Theme-a-licious April Update

Theme-a-licious is hosted by Heather of It's Geek to Me

Each month Heather thinks up a theme for us to stitch to, or in my case, a theme to somehow shoe-horn my existing stitching into, no matter how tenuous the link!

April's theme is:

Amazon April

Dip your needle into the vast swath of fabric dedicated to your BIGGEST projects!

The first BAP is the Large Mirabilia Round Robin.   We decided to make the boxes twice as large as usual (5,000 stitches rather than 2,500) as we could fit more of the design in.  There are three groups of four stitchers and we get 12 weeks to stitch rather than the usual 6 weeks.  Even so, of course, I was still stitching almost up to the limit!

This the Archangel Michael:

This is his Bling:

And this is the whole of the design so far:

Julie chose Angels as her theme and designed this incredible layout herself.  The fabric is PTP Heather Lugana and is really soft and lovely to stitch on.  Archangel Michael is one of the less stitched Mirabilia designs which is one of the reasons I jumped at the chance to stitch him.  I don't think I'd ever do the full piece for myself but it is nice to stitch something different.

There is a ton of metallics, beads and treasures even in this small piece of the design, 12 of those little topaz diamonds for a start.

That's it for this theme so far!  I still have Sophia's Band Sampler RR glaring reproachfully at me from the corner of the room so I must crack on and finish that next.  Then the choice is between Joan Elliott's Green Goddess and the Scarlet Letter Sampler.  Difficult decisions indeed!

Thank you all very much for your Congratulations on my recent Blogaversary.  I'm glad you liked the cute photo, I have cute photos of me up until the age of 7 or so, then I'll just post a picture of a cake or something LOL.  It was great to read about all your progress (or lack thereof) since last Easter.  I remember alot of the projects so I must have been paying attention throughout the year.

I allocated everyone a playing card and got the Large Boy to pick a card, any card and not put it back.  Then do it again because it's my 2nd Blogaversary so we'll have two winners.  The winners of a small something are........

Giovanna

 and 

 Emma/Itzy

Finally, I just noticed a few more followers have joined me, heading towards 400 now, so there's another excuse for a little giveaway.  I'll wander off and try think of something interesting to ask you all.  You don't get anything for free on this blog, you have to work for it!

Theme-a-licious February Update

Fan-Girl February is this month's theme.

I plan to stitch on a choice from my four favourite designers - Joan Elliott, Just Nan, Nora Corbett and Teresa Wentzler.

So far this month I have stitched two different Just Nan projects.  The first one to be completed is one of her smalls, Spring Peepers.  I have had this chart and charm for eons and the fabric for a couple of years.  Thanks to the Just-Nan-a-thon it finally came to the top of the list.

Stitched on 28 count blue evenweave.

The design is very simple, mostly plain cross stitched with a few eyelets and some beads.  I used standard beads rather than the petites (because I didn't have the petites!).  There are four backstitched frogs in gold.  To liven up the lilies I added four straight stitches to each one using DMC Light Effects (the pink one!).  This made a huge difference to the piece, I love them!

Here's how my Just Nan smalls are displayed:

Some of them aren't Just Nan but rather than have gaps they're up there too.  My Dad made this shelf based on one I bought from a House Clearance shop which was just 10mm too small all round to fit the frames.  Typical.

The second Just Nan finish was for the Yuku Board Band Sampler Round Robin.  Kathy's theme was Just Nan in blue.  Here are my bands:

My bands come from the Burgundy Stocking and the Evening Star Sampler.  I changed the colours to fit in with Kathy's scheme.  I also added the beads to my band as I noticed Kathy had stitched the same band in different colours so I echoed her bead placement.

And here is the whole piece so far:

It's now off to Sophia to finish and return to Kathy.

This evening I started my Joan Elliott Round Robin piece based on the 6 Flower Fairies.  The other 6 participants will be stitching a Fairy each and I'm stitching the centre piece made up of 6 of the flowers.  I don't have a progress pic but here is my plan produced on the computer:

Finally a Big Thank You to everyone who took part in the Secret Stitching Sweetheart event yesterday.  It was such fun visiting all the blogs and seeing everyone guessing who'd sent which piece.  The bonus piece on my blog was by Mouse.  I will be doing it again next year, and if you can't wait that long, there will be an online Easter activity too.  All you will need is an Easter or Spring related stitched picture to join in.  Keep your eyes open for the sign up sometime towards the end of March.

Dilemma!

Blogger is driving me crazy!  I can see my blog in read-only mode but can't get at the Dashboard.  I have to go into someone else's blog, leave a comment to log in to Blogger then I can edit my own blog!  And my Picasa photo album is having a tizzy fit too and won't load any photos.  I have to add them to my blog then move them into the relevant photo album then delete them from the blog.  aaaaaaaaghhhhhhhh!

