And now for ... what?

Lately I’ve been working on LHN’s Seasons Greetings when I have both the time and energy to stitch, which has been far too seldom recently.  And while working, my mind is greatly occupied by the what-to-stitch-next conundrum. 

I’ve rooted through the main stash as well as the readily-to-hand stash (this is a real and very intentional distinction).  Of course I want to stitch it ALL, and fondling perusing all the pretties makes me want to stitch it all RIGHT NOW!!

There are … I suppose I could whittle it down to four.  There are four things I want to start.  Two are samplers Wonderful Husband gifted me with, one is a full-coverage piece (also a gift from WH), and the last is another sewing case.

Oh, better make that FIVE.  I have succeeded in acquiring the chart for Goat Load from Plum Street Samplers and want to stitch it over one as a Christmas ornament since goats are the subject of a longstanding joke between Wonderful Husband and myself. 

But how do I decide??!!

What’s that?  You can’t give out advice without seeing what I’m talking about?  Okay.

Sampler #1, aka Mary Goodburn

Not tiny, but all cross stitch and should stitch up relatively quickly.  And Mary looks like a fun stitch with lots of bright colors.

Sampler #2, aka Betsy Davis

Can’t work on this one in the winter since my hands get so dry I’d shred the silks, but it IS springtime now.  In my personal classification system, Betsy falls under the Large and Complicated heading.  She is supposed to finish up at 13 by 15, and even though she’s on 25 count (which will likely feel like I’m working on burlap since I normally prefer higher count fabrics), she will undoubtedly take quite a while to stitch.  No new stitches to learn, but there are lots of Queen stitches (which I like, but they're time consuming) plus sections that are freehand embroidery (why does that worry me so?).  Not sure I want to do another Large and Complicated yet, but I’ve loved this sampler going on twenty-five years now….

Full coverage – Cluny Unicorn detail

When I start this, it will be with the knowledge that I will NOT be monogamous with this piece, even though I’m essentially a one-at-a-time stitcher.  I’ve never done a full-coverage piece before and know I will need breaks.  Perhaps a great many breaks.

Ellen Chester’s (With My Needle) Acorn Sampler Sewing Case

Um, yes.  Apparently I *need* to have a sewing case in process.  While this piece has been kitted for several years and has been in my easily-accessed, do-these-really-soon project bag for well over a year, now that I’ve finally finish-finished a sewing case, this one’s voice has gotten considerably louder.  Perhaps it’s all those squirrels….

Goat Load

This should be a reasonably quick stitch, even over one.  But this small project will require Thought prior to beginning.  Many of the called-for colors are Classic Colorworks (Crescent Colours), and since my stash contains very few of those threads, substitutions will be necessary.

Oh wait.  Forgot about this one.  If you blow up the picture, you can see that I wrote “completed 13 July ‘92” on the pattern.  I really did stitch this guy.  I know where I worked on him most often (on the bench by the caboose in downtown Vienna , Virginia, where we used to live, stitching and keeping one eye on the kids as they clambered all over old railroad car), and I specifically remember doing his beard and adding the stars once the regular stitching was done, but as I was undecided about how to finish the back, I never cut him out.  Instead, I put him in a Safe Place.  He’s in such a safe place that I’ve looked in every reasonable place and a number of unreasonable places with no sight of the guy. 

Actually, I feel pretty lucky that I found the pattern and picture and for several years they were in hiding also!  I do have some tan perforated paper in the stash, so I’d just need to match DMC colors to the picture – you can see that the colors have names only in the thread list.  I have several other early kits in this series, but haven’t been able to bring myself to do any of the others until this first one is complete.

Thoughts?  Suggestions?

Thanks for stopping by and listening to me ramble.

>^..^<

Finished sampler – happy dance!

The Catherine Theron 1840 Town House Sampler is complete!  I started this to be a respite piece while working on Jane Turner, intending to finish a band on Jane, then do a section of this sampler (vine, strawberries, alphabet…), then work another band on Jane.  But with nearly every band finish on Jane, I was excited to start the next band, so this little sampler lounged about unattended for quite a while.

I picked up this kit at the Spirit of Cross Stitch Festival in 1992 - several years earlier I’d fallen in love with Catherine’s designs and with those nifty new overdyed flosses she made and used.  Being a child of suburbia, I always thought the name of the sampler a trifle odd – that sure doesn’t look like any townhouse I’ve ever seen!

