July Smalls

I've been trying off and on all day to get this post up from my laptop and finally gave up in disgust. I'm posting from my tablet now. On July 1 we celebrated Canada Day and that got me into the mood to stitch a couple more of Jeannette Douglas' Patriotic Snippets. I received the floss I was waiting on for last month's snippet, #5, and started by finishing it off.

It's hard to see the shine from the metallic floss but it's there. It's been years since I've used any kind of metallic floss or blending filament. I'm not a huge fan of it but it served its purpose in this piece to demonstrate the Northern Lights.

I'm not committed to stitching these in any particular order so the next start was snippet #2.

I was really motivated because I went ahead and did the final finishing of each of these! Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not fond of finishing and tend to put it off but I've had a lot of time on my hands lately so here are the results.

After seeing how well they turned out I pulled out my Canada 150, another Jeannette Douglas Design, that I stitched up last year and completed the final finishing on it as well.

I'm so pleased with how they all turned out. I was able to display them with some of my previous patriotics, just in time for the holiday.

The last snippet stitched this month #12, I finished up last week.

I'll wait until I've stitched a few more before I do any more pillows.

I've been concentrating on larger projects this year and when I need a break these are a great diversion. They stitch up quickly and I've feel like I'm making progress. 

The weather here has been so hot and humid. In fact Ottawa broke a record for the hottest July ever! When the humidity gets bad I spend most of my time indoors. I'm really hoping August cools down some. If it does perhaps I'll get in the mood for some autumn smalls!

July WIPocalypse

It's a HOT summer here! I know it's the same for many of you across not only Canada but in the US as well. I've been very thankful that we have our gazebo in which to enjoy the weather but during the past two weeks there have been periods of high humidity which just scream "Stay inside!" On days such as this I spend my time with my needle in hand in the air conditioned comfort. 

I had hoped that I could finish off A Yuletide Welcome but sometime during the first few days I ran out of the floss needed to fill in the label at the bottom of the piece. I have some on order but Lord knows when it will arrive. Postage times have increased as has the time to fill orders in many shops. Here are pics of the piece where I left off.

I'm really hoping that by next month my floss will have arrived and I will close to a finish if not there already!

In the meantime I worked on some patriotic stitches for display this month. You'll see some photos of those on my smalls SAL post at the end of this month.

Once the smalls were finished I pulled out Heartstring Samplery Victoria's Garden. I've added a bit more to it than I had last month.

This one is going to be really pretty when it's done. I'm enjoying my time spent with it. I really love that flower basket! The muted colours are lovely and show up much better in real life than in the photos. On the cover of this pattern there is a photo of both the original sampler and the reproduction. The reproduction is very true to the original colours because it's hard to tell them apart.

I'm thinking that I might get started on a few Christmas ornaments in August. I need to stitch some for my granddaughters as well as a friend. I've also ordered a Jeannette Douglas pattern, Friendship No Borders, which has both a Canadian and a US design which can be stitched as individual pillows or combined into a double sided pincushion. I like to stitch this as a gift for my sister who lives in the US. It's on order with my shop so it may take several weeks to arrive.

No stitching was done on my Blackbird Design piece but maybe I can get that finished up for next month too. Keep an eye for my Smalls post on Friday to see all of my patriotic finishes!

June WIPocalypse

The month of June has seen my stitching time increase somewhat. As much as I would have loved to see a finish on A Yuletide Welcome it just hasn't happened. If you remember from last month's post, I was pretty much finished with the exception of the bottom grass with the lettering and background fill in. At this point I have everything complete except for all that white fill. I started out stitching it from one side of the piece to the other but I keep on having to move the Q snap when I do it that way. So instead I decided to fill in one small section at a time and it feels like I'm progressing more.

I'll continue to plod along on this as the urge strikes me. As long as it's complete before the year's end, that's all I care about. I think the larger Q snap (11x11) is what is slowing me down.

Heartstring Samplery's Victoria's Garden was the next piece to get some attention.

