April WIPocalypse

I realized only a week ago that I have spent the entire month of April working on my large finishes and neglected to start anything small at all. So consequently you will only see this post from me and no Smalls post. Hopefully I can find the time to get started on another small finish for May. In the meantime I have some pictures to share of my larger works in progress.

You will remember from last month's post that I was close to a finish on Thirza Hudson 1825. Shortly thereafter I powered through and finished off the over one with her name and date and then the remaining border. 

 This has been such a joy to stitch and it's the sweetest little sampler! I have already had it stretched and I'm hoping to get it framed in the very near future. 

After finishing Thirza, I turned my attentions back to 1897 Schoolhouse Designs My Precious Jewel. Because I didn't have the chosen fabric for this design, I went with Picture This Plus Earthern, which I had in my stash. However I have had to adjust the colours of floss I'm using accordingly. I had hoped to do the whole sampler in silks but that hasn't worked out for various reasons. So as it stands, I'm stitching with a mix of silks and overdyes, some of which are the called for overdyes. 

This was my progress as of March.

Here's my progress as of April 23

The called for floss for most of the white areas is Gentle Art Shaker White. My lot was more of a creamy colour and I wanted to achieve the white look that the chart displays on its cover so I went with Picket Fence. It worked well for the house and area but hasn't worked as well in some of the smaller motifs at the top of the piece. I'm currently trying to decide whether to frog them and go with another colour of floss altogether or find a brighter white that will stand out more on my fabric choice. 

 My brain was tired of trying to make a decision so for now I moved on to the funky tree that drew me to this piece in the first place. I also love the little teapot motif at the top which is ghosted now with the white. 

Up close the motifs look like they work but from a distance they're just ghost shapes on the design. I'm still working on the tree and surrounding area while I let my frustration settle. I'll have to decide at some point but for now I just want to stitch!

I recently picked up the birth sampler I did for my sweet little grandson along with a LaDDa finish from 2018. I used the same frame for both pieces and I absolutely love how they turned out. As you can see from the one photo, my grandbaby isn't quite sure how he feels yet, lol!

This weekend marks the start of a Blackbird Designs SAL, a new start or a WIP. It's being sponsored by Brenda and Laura of Flosstube fame. I have pulled out a start from 2019 from the Ooh La La book which is called Last Rose of Summer. I actually am going to restart the piece on a different piece of fabric and as well I now have the called for floss. I wasn't happy with my original fabric choice and some of the DMC conversions of the overdyes. I'll have a pic of my progress from each weekend for you. I'm already enjoying it much more this time around.

I'm also looking at several starts of another small sampler....  Little Deeds by The Scarlett House, Little Robin Designs Clarissa Beaumont 1875  and Hedgerow Stitching Jane Thwaites 1828. I'm just in the process of kitting each and then I'll decide which to start first! See you next month!

June WIPocalypse

June seems to have arrived rather quickly but its summer weather sure took its time arriving! It's been so unseasonable that I wasn't quite sure what to pack for my Prim Stitchers Society Retreat. Fortunately their weather in Pennsylvania seemed to be a little warmer than ours at home so summer attire prevailed. Before I get to the retreat I'll show you a pic of what I'm working on at the moment.
 Last month I had completed all save the border on LaDDa Awake My Soul. The border was a bit time consuming and it was the sole project that I worked on during retreat but I still didn't complete it until shortly after I returned home. It was a real hit with all the ladies at retreat a lot of it due to the fabric I chose.

The fabric is a Silkweaver evenweave which I found in my stash. I remembered that it was a Silkweaver but had to go onto their site to look up the colour which I believe is Autumn Blush. The fabric makes the colours pop and I love how it turned out. Time to save for some framing!

At retreat I picked up one of Nan Lewis' new designs (Threadwork Primitives) called Live Simply. As soon as I finished up Awake I started in on the new design. This past weekend I put in the final stitches.

This was a sweet little stitch which I hope to finish in a frame as Nan has with some ticking fabric and lace.Just click on my link to see her finish.

My latest start is by Heartstring Samplery and is called All The Pretty Flowers. 

Sorry, it's not the greatest pic but the lighting around here is pretty lousy right now. It's a sweet little summery piece that shouldn't take too long to complete.

