Motorcycle Flask

This was my "secret for Christmas" piece this year.  My husband rides motorcycles, yes plural, he has 5!  The BMW R1200GS is his current favorite.  He likes to do trail riding and camping.  He enjoys a nightcap when he is camping.  When I saw the flask with needlepoint insert on Chilly Hollow, I had to do it for DH for Christmas.  With Jane's help, I was able to locate a vendor and purchase one with blank canvas.  Then I found an image of the bike on Google & charted it.  It turned out great!  I painted the canvas yellow, the color of his bike, and just stitched the bike and his initials in tent stitch with pearl cotton.  He was really surprised and pleased.

Puzzle Piece, FINISHED

It's finished!  My Puzzle Piece (not a purse) is finished!  Happy, happy dance!!!

 

I concentrated on this piece in an effort to finish it before the end of the year and I've just made it.

 

This was an incredibly intense project.  Every section required multiple decisions.  Even though I sort of planned out a lot of it, deciding where to use the different area designs from the Puzzle Purse book, I still had lots of decisions to make all the way.  And towards the end, I couldn't fit any of the area designs into my remaining shapes, so I pulled out all my Jean Hilton books and chose stitches from those.

 

I think the biggest mistake I made on this piece, was not to see it as a whole.  I tended to focus on each area individually and that was a mistake.  It is going to be a very busy piece no matter what, but if I had been looking at it more as a whole, I would have arranged the colors differently and used fewer colors so that the center Bargello diamond would be set off more. 

 

That being said though, I do like this piece.

 

Candy Cane Ornament

Merry Christmas everyone!  Can you believe Christmas is tomorrow already?!

This cute ornament stitched up in minutes, well, maybe a couple of hours.  And the prefinished fabric ornament is a dream!  Just stick in the finished stitchery & you're done!  A friend told me about these "Christmas Tucks". I love them!  Your LNS can order them online from the Yarn Tree.

Puzzle Piece, Progress #4

I have been working on my Puzzle Piece, hoping to get it finished before the end of the year.  I don't think I'm going to make it, but I'm still trying.
I didn't work on it for several months and just got it out again a few weeks ago.  It is a fun project, but it does require me to make constant decisions about stitch placement, color & thread.  Sometimes I just don't have the energy for all that!
I have two bags of threads for this project - one has the threads I've used so far and the other has possibles.  More & more threads are migrating to the "used" bag!  I can't believe how many different threads I've used so far.

A Little Bit of Happiness, FINISHED

A Little Bit of Happiness is finished!  This project turned out to be a "bigger" project than I

thought it would be.  Jan  also has finished hers, do take a look at her lovely finish!

I have used heavier threads than the designer suggested for most of this project, and, therefore have run out of threads twice!  I also ran out of beads. The joys of working from stash!

I did not want to go across town to my LNS just for a few beads, so instead I used a different color for the beads in the center diamond and a different thread color as well. 

And, I didn't care for the look of these very shiny Magnifica beads using the pattern that Peggy designed for the center diamond area.  Instead, I redesigned it to be the same style as the corners.   I actually like that though and DH says it looks like it was supposed to be that way.  High praise indeed.

Nature-Earth Finished

Nature-Earth is finally finished - and the rock rocks!
I found the rock in the aquarium section of Petsmart!  They had fairly small bags, about 12 rocks, for $1.  Hard to beat that!
Now if I could just get the directions finished! 
And, Nature-Sky, the 3rd in the series, is waiting to be stitched.  It is kitted & ready to go, just have to finish up a couple more things.

2-4-6 Bargello 4-Way

No, I am not sitting around eating bonbons and watching soaps.  I have been stitching, although perhaps not as much as usual.  Like everyone else, the holidays do get in my stitching way!  Also like everyone else, I do have at least one "secret" project that I can't show you till after Christmas lest the surprise leak out.
When we were in Reno the last time, I ran across a notebook of a technique I used to do, and teach, many years ago.  It is called 2-4-6 Bargello and is just a ton of fun!  I will be working on more new models for this and hope to have a class put together sometime in 2014.
This model is 2-4-6 worked as a small 4-way, it is just 5" square on 18-count, worked in Silk & Ivory with one row of Watercolours and a center of FyreWerks.  I think it is rather pretty and it will make a nice box top.

A Little Bit of Happiness, Progress #2

I have made considerable progress on A Little Bit of Happiness.  So has Jan, check hers out too!  It's so fun to watch the different color schemes develop!
I've had a bit of trouble with this pattern, figuring out the positioning of the different elements.  I made a mistake somewhere and didn't want to spend hours trying to find it & fix it, so I'm just adjusting everything to compensate.  So, mine is a bit different, but probably not really noticeable.
I had to go back & put in the borders, which took awhile!  But now I'm on a roll.