Last month's start

This month's progress

I'm really enjoying this particular design but then again I've always been a huge fan of any Heartstring Samplery pattern. I'm hoping to get back to this very shortly.

As for my Blackbird Design, Her Fair Works, very little was done. I finished up the bottom lower left flower basket and started to add the little bird to the right of it. 

Last month

June's progress

Then my interest waned and I switched to a small design for Canada Day which can be seen on my previous post. 

The plan for July is to continue working on the above three until at least one is finished before I start something new. Our weather here the past couple of weeks has been extremely hot and humid which I find just doesn't give me the energy to do much of anything, lol!

As Covid restrictions start to ease up some here we are also starting to see some of our family and a few friends. I've missed everyone and I'd much rather be doing that this month. I hope everyone continues to be well during this difficult time. 

June Smalls

Six months into the year and this is only my second posting for the Smalls SAL. This year has turned out to be the year of the larger projects. Understandably they help pass the time more during this quarantine plus I have some large projects that have been on my wishlist for some time. However I couldn't resist stitching up a little Canada design for the upcoming Canada Day on July 1.

This particular design is one of Jeannette Douglas' Patriotic Snippets, specifically #5. I had hoped it would be completely finished by now but I had none of the required Petite Treasure Bread, Kreinik Blending Filament and none of the required Threadworx floss. I couldn't find them locally which means that I have to wait for them to arrive from the US before I can finish this.

The missing threads will fill in the outline on the left which is meant to be an interpretation of the northern lights. There are 12 of these sweet little snippets to stitch. They were released two to a package every other month throughout 2017 in celebration of Canada's 150th birthday. I hope to do several more of them if not all but it probably won't happen this year. Too many other things are wanting attention. I'll post a pic of the final finish on this one as soon as I can get it stitched up. Floss orders have generally been taking anywhere from 3-5 wks to arrive!

I hope you are all well and getting lots of x's crossed!

May WIPocalypse

I've seemed to get back some of my Mojo this month and have made considerable progress on my stitching. First up, Plum Street Samplers A Yuletide Welcome:

I spent the beginning of the month completing the border and then grew tired of this. It then sat aside until just this past Thursday when I picked it up again and started work on the large box at the bottom which will eventually contain the title of the piece. This morning I've moved the Q snaps and I've already completed two more rows at the top to the right of the house door. Once the entire box of green is complete I'll start stitching the letters before adding the white background. On all the completions of this that I've seen that box is filled in with white but on the chart it only shows an outline of white around the inside of the box. 

When I'm ready to move on from this again I'll return to my latest start which is Victoria's Garden by Heartstring Samplery. 

This is such a pretty piece! I've thought about buying it on many occasions and always passed it over for something else. However several weeks ago I decided I really wanted to stitch it and I ordered the PDF from Beth's Etsy site. As a result of the pandemic she has recently switched over her Etsy shop to exclusively PDF models. This works better for me as the shipping costs to Canada are quite costly, along with the exchange rate on our currency. 
I searched my stash and found a piece of R&R Crème Brûlée. I had all the suggested threads with the exception of one and Beth gave me the DMC equivalent for it. I'm hoping to get back to this one in a couple of days.

Earlier in the month, when I tired from my Yuletide Welcome, I browsed through some of my Blackbird Design books. I love working on Blackbird projects and many call their designs comfort stitching. If you watch flosstube, specifically Brenda & The Serial Starter, you'll hear Brenda often refer to Blackbird Designs as comfort stitching. I feel the same way about them and considering my mood at times with this pandemic I gravitated directly to my BBD books and charts. In their Ooh la la book from 2019 I found 
Her Fair Works, a boxtop finish which is featured on the front cover.

As you can see, I'm nearly finished. Only the flower on the left is remaining along with a bird and an ititial and then the border around the piece. 
I don't have the appropriate size box for the finish but whenever we can finally get into our stores again I hope to find one. 

While I was searching for a box though I found one that I had completely forgotten all about. This is a Sudberry House Box which will fit a 5 in diameter circular stitch.