After writing this I have decided to put up a separate post for the retreat. There are just too many pics to add and my computer isn't co-operating at the moment. So watch for a post to go up in the next few days with all my retreat goodies! See you then!

Edit: I forgot to say that I have loved reading all of your comments but suddenly I am not receiving them in my email any longer and I'm not able to reply to them. I've checked my settings and all is well so I don't know what has happened. Is anyone else having problems with this issue?

May WIPocalypse

May has involved a fair amount of stitching for me but only during the first week of the month and the latter 10 days or so. The rest of the month I've been dealing with vertigo which sidelines me from time to time. 
Last month's question, What is your longest running WIP?, involved my digging into my journal of starts. I knew which piece had been hiding out in the closet but I wasn't sure just when I had started it originally. As it turned out it was A Mon Ami Pierre Paradis Perdu which I started stitching in January of 2012. Now 2012 was the first full year following my retirement and when I look back at my journal I see that I kind of went overboard on stitching that year. Paradis Perdu was indeed lost in all the shuffle and brought out roughly once per year thereafter for some token stitching. However nothing has been added to it since early 2015. 

Once more I dug it out and gave it some love. Will it get finished this year? One only knows!
These are the before pics.

I've concentrated on the alphabet mostly this month and the apple tree. Here's my  progress so far.

I also picked up Awake My Soul and it's very close to completion. All that remains is the border.

May is a month of birthdays here..... my daughter-in-law, me and my son. This past Sunday we joined Chris and Violet in a joint celebration of our birthdays as well as a delayed Mother's Day celebration. Chris and V have just returned from their honeymoon so after a great dinner at Pub Italia in Ottawa we went back to their place to view all the photos from their trip. 

Earlier in the month I paid a visit to the Tulip Festival in Ottawa. I try to make it to this event at least every couple of years. Most of the tulips can be seen at Dow's Lake which is a great location for them.

Tulips are a favourite of mine and I enjoy seeing all the new varieties.

Tomorrow I'm headed to Harrisburg, PA for the 2018 Prim Stitchers Society Retreat. I'm so excited and can hardly wait to see all my friends. Next month I should have lots of pics from the event. Until then, have a great month. Summer has arrived!

April WIPocalypse

In addition to my small finishes this month which I previously posted here, I have added some stitching to the lovely Awake My Soul.

I continue to enjoy the spring colours in this one. It's such a pretty piece. I want to do nothing but work on this one right now however I'm desperately trying to get some stitching done for gifts. I dislike deadlines and I should have started them earlier but we always think we have more time than we do, lol. Hopefully I will have a few days to devote to this for my next month's post. In the meantime I will show you some pics of recent finishes that I have had framed.

 Blackbird Designs  It's Spring Fever

Blackbird Designs   Evergreen

Both of these pieces have been framed by Patti Nicolosi of By My Hand Needl'werks. I will be picking them up from Patti at the Prim Stitchers Society Retreat which runs from May 31 - June 3. I'm looking forward to bringing them home and adding them to the other treasures on my walls.

I'm scouting through my stash now looking for a new start for when Awake is complete. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't often stick to my original WIPocalypse list. I go where my mood takes me and often something will just jump out at me and say "stitch me".  

April's question of what is your longest running WIP or UFO got me to thinking. I looked it up and a design by A Mon Ami Pierre called Paradis Perdu is my longest. I started it in Jan. 2012 and it still sits unfinished. I've completed quite a bit of it too. It's a large Adam and Eve design which I'm stitching with silks. I think the reason I've left it linger for so longer is that I'm not comfortable stitching it on the larger Q Snaps. It's difficult for me to hold in hand for any length of time and I'm not interested in purchasing one of the stand frames.  

It took me a bit of time to find these pics but just seeing it again makes me want to work on it. Now if I could only find it, lol!

Warmer weather is forecast for this coming week and with any luck I could quite possibly be stitching outdoors in the gazebo. I can't wait!

March WIPocalypse

Spring is getting close! I know it's officially arrived but the temperature doesn't always reflect that. However the warm sunshine of the past couple of days certainly reinforces that winter is leaving us for good very soon. Consequently I have tired of working on winter and Christmas stitching and switched gears to start on something with a little more colour and spring/summer feel to it.

