Happy Dance Duo

Not one but two big finishes this month!!

First up is the Joan Elliott Faces SAL started in 2014.  Joan released a block each month featuring an adapted face from one of her existing designs.

I decided to stitch the skin on the first face over one and was really pleased with how she turned out.

The second block was charted as a rather chonky cat which I wasn't fan of so I left that block blank.

I did complete the centre with some lovely over one butterflies from another of Joan's fairies

I eventually stitched this lovely owl:

When the third block was released I just stalled on the skin as there was so much of it!

I finally completed her in 2020 and  decided to focus on just one or two blocks per year and work through them all in time.

The owl and the dragon were completed in 2021

The unicorn and the beading on the centre block were 2022

This pair were completed in 2023

And the final two blocks in 2024, just in time for it's 10th Birthday!

The second big finish is Nora Corbett's Capricorn, started and completed this year.  The beading did take a while, she is the most heavily beaded out of the Zodiac Girls plus it's difficult in the Summer holidays to find time to sit and bead, I need to spread everything out on the table to do it properly.

stitched on 32 count Murano in Capricorn from Sparklies

Look at all the beads!

Finally, I hope to get these two framed and on the wall as soon as possible.  I'll do Faces myself but my framer will be in charge of Capricorn.

October IHSW

 

IHSW or International Hermit and Stitch Weekend always starts on the third Friday of the month.  It's a chance to lock yourself away and focus on your stitching for the weekend.  You can take part on your blog or via the Facebook page - IHSW on Facebook.

Once again, I worked on Friday so my weekend got off to a late start, bath-time to be exact!  This is Framed Fright by Barefoot Needleart from the Just Cross Stitch Hallowe'en Ornament Special:

stitched over 1 on 28 count Moondust evenweave from Crafty Kitten

I used a Victorian Motto Sampler thread called Violet Grey for the Castle, it is subtly variegated and was a gift from Beth in IL.  The tree and bat are DMC 310.  There is supposed to be an ornate frame all the way around it but I didn't fancy stitching all that yellowgold so I will use a scrapbook frame instead.

I finished that one on Saturday evening so I started a new bath-time stitch, another one of the designs from this year's Just Cross Stitch Hallowe'en Ornament Special.  This is Happy Halloween by StitchyFish Designs:

stitched over 1 on 28 count linen from a Crafty Kitten grab bag

Basically I am using up scraps of fabric and choosing designs that suit the fabric colour.

Saturday and Sunday daytime was dedicated to my Just Nan Autumn Mouse Scissor Roll and we have another finish!

Scissor Roll stitched on 32 count Vintage Country Mocha linen

Here are the four sides of the roll when it is all rolled up.  The lining wool is doubled over at the pumpkin end to make a little pocket for a pair of scissors.  These ones are a little bit too tall.

I am not really a fan of sewing but it didn't take too long to blanket stitch all the way around.  The whole piece is 10 inches long when unrolled.  There was the added incentive of my next new start when I finished it too!

This has been my Unicorn chart for many years (along with Mirabilia's Touching the Autumn Sky).  This was a Limited Edition for Silver Needle and I was lucky enough to be sent this chart by a destashing stitcher earlier this year.  It had to go to the top of the list!

stitched on 28 count Wood Violet linen from Permin

SCREAM HOUSE!!  Yes, I got the Scream House chart and finishing instructions!  The project is charted for 30 count linen from Weeks Dye Works which is incredibly difficult to find here.  I wanted to go slightly larger so you can see all the details so when I went off to the needlework shop to collect my Owls of October II, I had a rummage through the linens to see what I could find.  This is called Wood Violet and is more purple than it is showing.  It's a Permin linen which means it is stiffer than Zweigart but that's OK because stiff is better for 3D creations.  

The charts calls for DMC and some Weeks Dye Works threads.  Four of them have good substitutions in DMC but the 5th is for the borders so I dug out this silk by Stef Francis which appears to be called "49" and was a gift from Mouse.  It is mostly all purple and pink apart from that patch of yellowygreen in the middle.  It is nice to be using gifted threads.  I have 13 days left this month, let's see how much I can stitch by the 31st.

Finally, the next IHSW will be 20th - 22nd November so make sure you note the date in your diary or come and join us in the Facebook Group - IHSW on Facebook. If you don't do Facebook then you can check in here by leaving a comment on my post.

