The People Chose Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees

Regular followers will be aware that for over 3 years now I have run a themed SAL on the first Saturday of each month.  First we spent 26 months doing The Alphabet Club and then 12 months of the Zodiac.  Now I have decided to listen to the People and post about your choice of theme.  Each month I ask for suggestions on the blog and then make a poll in the IHSW Facebook Group from those suggestions.

September - Bees

October - Cats
November - Autumnal Colours

Bees are very popular in stitching designs, they are probably our favourite insect (ladybirds being a close second) and they work well with floral and garden designs as well as bee-ing very pun-friendly.   They are quite Bee-utiful too.

The largest design I have stitched with bees was a present for a friend who gave me the kit when she swapped stitching for a career in crochet.  (Seriously, find out more here - Rosina Plane).  Anyway, she gave me a box of stash with the fee being I would stitch Gathering Honey for her.  It took me a little longer than anticipated but I got it to her for her 25th Wedding Anniversary.

Gathering Honey by Jannlynn Designs

Close-up of the bees:

Just Nan is fond of a bee and here are two of her designs - Beehive Violets at the top and Big Bee, Little Bee at the bottom (although both my bees are the same size).

This is a sweet little one I stitched back in 1999 from a needlework magazine.  There was a series of smalls designed to teach you how to do speciality stitches.

That's it for designs I have stitched myself but here is some inspiration.  

Nora Corbett has recently released this pair of Bees; Miss Honey Bee and Miss Queen Bee:

The Primitive Hare has a number of bee patterns as well as beehive printed fabric to stitch them on! 

Beth Twist from Heartstring Samplery also loves bees.  She even has a couple of hives and some of her YouTube videos have film of her showing them and explaining how to look after them.

I love her little fob series, these would look cute in Vicki's cubby I thought.

Now it's over to you. All you have to do is make a post on the theme of Bees, mention The People's Choice SAL (you can copy the picture I used at the top of this post and in my side bar) and my blog. Please link up using the URL of the actual blog post, not the home page of your blog. I look forward to seeing what you all post.

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Finally, I need your suggestions for the next poll.  Any thing, no matter how obscure, weird or random will go into the poll.  Keep the theme suggestions to a single word or two - so you could have Cats, or Blue, or Holidays, or Warmth etc.  Really anything which could be illustrated in cross stitch.

Looking forward to reading them all!

Happy Dance for My Lovely Sewing Tools

Warning  - Photo Heavy!

This is what I wrote back in October 2011:

The new SAL is from the fantastic Gift of Stitching online magazine.  I found this magazine a while back via various blogs.  They were offering 3 issues for $3 which was too good to resist so I signed up.  The magazine pops into your email box at the beginning of each month full of tempting designs.  They are very keen on part works (encourages people to keep buying each issue!) which is great because it makes the larger designs easier to stitch.

I saw a post on Kathy's Blog A Stitcher's Heirlooms about her indecision regarding which project to start next.  I said I wanted to start My Lovely Sewing Tools myself and we went from there.  If you'd like to join us pop over to Kathy's Blog and let her know.  We're also posting our progress on FB if you're a member.  Just search for Gift of Stitching and their page comes up.

I decided to use the DMC conversion as I don't have any Valdani threads.  They are £2.29 each from SewandSo which isn't the most expensive thread but I am supposed to be on a stash diet until Christmas!  I used my Willow Fabrics' voucher to treat myself to some 40count Newcastle linen.  The service was great, I had a glitch on the computer so phoned up the old-fashioned way, had a nice chat with the lady about the project and my fabric duly arrived, nicely packaged and labelled.  It was £13something for a FQ plus P&P so not the cheapest but not bad, and the service was good.

Here is my progress after one evening.  I've started in the middle as I always do.  This is actually Part 3c of the chart.  The charts start at the top left of the piece but I like to start in the middle.  I've used an anonymous variegated thread for the darkest red.  The label is long gone but it came from my now closed LNS.  One strand is about the same as 2 strands of DMC so where the chart calls for one strand I will use the DMC 315 they recommend.

Badly scanned image

So many changes since then, I no longer scan my work for one thing.

19th October, 2011 I wrote - I have also discovered something new to me - size 28 needles.  I kept seeing reference to size 28s so got a pack - aren't they amazing!!   I love them.  And you can use the thread down to the last mm as they're so short.

28th October, 2011:

11th November, 2011 with Madame Muriel the Travelling Granny:

15th March, 2012 (slight break there):

21st April, 2012 as my monthly TUSAL post:

25th April, 2012:

And that was it!  The last of the regular posts.  I did stitch on the border for my Longest Days SALs but other than that it languished rolled up in a tube along with my other UFOs.  Until this year when I decided to make it one of my "19 in '19".  I'd thought I didn't have much more to do but as ever, it took longer than I thought!

May 2019:

June 2019:

July 2019:

End of August 2019:

And now:

Close-ups of the main sections:

One of the things that took the longest was going back to the beginning after I had finished the border and checking I had included everything.  Some things were intentionally left until the end (the beads in the centre of every flower) and some things were not (there is an extra spool in the model that wasn't on the chart so I added it).