I know that I said I would stick to starts in my stash but when I saw this new design from the Nashville Needlework Market I just couldn't resist. It screamed spring to me along with the feelings we have as soon as spring makes an appearance. La D Da Awake My Soul was pulled out, kitted up and first stitches begun this past week. The fabric is a mystery evenweave fabric. I suspect that it's a Zweigart by the feel and may very well be Pink Sandy Beaches. It's a 28 ct which I have not stitched on for some time, 32 and 36 cts being my go to fabrics. However the colour suited this piece and my eyes could use a break once in awhile. I love the colours in this piece and I'm really enjoying this one even if I haven't got very far yet.

As I said, I tired of the winter stitches so I didn't get too much further on my Plum Street Samplers Pomegranate Santa. Santa still hasn't made an appearance yet and I guess we'll have to wait until next Christmas for that, lol!

I managed to add the large snowflake which doesn't show up too well in my photo, plus I worked on the leaves on the left.

Until my recent new start I continued and finished a design which I started towards the end of 2017. Threadwork Primitives Quaker Friends was a delight to stitch. 

I've added my mother's and my initials to this piece. I'm hoping to finish it either on a tray or a hornbook. I'm just looking for the right one. You'd never know that I ran out of my floss halfway through stitching and had to replace it with another one. A friend offered a skein from her stash but it turned out to be a different dye lot and wasn't working. I ended up pulling a floss from my own stash from a completely different company that looked identical.

That's about if for this month. I'm hoping to continue my new start and perhaps dig out a few other new ones or search my list for a current WIP to finish off. I hope that spring is coming your way and it won't be long before we're outside stitching!

A Quick Update

It's been absolutely lovely here recently. We've had a couple of milder days with lots of sun and our snow is melting, bit by bit. I know spring is on its way but I always dislike this time of year. The snowbanks are a dirty gray from all the road spray and there are potholes and puddles everywhere. Besides the potholes on the roads, the roads themselves start to heave and dip due to the freeze-thaw cycle. It's impossible to drive certain routes at this time unless you want to do some serious damage to your vehicle. 
On the up side, the days are longer and now the time change has occurred so are the evenings.

Today is a dull, cloudy day but despite that we've had a few visitors to our feeder.
 First came the purple finch and exactly why do they call it purple when it's obviously red?

He was followed by a common redpoll. We don't see as many of these. They are sub-arctic birds and only venture south occasionally. He looks a bit chilly, doesn't he?

We've heard robins singing but haven't actually seen one yet.

I've had some quality stitching and finishing time this week and have a few finishes to show you.

This is Threadwork Primitives Wintertime. As I finished stitching the border I realized a small error. I counted wrong on my deer to the right which resulted in the placement of the upper snowflake being too high by one row. Consequently the border touches it. At this point though I was not about to frog the whole deer and snowflake. It's my own unique version! Interesting though because this type of mistake would have driven me crazy in the past. Am I mellowing? Who knows, lol?

Then I finished up this sweet little pillow for a very dear friend. As soon as I laid eyes on this pattern I knew exactly who it was going to. The last pic is of the fabric I used for the backing. This design is by Annie Beez Folkart.

 I also finished up a cute St. Patrick's Day finish for this months Smalls SAL commitment but you will have to wait until the 25th of the month to see this one.

I've been working on Briar Rabbit over the past two days and I'm making progress. Just a couple of leaves, a couple of letters and the bunny himself and then this will be done.

The lighting here today is just the pits and I can't get a decent photo of my stitching. The fabric I'm stitching on is actually much darker than it appears.

A new start I have on the go is Threadwork Primitives My Work. 

 This one will also be going to a friend as a housewarming gift.

I've picked out a couple more small starts for Easter stitching including He Is Risen by Country Rustic Primitives.  
I also have a couple of ideas for some larger designs but they will have to wait until I get home from the hospital, during my recuperation. Perhaps one of the new market releases?

I probably won't be posting again until the end of the month after I'm home. I'll see how well I'm progressing with my physio, etc.
See you soon!