Anyway I have a decision to make about thread colour.  I want to stitch this fairy for my great-niece who is due any time.  I have a piece of raspberry aida to stitch her on but can't decide on thread colour - magenta? pink? purple? a total contrast?  Any ideas?  I want to do a plain colour not a hand-dyed but other than that I'm not sure.

The fairy is a Passione Ricamo freebie, there are several different fairies on their site.  If you click on "X stitch brand line" on the left hand side of the screen it will bring up the link to the free charts.

I have finished a cute Japanese Beckoning Cat design by Joan Elliott this weekend and framed it in a bargain frame.  The bric-a-brac people left a box of bric and brac in our Toddler Group hall and while I was moving it to a safe place I couldn't help but notice three picture frames.  I was told everything was 10p so I generously gave them 50p for all 3!

The cat is known as Maneki Neko (or Beckoning Cat) and more information can be found here.
招き猫 These are the Japanese characters for Maneki Neko which I might try stitching along the bottom of the picture.  Alternatively I might find some oriental braid and fix that along the bottom.  I found a great shop in town recently which sells lovely trimmings.  The shop is at the grotty end of town and is a bit tatty on the outside.  Inside it's a jumble sale but they do have some great finds if you don't mind rummaging.

Flower Fairy Finished!

Finally, I have finished the Cherry Blossom Flower Fairy that was the cover kit with WOCS 176.  I have moaned so much about this kit elsewhere!  The threads were a nightmare to sort, so many shades of brown, beige and cream.  I had to compare and contrast with my DMC stash to get them all right in the end.

I made a couple of changes in the backstitch, grey for the wings and red for her dress.  I also coloured the aida in before I started stitching using a nice pale pink felt tip pen.  Then I backed her with pink card which gives a lovely pink hue to the fabric.  I shall experiment more with colouring aida scraps when I do some card making as it seems to work quite well.

The mount came free with the magazine, they actually charged people an extra £1 this issue but as a subscriber we get it all for the same price which is nice.

Sarah-Beth is having a needlebook exchange and one of the joining-in conditions is to tell her your first finish.  So I rummaged through the cupboard in the small boy's room and found a box of my early work.  These two are my first ever finishes, I can't remember which was the very first, they are like twins!  As you can see they are beautifully framed in click-frames - no expense spared!  If I find a space for them I will reframe in something much nicer.



Actually, you can't see the click-frames cos I took the glass off to photograph them!  I think they are DMC own brand and I did the blue one first because I prefer it now.  Has anyone else got pictures of their very first finish?  Leave a comment and put a link to the picture.

I took a few more photos this afternoon and uploaded them onto Picasa.  My online photo album is a little scary now, there are 85 photos in the pre-2011 album alone!  And that doesn't include all the projects I've given away.  I have my 20 year anniversary in 2 years time, wouldn't it be great if I could achieve 200 projects by then!  I have photos of over 100 so far, all I need is a list of the finished but not photographed and I could see how many I need to stitch by the end of 2013.

IHSW weekend and a new letter

Last weekend was an IHSW (International Hermit and Stitch Weekend), see Random Ramblings for more details.  Since the birth of the small boy I have no social life so every weekend is a Hermitage for me!  Anyway I started my 4th project in my 11 in '11, it's very Rolf Harris* at the moment.  There's about a week's worth of evening stitching here (2 hours an evening).  Hopefully it will get more interesting soon.

The other project I'm working on during the day is the cover kit from WOCS which is a flower fairy.  A certain friend of mine who shall be nameless called Hannah was on the Reader's panel this month and described it as "a nice quick stitch".  It is not nice and it is not quick!  The threads were horrendous to sort out, so many shades of brown, beige and peach.  Luckily they had given the DMC numbers so I was able to compare them with the colours in my stash, otherwise I would have mislabelled at least 6 of them!  It's been a tricky stitch too but does look nice.  I have an idea for framing in one of my favourite box frames and look forward to posting it here.

The next part of The Dark Alphabet is out this week, D is for Devil.  A Note of Friendship have chosen a spinning monkey to represent the devil.  Apparently this was used in Dutch samplers, they say "A "spinning monkey" is an iconic representation of the Devil, standing for folly, laziness, lechery, and vanity. His punishment is that he will be turned into thread."  So there you are, educational as well!  The pinning is an in a spinning thread on a staff not spinning round in a circle getting dizzy a la small boy.  This letter features a stitch called "Detached Buttonhole Stitch" which looks suitably fiendish to stitch.  I think I will wait to see someone else's stitcher version before attempting this letter.  I have stitched A and B and they are proudly displayed on ANOF's gallery.  I've started C is for Coven but put it aside to keep my Cover Kit Resolution for April.

* Can you tell what it is yet?