At some point, I read the info included in the kit. Likely this falls under the heading of “when all else fails, read the directions.”

This piece was designed using several samplers from the collection of the Historical Society of Glastonbury.  The strawberry border is an adaptation of a sampler by Harriet M. Porter “marked in the summer of 1846 aged 13 years P. Skinner instrss.”

The building depicted is my rendition of the Historical Society’s building.  This edifice is the original Glastonbury Town House built in 1840.

Ah, it’s not a townhouse – a row house, as my father used to call them - it’s a Town House, a government building!  (sigh)  Curious at this point, I had to see what this building really looked like, especially since I’d always felt the door was a bit off. 

Hmmm… that’s lower, wider, and has a less steeply pitched roof.  So the Town House on my sampler is *my* interpretation of the actual building.  I made some other changes too - keep in mind I started this while working on Jane Turner, so even though the piece called for plain cross stitch with just a handful of Algerian eyelets, I had to add some more fancy stitches.

On each side of the border, one large strawberry is stitched in Smyrna cross and one small berry in tent stitch.  Within the alphabet, I stitched my initials in eyelets (something I once saw recommended by Eileen Bennett).  Which seemed a great idea until I realized that I’d stitched the “H” in the wrong color.  I discovered that frogging eyelets over two threads is very like frogging cross stitch over one, so the wrong color stayed.

I added a gold overdyed thread (left over from stitching another Catherine Theron sampler), changed the filler motifs, and made the tree more densely leafed.  Also added more grass.  The last dividing band was to be all Algerian eyes, but I thought it would look neat to make a pattern of those and full eyelets.  Not the best idea, probably.

I tried to show the triangle of recessed brickwork above the doors.  You can really only see the difference the tent stitches make when you’re right on top of the sampler, but I’m still pleased with it.  You can see some of those random berry changes here.

This is a small sampler - stitched area is less than six inches by about eight and a half.

The 1840 Town House Sampler

stitched on 28 count linen (don’t know color - provided in kit)

GAST and DMC Flower Thread

started April 6, 2017

completed March 1, 2019

Thanks for visiting me today!

>^..^<

TUSAL March 2019

CLICK HERE to go to Sharon’s It’s Daffycat blog to read all about the Totally Useless SAL and discover why I’m posting pictures of thread snippets, otherwise known as orts.    

How can it be TUSAL day already?  I was thinking there was another week to go and nearly missed it!  The Silly Stitching Calendar says that I’ve had 15 stitching days since the last TUSAL check in, and I have two piles of orts to show off.

I’ve finished Catherine Theron’s 1840 Town House Sampler, but have plenty to say about it and think it deserves its own post - hopefully in a day or two.  The larger batch of orts belongs to that sampler.

The tiny bunch of orts (I don’t think qualifies as a pile, really) is from Season’s Greetings, a Little House Needleworks ornament that’s been sitting neglected for maybe a year.  The other night I finished the frame and had worked one section of the branch, delighted with how quickly it was going ... and then realized it was in the wrong place (hello, frog).  This should finish up quickly, but I really want to figure out what larger piece to work on next before it's done.

Happy stitching everyone – thanks for stopping by!

>^..^<

Small tip

Wanted to share a quick little tip with you.  If you wind your DMC floss on those plastic bobbins, then you probably already have the winder tool.  What a marvelous thing – so much faster than winding those bobbins by hand. 

But not perfect.

The small peg that holds the bobbin in place is made of the same hard plastic as the winder and (for me at least) works best with the paper/cardboard bobbins.  But I want the durability of the plastic bobbins.

Over the years, I’ve tried a bunch of things to either snug up or take the place of the peg, most often stuffing a piece of paper in the hole with it so the peg doesn’t fall out after three or four turns.  Some plastic bobbins are thicker than others and I’ve had ones that barely fit into the slot – the peg was unusable with those as the holes did not align perfectly and then I used a piece of copper wire snipped out of a bit of leftover romex.

Having quite a bit of floss to wind right now (will explain that below), I was once again mentally grousing that the peg has no give and then inspiration struck.  Years ago, a friend suggested using knitting needle point protectors on the tip of my embroidery scissors to protect both my fingers and the scissor points and at some point I’d bought a package of them.

Ta-dah!  A softer, friendlier peg!

