Tuesday 26 September 2017

September WIPocalypse

This month has been the hottest September on record! This is the summer we didn't get and now that fall has arrived summer is reluctant to let go. We are still in the throes of the heatwave (at its hottest 99 F and 90 F today) although thundershowers are forecast for tomorrow along with a drop in temperatures. Normally I'd be spending my mornings out in the gazebo stitching away with my coffee but it's been far too hot to spend any length of time outdoors.
Wedding preparations, doctor and dental appts. and a return to a post summer routine has taken up a good portion of my time. Nevertheless I've managed to squeeze in about an hour of solid stitching most days. 
Here is my progress on Tribute to Summer.



The flower border is time consuming but I'm getting there. The flowers were charted to be stitched using Gentle Art Lambswool which seemed to be too pale. Then I tried stitching them with a white which was far too bright. So I settled for alternating the colour using Lambswool for some and alternating with Straw Bonnet for the others. I would love to have this finished before the wedding but time is running out and my days have been busy.

Other than a Halloween small which I will be posting this Friday, I have done no other stitching than this. I hope to get back to the other two new starts later in October. Happy Fall!

Friday 1 September 2017

August WIPocalypse

I feel like I never had enough time to stitch this past month but when I look back at my pics of my progress I realize that I accomplished more than I thought. 
Towards the end of the month I started two new projects. Both are on 40ct linen so the going will be a little slower than usual for me. I prefer the outdoor light when working on 40ct so there will be no evening stitching on these projects. I have a daylight lamp but I still prefer the real thing. The first pic is Quaker Friends by Threadwork Primitives. I love that motif! It's a monochromatic so it will go a little faster than the other. The second pic is of my meager start on Acorn Gathering Sewing Roll by With Thy Needle & Thread. I'm stitching this on a lovely, mottled piece of Picture This Plus Legacy.




I'll continue to plug away at these two over the next month. In addition I made significant progress on Stacy Nash Tribute to Summer. 


I stopped working on this a couple of weeks ago because I wasn't sure what colours I was using for the flower border. The called for Chamomile for the leaves was a brown colour which looked nothing like I was expecting. The centre of the flower is stitched in Chamomile. Apparently the dye lots for Chamomile used to incorporate a lot more green than they do now. So I've been playing around with different colours. That first flower in the border has two different shades of green for the leaves right now as I try to decide which I like better. One is GA Piney Woods and the other is GA Green Tea Leaves. I toyed around with the idea of changing the colour of the flower which uses the called for Lambswool but have decided to leave it as is. 

Wedding preparations continue to take up a lot more of my time lately as I take the boys for suit fittings and search for a dress and shoes for myself. As of last week I've been successful in finding a dress but I'm still on the hunt for shoes.
 Our weather has been quite a bit cooler lately but I hope we can squeeze out a bit more warmth before fall officially takes place!

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