December Smalls

 December was another busy month for smalls in terms of final finishing. I needed a push in the butt to get moving because once again I left things to the last minute and with less ambition and enthusiasm.

My granddaughters ornaments were the first priority specifically their requests, the snake and the rabbit. Here are the results of the final finishes. I've included photos of the backing fabric I used as well.

It was difficult to find a fabric in my stash to back the snake with. The fabric I chose reminded me somewhat of a snake's skin although it's not as clear in this picture as I would have liked.

With those two finished I moved onto finishing their Christmas ornaments. I cheated and pulled two previous stitched ornaments out of my pile and finished them up.

I squeeked out the final finishes on Dec. 14, packaged all their gifts up and mailed them out by Xpress post on Dec. 15. Believe it or not, they arrived at their home in Quebec two days later!! I was shocked. After all we all know how long it's taking to receive mail during the pandemic. 

I wasn't able to see the girls over Christmas but they took and posted a few pictures for me to see them opening their gifts. It looks like the ornaments were a hit as well as their requested pieces.

I also managed to finish off a name tree for my friend Trish and I finally got around to stitching one for myself after all the others were finished.

The first name tree is designed by Nouveau Encore Designs and my name tree was designed by M Designs who unfortunately is no longer designing.

I also finished the stitching on two small ornament finishes of a design called Twinkles by Stitcharoo Gifts. I spotted this little ornie on either a Facebook or Instagram post by another stitcher. I thought it would be a sweet and quick little finish.

I have stitched in on two different fabric linens. One is a pink-blue colour and the second is a light green with brighter colours for the floss.

As you can see, I have almost completed the final finishing on the first one. These will be put aside for next year's gifts for my granddaughters so I'm already ahead of the game!

I don't know how but I managed to squeek out all my finishes on time!

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!

December Smalls

There was no new stitching of smalls that took place this month. I had all these plans and had pulled all manner of charts from my stash however a vile virus destroyed all my plans. Around Dec. 8 I started to feel not quite like myself and over the next few days realized that my body was fighting something. By my husband's birthday on the 12th I knew I was full out sick and I didn't recover to any extent until the 23rd! By then I had seen the doctor who diagnosed a chest cold/virus that had morphed into bronchitis and now required antibiotics. The drugs did their thing and my lungs are very slowly recovering. I suspect the coughing will go on for a couple more weeks though.
Consequently I did nothing and I mean nothing! I had no energy to even pick up my needle and I'm only just now starting to stitch again. Once my energy did start returning I got down to some serious finishing. I had my granddaughters ornies to complete as well as a friend's gift. During the process I also finished off several other small pillows.

Here are my gift finishes:

The two for my granddaughters are designed by The Little Stitcher and the last one is a design by Little House Needleworks called Potted Poinsettia.

Here is a pic of the ornaments and pillows I set out to finish followed by some pics of my small pillow displays throughout the house.

So no new stitches but lots of finishes! I'm pleased with how the month ended after losing most of it to ill health. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Ours was very low key because although I'm somewhat recovered, my hubby is just coming down with a cold. 
Here's to lots of new smalls stitching in the New Year!

December Smalls

December has been just a flurry of smalls stitching. As usual I waited far too late to get started on my ornaments which I was gifting and ended up doing a marathon of stitching and finishing. All in all I'm pretty happy with the results. The first two pictured were for my sons Jeff and Daniel and their names can be found in the tree branches.

The remaining three are word trees and spell Snow, Rejoice and Santa. 

I love doing these name and word trees! They stitch up quickly and make awesome gifts. All of the above designs were created by Helga Mandl. Unfortunately she is no longer designing. M Designs also did name trees many years ago. I tried contacting them as well for more charts but there was never any responses to my emails. I am fortunate enough to have ordered all the charts for my immediate family plus a chart pack of 10 designs for Christmas before they were no longer available. 

If anyone know of another source for these could they please let me know? I would love to order more name trees for close friends. The ornaments I have gifted so far have been very well received and loved.

In addition to these 5 I finished off the ornaments for my granddaughters. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the finished pieces before they were gifted. Here's a photo of one of the girls displaying her gift.

Now I'm off to start some more word trees. I ordered some lovely new overdyed floss from ColourComplements and from Nina's Hand Dyed Floss just for stitching more of these ornaments. Maybe I'll be ahead of the game for next year!

April Smalls

There's been much more stitching than usual over the last month. It must be all those rainy, miserable days that did it! Who feels like doing anything except stitching on days like that? I managed to finish two smalls, another slightly larger piece and I got started on a new project. In addition, I did some final finishing on some pieces which was long overdue.

I'll show you my new start as well as the larger finished piece on my next post for WIPocalypse. One of my small finishes is for an exchange gift at the Prim Stitchers Society retreat in Columbus, Ohio which I will be attending later next week. I don't want to spoil the surprise so I'll show you that next month after retreat is finished.
My other small finish is for a friend's birthday. I haven't given it to her yet but she doesn't follow my blog so it's safe to post it. Here is J'Aime Les Boutons (I Love Buttons), designed by Danybrod.

As you can see, I added bone buttons along with some others from my collection as well as some lovely lace which I found in an antique shop last summer. This pillow is larger than it looks. I stuffed it with wood shavings and crushed walnut shell. I hope she likes it!

The remaining pillows are ones that you have probably already seen the stitched pieces on my blog over the past year and now I finally got around to finishing them up.

The next one is filled with dried lavender and it smells sooooo good!

This year Canada celebrates its 150th birthday. In celebration of this, Jeannette Douglas has released a series of Canadian Patriotic Snippets. 
There are 12 charts in the series and 2 are being released every other month throughout the year. I have the first  4 charts and hope to get started on them in the coming month. They can be stitched as individual pieces or as one in a framed piece. I'm looking forward to adding a few of these to my display bowls.
 Enjoy your weekend everyone!