And why am I winding all this floss?  Some of you might remember that Wonderful Husband gifted me with an incredibly scary amazing chart of the Unicorn in Captivity tapestry for Christmas. 

I took advantage of a great sale at my favorite online needlework shop to get fabric for the unicorn.  And since I expect this project to take approximately forever, it seemed wise to just go ahead and get new DMC, so have been using coupons at Michael’s and JoAnn’s to accumulate all 119 colors in the design.  Eeek!

The other day, Wonderful Husband asked me what I’d like for my birthday.  And being mindful that the size of the Unicorn is 285 x 404 and is solidly stitched (eeek again!), I thought perhaps something smaller would be a better first for a solidly stitched piece.  So I suggested this, which is a detail from the Cluny tapestry known as  À Mon Seul Désir. 

(image from Scarlet Quince website)

Hey, it’s only 123 x 274 stitches.  And has only 109 colors of DMC. 

Yes, I probably am crazy.

Hope you had a lovely weekend!

>^..^<

FFO ... I think

Never got back to my Santa ornament last weekend, but was able to spend some time with him today.  At this point I think he’s finished but haven’t fully made up my mind.  And I dug through my JCS ornament issues to satisfy my curiosity - Santa Star by Lavender Wings was in the 2002 issue, so he was part of the Chartswappers 2003 ornament SAL.  Then I remembered the little notebook where I used to write down all my starts and finishes - started 11/28/03, stitching completed 12/28/03.  He's stitched on a quite stiff 27 count natural linen, over one.

Here's the magazine picture.  You can see I made some changes.

Not sure if he's really finished because I got all excited about putting him together and didn't wait till I'd found all my trims (now not only are they found, but sorted and gathered together into their very own box!).  Had vague thoughts of putting cording around the edge, but might have used this trim with its ribbon of shiny flat gold woven into the green loops if I'd seen it earlier.  Harley's trying to help me decide what to do.

Not positive about the bow, either, but it's just attached with a straight pin thanks to the foamcore.  So what do you think - does he need that other trim or not?

>^..^<

Working at finishing

I've had this piece stitched for ... I honestly don't know how long as I didn't photograph it once the stitching was complete, but I'm guessing it was from somewhere between 2002 and 2006 since I'm pretty sure it was stitched as part of a Christmas ornament SAL with the now-defunct Yahoo Group Chartswappers.  Of course sharing with you has made me curious, so I'll have to dig back through the JCS ornament issues to find out what year!

For some reason, my heart got set on making this an oval ornament.  Maybe because of the arc made by the juggled stars?  Anyway, had cut posterboard ovals ages ago and put them with the stitched piece but was leery of starting for fear of smooshing everything when gathering the fabric around the form - this is a rather stiff unbleached linen.

Then yesterday I remembered the scraps of foamcore left over from framing Noah.  Yes, the how-to-do-it has been right there all along, waiting for me to figure it out.

Maybe I can finish it today - will certainly be inside all day as it is pouring!  Now if I can just find my box of trims....

How's your holiday weekend - what are you doing for fun?

>^..^<

TUSAL August 2017

Sharon’s It’s Daffycat blog will give you a thorough explanation of the Totally  Useless Stitch A-Long.  CLICK HERE for all the details.

My Silly Stitching Calendar says I’ve had only 14 stitching days since the last new moon – that’s because nearly every night last week, the book won out over the stitching bag.   

For some reason, I couldn’t keep from starting Little House Needleworks ornament Season’s Greetings.  I’ve switched out a couple of colors on it, the biggest difference being I’m stitching the frame in bright gold rather than off white.  

What it was designed to look like:

On Jane Turner, I’ve begun filling in the oodles of leaves on the Lady Band and have done the first color on all but one on the left side tree.  So far, they're going quickly (probably shouldn't have said that), but expect progress will slow as I add in the second color.  See the top of the tree trunk with the diagonal green and yellow stripes?  That took far too long to do.

Hope you're all having a lovely week! 

>^..^<

Plans? Good intentions? More like pipe dreams…

So if all your friends jumped off a cliff…. Did you hear that one a lot when you were a kid? I sure did. But in this case, I don’t think following the crowd is at all harmful. ;)

Stitchy plans/hopes for 2017:

Finish Jane Turner. This is seriously ambitious for me since I’ve already been working on her for over a year, but if I can manage to stitch at least two or three times a week, maybe I’ve got a shot at it.

