Finally Fully Finishing Fun for September

Hosted by Rachel the Ten Hour Stitcher

This SAL is designed to motivate us all to do something with that box of Finished pieces instead of just storing them under the bed.  We will all be linking up on Rachel's blog on or after the 10th of each month (10 Hour Stitcher - 10th of the month).

Grab a coffee, it's going to be a busy post!

I started off scrapbooking some Just Nan smalls:

Jump for Joy and Floral Sunshine:

Thanks a Bunch and Happy Bluebird:

Potpourri and Fairy Roses:

Then I did some papercraft.  At the beginning of the year I stitched a series of inspirational words by Jessica Savage.  There were only 6 in the series and I was a little unsure how to finish them.  Then I saw a nice folding book idea.

I got some stickers from Etsy to fill in the blank spaces.  On the reverse, I used the snarky sayings from our work calendar from a few years back!  I saved the back page that had small versions of each month because they were too funny to throw out!  Here they all are:

The book folds up like a concertina and I added ribbons so I can tie it up and stop it unfolding:

Here's a video clip of the book being unfolded:

This was an easy finish and one I will definitely do again.

I scrapbooked my lovely Alice freebie:

Love the sparkly ribbon, I bought a lot of it so can use it some more.  It is perfect Disney Cheshire Cat colours!

And this very old finish which was also a freebie, this time from The Little Stitcher:

I plan to stitch some more small Alice themed designs and add them to that page.

Finally, I finished my Judith Stanley for Needlepoise sampler - Bramble Harvest and framed that!

stitched on 28 count Annabelle evenweave

There are so many pretty details in this sampler

Satin stitch used to great effect

different weights of thread to create texture

A simple frame from a charity shop.  By luck, the mount was the perfect size!

January Smalls, Stitch from Stash and Pie

The Smalls SAL is hosted by Mary's Thread

This year my Smalls will be my JBW 12 Days of Christmas ornaments which I started on Boxing Day 2019 for the 12 Days of Stitchmas.  I completed the first one on Day 9:

stitched 1 over 2 on 40 count white linen

I finished the 6th Jessica Savage Word on the 16th January:

stitched over 1 on 25 count blue evenweave

I was hoping there would be more than 6 of these.  Maybe I will design two more myself.

This is the latest Just Nan Small; Christmas Friends:

stitched on 28 count beige evenweave

I would love to complete 12 Just Nan Smalls this year.  Last year I managed 8 but then stalled on this one.

As usual I have prepared a Pie to share with you all; a Stitching Pie.  I include my main focus piece for each day.  A "day" may only be an hour of stitching or it may be 5 hours but it all averages out.  

I managed to stitch for nearly half the month on the Discworld Mappe which went from here:

to here:

sttiched on 32 count Murano custom-dyed by Sparklies

My original plan was to stitch on the Alice in Wonderland SAL for 3 days per month starting with the border at the beginning of January.  Which I did.  But then the next issue came out on the 23rd just as I completed my 15th Day of Discworld.  So I started on the first block straightaway.  Here is Alice watching the White Rabbit disappear down the corridor:

stitched 1 over 2 on 32 count yellow Belfast linen 

I rather like the more sketchy effect of only using one strand of thread instead of two.  It also makes the backstitch so much easier as you can actually see the holes in the linen.

I've been stitching the blue borders while I watch TV and the motifs inbetween at bathtime.

When I completed my second 3 day stint on Alice I had 6 days of the month left, one of which was a full work day.  I knew I'd only get an hour at lunch to work on my Small so I used the Tiny Decision app to choose which project I should stitch the rest of the days.  The first day came up as the Brooke's Books' Stitcher's Alphabet (which I showed in my WIPocalypse post) then I spun again for the remaining four days and got Nora Corbett's Gathering Eggs.

Last time I worked on her was the Longest Day Marathon last June and she looked like this:

In four days I finished the purple ribbon, the aqua skirt and started the white fill-in:

stitched on 35 count Vintage Country Mocha linen

I do enjoy stitching her but for some reason she seems to take a long time!

Finally, my Stitch from Stash figures.  I have done this every year except one since the beginning when it was a Blog Challenge.  Now it's on FB and hosted by the lovely Ms Oh Sew Crafty.  It was a very low-spend month, I only bought two skeins of DMC from the local Wool Shop.  I am planning another cheap year with only magazine subscriptions and essential threads/bead purchases.

