projects fit this theme.  Project 1, 2, 7, 9, 13, 19 and 21 to be precise!  I have also completed and framed a beautiful garden design since the last Theme-tas-Stitch post and gave it to my friend today.

Gathering Honey by Jannlynn Designs!

My friend loved it and said she hadn't forgotten she'd asked me to stitch it for her but thought I had!  So she was really pleased to see that I hadn't.

Finally, I really enjoyed the Stitching Marathon and it was lovely to have people stitching and commenting along with me.  It was so nice to get some of the older projects out again.  Some are mammoth pieces and will take years to finish while others could be done in a week or two.  But then there are my active WIPs already in the rotation!  So much to think about and plan.  I will definitely be doing this again next year anyway.   So make your plans now to join me!