Springing to a finish

With spring coming to a close and summer fast upon us it was only fitting that on Friday morning I put in the final stitches on Spring Quakers. I ran out of floss for the backstitching on the final word, Hyacinth, and had to do a bit of improvisation. I cut sections out of the other two green floss which was similar to the dark green and using some last small cuts of floss from the original, I was able to piece all the colours together so that it looked similar to the other backstitches. I wanted this to be complete by next Tuesday since our framer and stretcher John will be dropping by at our stitch night so I'm happy I made my deadline.
This design has been a true joy to stitch!  I love the Valdani floss and will definitely use it again.  Below are a some pics of the different motifs within the design.

I have yet to decide what will fill the void left by this one. The Canadian postal strike will postpone my start on Sixteen Birds since everything I've ordered is in mid-transit, stuck somewhere in postal land.

In the meantime I needed a small, easily portable stitch . I have wanted to stitch a small patriotic Canadian design for some time now. There are very few of them out there. Most of the Canadian designers have larger designs available but I want to make some smaller designs which I can turn into pin pillows. I put out a request on my last post and Karen sent me the link to this VeeandCo freebie called O Canada. I started it on Saturday and managed to get this far.       

I worked on it again yesterday and I'm actually very close to a finish on it now. I have a little bit of backstitching and beading left. While I was in Ottawa on Saturday I went on a little side trip to Fabricland in the hopes of finding some patriotic fabric to finish it off with. Imagine how pleased I was when I found out that not only did they have 5 or 6 different prints to choose from but they had an inventory sale going on as well! I chose 3 different prints at 50% off and also picked up some Warm and Natural quilt batting at 3 for the price of one!

Just prior to the postal strike I had ordered two larger patriotic designs from 123 Stitch.  They're also stuck somewhere out in postal land so I got thinking. I have a copy in my stash of Little House Needleworks America. I dug it out and had a look at it to see if I could do a conversion of the design to a Canadian one. Things looked fairly simple so I then emailed Diane Williams of LHN and asked her permission to make the changes and substitutions. She replied and very graciously told me to go ahead with my changes and enjoy! Friday afternoon was spent graphing the necessary changes such as the Canadian flag for the U.S. one.  A check of my stash found the fabric and floss needed so I'm hoping to get started on this one later in the week.

I've had a productive morning sorting through piles of winter and summer clothing and designating what can go to Goodwill as well as cleaning out my bedroom dresser drawers. As a reward I'm now off to spend a couple of hours stitching on my Wedding Sampler. I need to start putting in more time on this one since the wedding is coming up the latter part of August. Our trip to the cottage is a little less than three weeks away now so I expect I'll be stitching on this one out on the deck at the lake. I'll also take the LHN design with me and Their Song. Now that I'm retired and my vacation time is not limited we've booked two weeks in Muskoka instead of just one. The weather here has been sublime with warm days, cool nights and little rain. I hope it follows us to the lake!