Now, since I decided to treat each band (or pair of smaller bands, if they go smoothly) as a finish, what to stitch in between?

Here’s what's kitted up and in my other stitching bag.

Left to right, top to bottom, these are:

1. Welcome Berry Basket (Catherine Theron)
2. Maidens of the Sea (With My Needle)
3. Snowman Ornament from 2000 (Homespun Elegance)
4. Wildflower Hearts (Caron Collection freebie)
5. Celtic Jewel bookmark (Textile Heritage … I think – set aside ages ago)
6. Acorn Sampler Sewing Case (With My Needle)
7. Needleworker (Little House Needleworks)
8. Sampler Pincushion from 1995 (Tidewater Sampler Guild)
9. Shaker Village ornament (Little House Needleworks)
10. Pincushion companion to Castleton Sampler (Earth Threads)
11. Faith ornament (Little House Needleworks)
12. 1840 Town House Sampler (Catherine Theron)

Rotations have never really worked for me, but I’m thinking I’ll start either Needleworker or the 1840 Town House Sampler ... or maybe one of the LHN ornies, and working for a week or two when I finish the current large band on Jane.

I’d also like to give myself several finishing days to take care of the stack of stitched ornaments, and maybe even the (second) Merry Cox sampler sewing case. Really don’t want to admit how long some of these have been waiting…

(not this one – the *other* one [from the Spirit of Cross Stitch video] that’s the same style, which I couldn't find a picture of)

And what’s next when Jane is complete? First, something relatively simple, perhaps Mary Goodburn from the Examplarery, which my wonderful husband surprised me with at Christmas. Aren't the colors bright and fun?

… and then probably one of the Scarlet Letter’s Balch School reproductions, Betsy Davis or Betsy Manchester. Both are in the stash and ready to go - anyone have thoughts on which one’s better to do first?

Happy stitching in 2017, all!


>^..^<

Sewing box … er, tray

Well, whichever it is, it’s finished and ready to use!

The other day I gathered everything I needed (which involved much running around the house to find weights and appropriately sized pieces of wood), then measured and cut and trimmed and glued and stitched and glued and weighted … and then waited.

Ta-dah!

When we talked about selecting the lining fabric for the box, I mentioned the green would match the needlecase that I really use, so I thought you might like to see it. This is another of those things I’ve made twice; the original for Sarah in the UK in a fall freebie exchange. Couldn’t make up my mind between two designs so incorporated both into a single item. There are felted wool needlepages and a double pocket in the back – one open section and another pocket with a flap secured by Velcro. Here's the original:

Had wanted to add another row of leaves below the flowers on the sampler but didn’t remember about making the change till after the boundary border and spine had been stitched (sigh). Having the size fixed rather limited what could be altered but I like the way it worked out. I also wanted a couple of smaller tool pockets in the back so that required a bit of redesign also. Of course adding more needle pages was a piece of cake.

The needlebook normally lives in my sewing basket on the dresser, but we can look at that another day. The sampler is stitched in DMC with the border/spine/frame in GAST. The squirrel and the leaves on his tree are stitched in GAST and Weeks.

The back has a little poem I wrote plus a scattering of acorns.

So here's the sewing box tray thing, all ready to get going on a mending project. Now where'd I put that bias tape...?

>^..^<

TUSAL – September 2016

If you’re asking what TUSAL means, you can find the explanation HERE.

A goodly pile of orts but very little stitching accomplished this month – I had a whole knot of frogs come to live in my stitching bag. (Seriously, knot is one of the correct collective nouns for frogs – how appropriate! For the curious, the others I was able to find are “army” and “colony” which both seem rather dull.)

Finished the peace dove (which I grumbled about in my previous post), no thanks to all those pesky frogs.

Poor, neglected Jane Turner – got back to her before the first of the month but only for a few minutes, not even enough to generate a single ort. Tonight, hopefully…


>^..^<

Small finish

Well, the stitching’s finished at any rate. Somewhere there's a slender piece of white cording to make the hanger. I know I put it somewhere "safe" so I'd be able to find it easily. Ha! Seems no surer way to guarantee you'll never see something again than to put it someplace safe.

The frustrating little peace dove is done and as with the first one, he has no sparkles in his tail (sigh). I think one of the shiny threads might have worked if I’d been able to convince myself to use half crosses, but then I’d feel like he wasn’t finished.

Here is Mr. Dove, in all his UNsparkly glory.