August Stitch from Stash and Pie

Well, August turned out to be a very productive month, with no fewer than 5 finishes!

Here is the Pie:

Yes, those couched lines on the Discworld Mappe took nearly 2 weeks to stitch.  To be fair, some of those days were very short because it was sometimes difficult to get the enthusiasm to start on them.  I also stitched the lovely silver stars around the edge of the Mappe.  I intend to do a full post this week dedicated to the Mappe, so I will show lots of photos then.  In the meantime, here's another full picture of it:

stitched on 32 count Murano custom-dyed by Sparklies

Holly Noel by Just Nan was the first finish at the start of the month and then it took 20 days to get another finish.  This is the Alice freebie from Passion Creative:

stitched on 28 count linen from a Crafty Kitten grab bag

The original is charted in two shades of grey but I knew I wanted blue for Alice.  Originally I planned to use the dark blue for all the darker stitching but having done her eyes I realised it was just too dark.  So I used the intended lighter blue for the rest of the dark stitching and chose a new light blue.  I love the way this turned out and hope to scrapbook it very soon.

The next finish up was my Summer Sampler SAL with Leonore.  We have both been stitching Just Nan's Morning Meadow over the last eight weeks.  Here's my finish:

stitched on 32 count pale green linen (matches DMC 772)

I didn't have all the charted threads or beads so I substituted blended DMC for the Caron Waterlilies, standard DMC for the Perle and beads which I did have in my stash.

I also made those bunnies darker so they would show up better

This is a very early Just Nan - JN013 copyright 1993, the year I started stitching.  She uses some absolutely wonderful speciality stitches in this sampler.  Some I was familiar with and some that were new to me.  The butterfly stitches are fantastic and I like the satin stitch flowers too.  She uses Mosiac Stitch to great effect, there's so much texture in this piece.  I do wish she would do more band samplers but I have several in my collection so I can't complain too much!

Another Just Nan was the final finish for the month.  This is Jasmine Mix, 49 x 49 stitches but 17 colours and 1 kind of bead:

stitched on 32 count Vintage Country Mocha linen

I absolutely love this one.  The way the B5200 just pops off the fabric and those gorgeous dark pinks, the splashes of yellow.  Great little design.

I did purchase a little treat this month.  I saw a former shopowner selling off some Just Nan exclusive kits from when she owned a shop, for a bargain price and had to snatch one up!  Then the Just Cross Stitch Hallowe'en Special came out so that's an essential purchase.  It is very good this year, now I just have to figure out how to fit a couple of the designs into the rotation!

August
Just Nan Regency Roses	£8.50
JCS Halloween mag	£7.50
Total	£16.00

Finally, with only 2 days left in the month after completing Discworld I decided to pick up a very old project.  So old, it's not even on my WIP list as I didn't discover it until I was stash-diving for old finished pieces to FFO.  This is Bramble Harvest from Needlepoise charted by Judith Stanley in the days of hand-written charts.  This is just the cover, I literally have some blackberries and a row of Fly Stitches and it's a finish!

look at that price tag - £7.50 for an entire kit!

Frankly, I think I prefer birds.

What am I supposed to do with eight milkmaids - AND their cows?  Is this some kind of joke?  If so, I'm afraid I don't find it very amusing.
Emily

12 Days of Christmas (Correspondence) - John Julius Norwich

Emily obviously feels the same way about cows as my Nana did!  This block took quite a long time to stitch compared to the previous blocks.   I think it's the amout of colour changes and small details.  Once again I did the background with just one thread.

In the evenings I have continued with the header.  I have completed both angels and the two Christmas Roses now:

Here's where I finished last month:

And here is where I am now:

I have also stitched on both my Hallowe'en pieces this month, the theme on the blog was Creepy Trees which fit perfectly for Happy Hallowe'en (see this post) but not for Witches by Oberlin Samplers.  However I wanted to get both pieces ready for September's theme which is Spooky Woods.  So here is another Witch:

And the whole piece so far.  Like Happy Hallowe'en it could be complete but has words above and below the figures:

One of the SALs for Cross Stitch Finish Line this month was called Guess What? and each day we had to post first our fabric, then our thread, then 25 stitches per day until Reveal Day on Day 7.  Here are my 7 photos, see if you can guess before the Reveal:

Day 1 - 28 count Jazlyn in Aurora by Crafty Kitten

Day 2 - Threads, mostly purple and yellow

Day 3 - 25 stitches

Day 4 - 50 stitches

Day 5 - 75 stitches

Day 6 - 100 stitches

Any ideas yet?  Two people had got very close guessing the designer straightaway and narrowing it down to one of her Fairy designs.  Shame there are so many to choose from!