January
2 skeins DMC	£1.90
Total	£1.90

December Smalls SAL

The Smalls SAL is hosted by Mary's Thread

This year I have been stitching Christmas Ornaments from the Just Cross Stitch Ornament Specials 2001 to 2009.  I have almost finished this month's ornament which is a design by The Sweetheart Tree called Merry Christmas.  So here is the top part only:

stitched on 32 count linen

I just need to add beads and fully finish it as a bellpull ornament like the other two, albeit slightly larger.  Here are the other Sweetheart Tree Ornaments I stitched for this SAL:

   

I did complete another Word in the Jessica Savage series for Cross Stitcher magazine.  This month it was Embrace:

stitched over 1 on 25 count blue evenweave

All five so far:

At the end of November I joined in with a new SAL - 1 small snowflake for 26 days by Stitchonomy.  I did well to start with but work and pre-Christmas busyness caught up with me and I finished it after Christmas.  I decided to use all beads instead of the charted colours.  The blue are some unbranded beads I had in my stash and the white and crystal are Mill Hill (00479 and 00161).  The fabric is a random piece of opalescent blue linen from stash:

I made a few changes, the blue beads are a bit bigger than Mill Hill and wouldn't all fit so I tended to leave them off where they got too crowded.  The "sparkles" she added on the 27th day are the little single stitches and small motifs inbetween the snowflakes.  I used a Madeira silver metallic for them.  Finally, I added a snowflake charm that Mouse sent me for Christmas.  Now I need a round frame!  For maybe just a round mount for a square frame.

This was a lovely SAL, not too demanding, any other time of the year I would easily have managed one motif per day.  You can buy it from her Etsy store now - Stitchonomy Etsy

I have now started the 12 Days of Stitchmas, originally I intended to stitch a band sampler but serendipity demanded a 12 Days design which I received as a Christmas gift.  Here is the cover:

And here is Day 1

And Day 2:

My plan is to stitch one length of green  border on each day and one colour on Day 1.  If I complete Day 1 then I'll stitch one colour on Day 2.

Then throughout 2020 I will finish one ornament per month.

Finally, I had a Smalls Tree this year!  Usually I have a section of our main tree for stitched ornaments but this year I decided as I had made quite a few myself there were enough to put them on their own tree:

How many do you recognise?

The gifted ones are mostly on this side:

November 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.  Links at the bottom of this post.

This month I focused on the Discworld Mappe by Lyndisfarne Designs.  Here's where I was on Friday:

And here's where I am now:

Genua is a country across the main continent from Ankh-Morpork, past the Ramtops and Überwald. Genua as a country makes its money by taxing the Vieux River traffic in a manner that cannot be called piracy, because it's the government doing it.

At some point the royal family of Genua died out due to inbreeding over the generations, which had become so bad that the last male heir kept trying to breed with himself. With the line extinct Genua requested that Ankh-Morpork nominate a suitable new king. They rewarded their most successful general Tacticus, making him a duke and sending him to Genua. As the new king of Genua his first act after assuming the throne was to declare war on the biggest rival: Ankh-Morpork. This led to the downfall of the Empire of Ankh-Morpork.

In more recent times the city was ruled by Baron Saturday regarded by some as a wicked ruler, but able to get away with it due to his good looks and charming smile. Chaotic though his rule may have been, most people remember it with fondness when the Baron was overthrown and replaced by the Duc and the fairy godmother Lilith. Under the tyranny of Lilith Genua became a fairy tale city, clean, tidy and full of happy people (if they wanted to stay alive that is). As Nanny Ogg put it "why do they need all these guards all over the place when everyone is so quiet and well behaved?". Theft was punished by decapitation, but so was the crime of 'not fitting it' as toy makers were locked up for not singing while they worked and innkeepers were imprisoned for not being fat enough.

Genua is a country of cooks and carnivals. It is said that in Genua there is not much to cook, so the cooks learn to turn anything and everything into a gourmet meal. Ingredients that might make an Ankh-Morporkian or a Lancrastian feel ill include: whiskery things, tentacled things, snake's head (animal product, not name of a plant), dead leaves, things dredged out of mud. The annual carnival is called Fat Lunchtime, where there is costumed dancing and drinking on the streets on the night of Samedi Nuit Mort.

Source: L-Space

As you can see from the little paddle steamer, Genua draws many characteristics from New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A, and is also partly based on Disney's Magic Kingdom.  In addition it is the German name of the Italian town of Genoa.
Here is the whole piece now, to give you an idea of where I am, the mountain with the cloud round it named Cori Celesti is the centre of the world and the design.

stitched on 32 count custom-dyed Murano from Sparklies

I completed another one of the Words from Jessica Savage in Cross Stitcher magazine.  This one is Create:

stitched over one on 25 count blue evenweave

We have four so far:

A few people have said that they don't do Facebook and asked if I could host a link-up for them, so here it is! Just add your name and the link to your actual IHSW post, not just your blog home page.

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Finally, the next IHSW will be 20th - 21st December 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.  I appreciate this is the weekend before Christmas so I think the challenge will be to get ANY stitching done at all!  I am working on the Saturday, but not the Sunday.  At least I get a lunchbreak for stitching at work!