But at  least now I've gotten back to Jane!


>^..^<

Maybe I’m just too picky

The peace dove (earlier post - HERE) has such a pretty, swirly tail – it just begs for sparkle, some type of shiny thread. The first time I stitched the ornament for an exchange a dozen years ago, I tried several things (no real idea what at this point) but gave in to concerns about finishing in time and finally stitched the tail in DMC’s then very new bright white color, B5200.

Look really close and you might be able to tell the difference.

So now that I’m stitching it again to keep, of course I’ll be able to find just the right thing to add that sparkle I envisioned when I first saw the graph.

Riiiiight.

Pulled out all the shiny, fancy fibers I could think of and started test stitching in the top margin. Tried – and rejected – white shiny Rainbow Gallery, some DMC sparkly something, a narrow white Balger braid, a sparkly white Balger cord, high luster silver Balger under white DMC, white Rajmahal silk… Didn’t try the white Marlitt, but only because I couldn’t find it.

Thought I’d come up with an answer - a half cross of pearl Balger blending filament over a completed cross stitch in white DMC looked good when I tried it out, but after stitching several tail tendrils, the stitches looked clumpy and the sparkle was inconsistent.

Everything that looked good against the fabric was too thick or too wiry to stitch over one.

Once again, the dove’s wings and body are stitched in plain old DMC white, and the tail’s in B5200. Here’s a progress shot. See the needle? Stitches to the right are plain white; to the left is the bright white.

Nah, I can’t tell the difference either. Sigh. (Ugh, you can also see that my stitches looked much nicer the first time around. Guess it’s time to get a stronger pair of cheaters.)


>^..^<

TUSAL - August 2016

I usually “flunk out” of SALs, but this one’s manageable! Explanation is here.

I keep plastic 35mm film canisters (omg, film? what's that?) in my stitching bags as ort receptacles. My orts through August 2:

Jane Turner’s orts are separate so I can have thread snippets from the entire sampler all together – I’m keeping them in a pretty little jar (yes, I am silly).

Jane is complete through Band 6 (yay!):

“Other” is currently a Christmas ornie. Stitched this back in 2003 for an exchange and have been meaning to make one for myself ever since.

Unfortunately, when I picked it up again the other day, I realized that my wonderful stitching light is an absolute necessity for stitching over one, even on 28 count – had to frog the entirety of what I’d done a few days earlier (sigh). Here’s the completed one from that old exchange:

>^..^<

Noah's on the wall!!

When I catch sight of it, a huge smile steals across my face. Yes, Noah has been hanging up for several months, but it was a WIP (or more like a WNP - Work Not Progressing) for so long that I’ll probably still be grinning next January.

It was (nearly) love at first sight when I received the January/February ‘87 issue of Cross Stitch and Country Crafts. The ark itself was too cutesy for my taste, but I really liked the layout of the sampler. Still do.

After gathering supplies and charting an ark more to my liking, I started stitching in January 1991. Yeah, you read that date right. Noah was my first attempt at a largish sampler – stitch count as originally charted is 204h x 185w – and it contains a number of “firsts,” including my premier effort at stitching over one thread to shrink Noah himself to a reasonable size. He’s done in tent stitch with a blended needle, and parts of him came out a trifle fuzzy.

Besides the ark, there were other things that wanted changing – can you believe the original chart had no lions?! And I had to add tigers - my son's favorite animal. Of course adding those extra animals made it taller overall and at one point, I was worried that with all the design changes I’d made after starting to stitch, there wouldn’t be enough fabric at the bottom to have a framing margin (eep!).

And because I was worried that all my work so far would turn out to be for nothing, Noah sat. Have you ever done that? Silly me, all that was really necessary was some more counting to make sure there was enough room. But no, worry ruled and Noah was banished to the closet.

And even after deciding that this sampler Would Be Finished, between the magazine, lots of different pages where I’d charted a bit of this or that, the box of threads and the large piece of fabric, Noah didn’t make a 10 or 15 minute stitching session feel worthwhile at all.

But it was fun deciding what animals to add and finding or designing them. There’s a nearly complete test fox in the margin fabric! And I’m really happy with the porcupine’s quills.

Twenty-four years to finish a sampler (should I really admit that? oh well, too late now)? Not recommended. But it’s done and it’s framed and it’s on the wall, and I’m delighted with it.

>^..^<