 You won't believe it but I found this box in a collection of stash which was dropped off at my front door a few years ago. We have never found the donor of the stash collection but it contained many treasures including this box and a vast collection of Weeks Dye Works floss.

I celebrated my birthday earlier in May and because my family couldn't go out and purchase gifts they gave me the next best thing. My sons gave me gift certificates to a favourite online shop and my husband gave me the money for some stash which I used to order four cuts of linen. In addition my friend Nan sent me a copy of her latest release, Handtuch Sampler, along with the floss to stitch it with. 
It also felt like Christmas all over again when I received word from my friend Patti that she had completed the framing on my Pennsylvania Dutch Sampler. 

I love how it turned out! This was a Christmas gift from my mother and I know she will be happy with the results too. 

I hope everyone is well and that it won't be long before you can resume visits with friends and family. Until then, happy stitching! 

April WIPocalypse

I have only worked on one project all this past month, namely my Plum Street Samplers A Yuletide Welcome. I'm taking my sweet time with it too! Here's are a few progress pics.

As you can see I've completed the bulk of this with the exception of the border, a few snowflake motifs on the bottom left and the large grassy area at the bottom of the house which will contain the wording. That in itself is going to be time consuming! The over one on 40 ct was a first for me. It went better than I expected as can be seen in the last pic above. The border will still take a bit of time since I have to finish all the small flowers along it. I'm growing tired of this now and have been kitting up projects over the last few days. I'm waiting on some linen to begin some choices which unfortunately is taking longer to arrive than usual because of the pandemic. Gentle Art floss is becoming more difficult to find too as they have had to temporarily close because they are a non-essential business. Consequently they can't dye or ship floss until they are allowed to return to work.

I started a small Blackbird Design project called Her Fair Work from their OohLaLa book but I've run into my usual problem of changed dye lots and I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with what I have or change it. Time will tell as I put in a few more stitches on it. Not enough progress yet for a pic. 
As most of my friends are stitching up a storm during the pandemic, I find that I'm slowing down. Stitching has always been my stress buster but during these unusual times I find myself turning to other pursuits. I'm reading more and watching TV more with my hubby. Generally we watch very little TV but now are catching up on some programs we've wanted to see. Because we live in a small rural community we can go out for walks frequently without coming into contact with many people. We try to get out a couple of times each day.
When I think about it, most of my stitching is usually done when I'm by myself and my husband is away at work. It's quiet and I can think freely as I stitch. Now Bob is home all the time and I find I can't settle for long with my stitching.

Hopefully I'll have some progress to report on next month. The weather is starting to warm up and we've just finished opening and cleaning out our gazebo. Outdoor stitching may be just what I need!

March WIPocalypse

Wow, what a month! I'm sure that no one in their wildest dreams could have imagined where we'd all be when it came time to post this month. We are doing well in our third week of self isolation. My husband is going out weekly to get groceries as I am considered compromised due to previously existing health conditions. So for me, as I'm sure it is for many of you, my needlework helps me pass the time. Mind you I do find that it's more difficult to concentrate these days and I find myself frogging more than usual. However I'm still grateful that I have this ability to help pass the days.

On a positive note, I finished my Willow Hill Samplings Pennsylvania Dutch Sampler before the month's end. She is a beauty and I have already sent her to a dear friend who does framing.

Sorry about the quality of the photo. I really had a difficult time getting a good picture because this piece is so wide.

I took a break for several days after finishing this before picking up anymore stitching. I kind of lost my mojo for a few days. I have picked it up again but progress is slow and I spend more time frogging than I would like. I resumed stitching on Plum Street Samplers A Yuletide Welcome. I haven't bothered to take it out of its frame for this picture but here's my progress on all the motifs.

I can't make up my mind what I want to start next. My Needlework Market order arrived today so perhaps I'll find something from those charts. It's not as if I have no stash to choose from, lol! I may even decide just to continue working on Yuletide Welcome for now.
Until next month I hope you all remain well and safe. Keeping you in my thoughts!