Here's a close-up of the part I was stitching:

And here's the Reveal - Joan Elliott's Fairy Dreams AKA Little Reading Fairy AKA September Fairy from the 2013 Diary AKA Year of Magical Stitching:

I've carried on stitching a little bit each day and here's where she is now:

Finally, we had a Tenuous Shoehorn Linky Party on 8th August, the linky is still live if you'd like to join in any time this month.  I love reading the different posts and it would be nice to see more!

Click here to join in.

A Plethora of Small Finishes

You may recall back in March I made several small starts as part of March Madness?  Well, I have now made several small finishes!

In no particular order here they are:

This is my own design of a Union flag in a heart shaped stitched especially for Sarah-Beth.  She won one of my Epiphany Giveaways and we decided to do a little "local" exchange.  I sent her some local-to-me things and she will do the same.  As well as the local items I sent some Jubilee goodies too and thought a card would be nice.  I didn't feel like rummaging through all my mags to find designs which weren't quite right so it was actually easier to jot this down on graph paper and stitch it up!

I only stitched the red and blue, the white is the fabric.  Purists will realise there should be white spaces between the diagonal red stripes and the horizontal/vertical stripes.

If you'd like to see what else I sent her, then pop over to Sarah-Beth's Cross Stitch Blog and see for yourselves.  I was particularly pleased to get her the woven badge she wanted.  The company that makes them went out of business some time ago and my local gift shop was selling off the old stock, this was the last one in the shop!

The next finish is the Spring Heart by Gazette 94 to go with the Autumn previously stitched:

This was a very cheap frame from QD, the hearts are printed on the glass, clever isn't it?

I've just started another Band Sampler Round Robin on the Yuku Board.  My theme is "Purple with an Accent".  I am asking each stitcher to use DMC 333 as their main colour plus one other.  They also have to stitch with a fake British accent.  Not really, but it would be fun!  Here's my band:

This is stitched on Sparklies' Purpleberry Spludge, a great name for a great colour.  Last year's band sampler was amazing and alot of the same stitchers are doing this year's so I'm really looking forward to it.

The final pictures are actually 2011 finishes but I couldn't show them until now.  Dawn from Crafty Kitten found out she was expecting a baby due in January.  As she would be on maternity leave in January I decided to order my fabric just before Christmas so she could dye it over the holiday period.  I got an email on Boxing Day from her hospital bed saying "Baby came early, don't worry about your fabric, hubby is getting it ready to send to you"  That is the sort of customer service you get from Crafty Kitten, beautiful fabrics come Hell, High Water and Newborn Babies!

Anway, Nic, Hannah and myself collaborated on a Round Robin afghan for baby Sam.  Here are my two blocks in close-up:

This cute little dragon comes from here - Free Cross Stitch Charts

And this is the Tralala cat I have stitched before, available free from Socreastitch

I changed the colour of the dragon to blue and simplified the colours used ALOT.  There were 26 different colours used originally which I reduced to about 10!

Here is the whole piece in all it's glory:

This was a lovely afghan from Sewandso,  reasonably priced and very soft.  It specified "18 count evenweave" on the website so my brain said "that mean 36count which is equivalent to 18count aida".  When it arrived it really was 18count evenweave and a very loose evenweave too.  So the choice was to stitch over 2 and get 9count equivalent or stitch over 1.  Which I did.  Moral - read and believe the website.

Dawn was thrilled to bits with the present which arrived this week.  She sent us a lovely photo of Sam with it, I forgot to ask permission to post it here, so I won't just yet.  But his expression is priceless - he's got his arms stretched out wide going "how big is my blanket?"!!

BTW, Hannah is taking a break from blogging as she has one of those job-things which takes up alot of time at the moment.  She's in touch via FB and email and is keeping well in case you were concerned!

The other 2012 finishes can't be shown yet as they are all gifts.  If Parcelforce had got a move on I could've shown Christine's but they haven't so you will have to be patient along with her!

Finally, only three more followers until my 250 Giveaway!