I made a few changes apart from using the DMC conversion.  I used a mixture of one strand and two to create texture.  I added the beads in the border, the flower centres and the heads of all the little pins.  Those pin heads are on of my favourite things.  I added charms and buttons according to what I had which would fit.  This is 40 count so I needed tiny things.

Details:

This part was charted for a brass heart charm, a key, a flower charm and a button:

This part was charted for a crown but I really wanted these scissors to be near the S:

This part was charted for the scissors but I had the yarn charm so I wanted that to be near the Y.  It was a little bit big so I frogged the row of stitched under the herringbone and put it there.  Then added a button where the original charm had been:

This is another favourite part.  My original idea was to add the needle I had been using but as I mentioned above, I use 28 petites and it looked too tiny.  So I added a 24 needle I used on a different project.  The chart showed a stitched needle not a real one.

Cute buttons from the local haberdashery, chosen by my friend's daughter with the instructions "they must be under 8mm"

All the spools were satin stitched:

Adorable tiny over one stitches on 40 count and a sweet little tassel:

Finally, the whole piece once again!

  What is your favourite part of the design?

August Stitch from Stash and Pie

Let's start with Pie:

As you can see I got another two full weeks on the Discworld Mappe which went from here:

to here:

stitched on 32 count Murano custom-dyed by Sparklies

I made some great progress on Marie Suarez's My Lovely Sewing Tools.  From here:

to here:

and here:

stitched on 40 count white linen

I am so close to a finish I am not going to put it away today but keep working until it is done.  I need to add the rest of the bottom border, and some beads and charms.  You can see from the Pie that I only got 5 days on this but spent 9 days with very little stitching except my daily project or one of my smalls.

When I completed Summer Typography, the next project should have been Winter in the Square.  I even got the chart and linen out and put it in the project bag.  But then I looked at my WIPocalypse projects and thought it might be better to start one of those instead.  This is a Just Nan sampler called Summer Night.  At approximately 90 x 50 I thought I could average one row of 500 stitches every 5 days.  So I wrote a schedule out and this is the first six day's work, almost all the top 15 rows.  The plan is to complete it in the 42 days of the Summer Holiday.

Last time it looked like this:

And now it looks like this:

stitched on 28 count Jobelan in Dragon Shades from Polstitches

Again, very close to a finish.  I have the bottom row which is all Satin Stitch and some Smyrna Stitches in the flowers.  Then it's just beads and ribbon to complete the project.

Finally, let's finish with Stitch from Stash:

August
Charms	£7.86
Total	£7.86

Another low-spend month because it's been the holidays so no money for stitchy stuff.  I only bought the charms as I need them for My Lovely Sewing Tools.

August TUSAL

This is going to be a very quick post as I forgot to include the TUSAL with my Smalls post!  The TUSAL is the Totally Useless SAL created by Daffycat where we all show our ORTS.

The design is my Summer Holiday Project - Just Nan's Summer Night which is going to be a finish very soon.  One boy goes back on Tuesday and one on Wednesday so with a bit of luck Wednesday will be finish day.

Finally, this is a photo of a statue in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge which we visited this holiday.  I know how this mother feels after 6 weeks of school holiday!

Maternal Affection by Edward Hodges Baily

Description:- The child rests on the left side of her back, snuggling against her, and kissing her left cheek, while touching her right with his left hand. She holds her left arm out behind her to support the child's right foot, and turns the upper part of her body to the front, leaning her right elbow on her left thigh, and raising her hand towards the child.

While thinking "hold still, stop wriggling or you'll fall off"!

August Smalls SAL

The Smalls SAL is hosted by Mary's Thread

For this SAL I am showing the monthly project for the Christmas Ornie Blog. I am choosing from the back issues of the Just Cross Stitch Ornament Specials.  This month the issue was from 2005 and I chose another design from The Sweetheart Tree.  This SAL has been a great excuse to stitch some of their ornaments.

stitched on 32 count linen

Unlike the previous two designs this one is not a bellpull!  It's going to be a round ornament with a beaded trim to hide any unevenness in the rounding process!

I also stitched this bonus small by Jessica Savage:

stitched over one on 25 count blue evenweave

It was in Cross Stitcher magazine and when I showed it last time, someone asked which issue it was from.  Unfortunately they were a "no reply" commenter so I'm adding the information here.  It was issue 348 September 2019.

I started Just Nan's Butterfly Welcome last month and made a lot of progress, especially on the train trip to Cambridge.  All I need to do now is add the gold metallic and the beads.  So I'm only showing half of it!

stitched on 28 count Colonial Blue evenweave

Then I moved on to the next Just Nan in line - Christmas Friends:

stitched on 28 count beige evenweave

I didn't stitch much more because I've been focusing on my Summer Holiday project.  Another Just Nan called Summer Night.  I'll show the progress on that next time.

Finally, this really is the last call for the Summer Postcard Blog Hop!  I will be sending out the last card on 1st September so if you want to take part you have only 2 days.