Happy Canada Day

In celebration of Canada Day, I have a chart to share with all of you.  I charted it many years ago for a workshop I was teaching at the Creative Sewing & Needlework Festival in Toronto.  It is stitched in the Continental/ Tent Stitch on a 10ct canvas using Anchor Tapestry wool.  The larger canvas is great for teaching at shows, as one never knows how good the lighting will be, and for a pillow the wool wears better than cotton.  At the time my son, Christopher, was in elementary school and had wanted a Canada themed bedroom. The room looked great, right down to a 6' totem pole.  Over the years his room has slowly transformed into a NFL decorated room with a heavy emphasis on the Chicago Bears, his team.  Today the only sign remaining from his childhood room is this Canadian Flag pillow.  It sits on his window bench among his other pillows.

Click here to download the Canada Flag chart

Have a great Canada Day !!!!

Background! Background! Background!

I have never thought of myself as a pink person, but it was the soft pink I choose as background for my "Stitch for a Cure" cancer ribbon pillow.  What is it they say?
"Never say never!"
So over the past few weeks I have started filling in the background.  Although stitching with knitting wool is quite different than tapestry wool, I am very pleased with the result. 
I could have had the background done by now, were it not for the high temperatures we had over the past week.  When handling wool while it's HOT, my hands feel sweaty and my internal temparture goes way up!!   I can stand it for only about an hour (after the sun has gone down, of course), so it has been a slow process.

But my time has not been waisted.  I've have been working on my "Palm Tree" sampler design, the 5th tree in my Tree Sampler series, and it's all done.  I love it!! It looks great.  Now I just have to stitch it.  If all goes well, I should be able to release it by August.

Prom Night

My son, Christopher, was at his Prom tonight.  He met up with his date, Lauren, at the banquet hall.  Don't they make a lovely couple?  The dinner and dance runs until midnight, and knowing my son he'll be ready to come home by then.  He's not the "party 'til you drop" kind of guy.  

So while I'm waiting for him to call for his pick-up, I'm working on my "Stitching for a Cure" pillow. 

Last weekend was a perfect weekend for stitching 

- it rained, and rained, and rained.  

We had gone up north to my parents' cottage,

 and I took a few stitching projects with me.

Friday evening I had worked on my pillow.  I stitched the darker colour in the ribbon border, only to then discover that I had not brought enough of the second ribbon colour.  So I started filling in the background.  I stitched a full skein of 7322 DMC, to get a  feel on how this colour works with the pink.  I quite like the aqua-greenish shade, but I wasn't convinced about using it as the background.  My other option had been a soft yellow, but of course I did not bring any of it with me.  As it turns out, I was glad I had to put this needlepoint on hold.  On Tuesday I popped over to our local knitting shop and found a wonderful soft pink, it was exactly what I had envisioned in the first place. The above photo I had taken before ripping out all of the aqua-green, to show you all 3 background options.

On the Saturday I sat in the kitchen, watched the rain come down, and finished  this Huck Weaving table topper.  Huck (Swedish) weaving is so fast and lots of fun.  I had the centre Star pattern all finished by dinner time.  

It will look great on my table at Christmas time.

The fabric is 11ct Stockholm and the threads are DMC's perle cotton #5 - 3 shades of red and a Gold.  The pattern is from an old German magazine my grandmother had sent me in the 80's.  Patterns never really get old!!!

I'm charting the pattern and will make it available with some instructions to all interested at no charge as long as you purchase the fabric and threads.

Happy Stitching!!