Finishing a Finish

Thank you all for your nice comments on the quilt I made LadyBug! I appreciate them so much! That will definitely not be my last quilting adventure. And to those of you wanting to try it as well - go for it! It is a huge learning process, but very fun and I felt incredibly accomplished.

This morning while Cuddle Bug was at preschool and LadyBug napped, I finished a very old finish - I stitched this in 2008. Like many of you, I am hoping to make a big dent in my pile of "Fuppies" (as Monique calls them) this year. Mark this one off the list!


I hope everyone is having a delightful week!

Tin Finish Pictures and a PS Finish

It feels like ages ago that I made a little tin and scissor fob for my sister. I gave it to her April 4th but never got pictures of the finished product. She was supposed to email me some and never did get around to it. Well she's in town and she brought the tin with her so I could take pictures myself.

I gave this to her as a sewing kit. She doesn't stitch but she does live on campus where she is attending graduate school. I thought a little mending kit would be a practical thing for her to have around. I changed the wording from "Thankful for Ewe" to "Ewe Are Beautiful."

"Thankful" Freebie from Little House Needleworks

Fob: Lamb Stitched 2/2 - Heart Stitched 1/1
Tin: Stitched 1/1
Thread: DMC
Fabric: 28 ct DMC Linen
Stitched 3/29/08 - 4/2/08
Finished as Tin & Scissor Fob (Sewing Kit) 4/3/08
This was my first and so far only tin finish but I really loved doing it and was incredibly pleased with the result!

I finished block 3 of the PS 12 Days of Christmas last night. I still need to do blocks 2 and 4 before I can cross that off my May goals. This took me 4 days between starting it and finishing it. It never should have taken me that long. But my sister came into town Friday and I just didn't make time to get this finished until last night.

Block 3 of Prairie Schooler's 12 Days of Christmas
Thread: DMC
Fabric: 32 count Natural Light Linen
Stitched 5/15/08 - 5/18/08

Hopefully I will get the other 2 blocks I have set as a May goal finished up in shorter time so I can get at least a mildly respectable start on Peach Tree Cottage before June rolls around.

Thanks for visiting! I love reading your kind comments!

Biscornu in Progress

Thank you all for your wonderful comments on my Mother's Day post. I should have put a picture of the fun flowers DH presented me with on Mother's Day but I didn't. So here they are:

They are especially great because DH was so creative and crafty! He seriously isn't a crafty guy so it floored me that he came up with and executed it all on his own!

In stitching news, I finished the stitched part of my biscornu last night. It's so cute and all your sweet comments about the adorable froggies were appreciated in my last entry :)

Froggie Biscornu by Casey Buonaugurio
Freebie chart found here.
Fabric: 25 count Cream Lugana
Thread: Recommended DMC
Stitched 5/7/08 - 5/14/08

I actually got it constructed today except for the buttons. I need to make a run to the store to find appropriate buttons. Maybe I will get that done tonight. It is so cute put together! I can't wait to post pictures as soon as it's completed!

I need to make a start on PS 12 Days of Christmas blocks for this month. Hopefully I can get them all stitched lightning fast so I can meet all my goals.

Happy May Day!

Wow 2 posts in one day! Seeing as how it's May 1st - I figure I better get my May stitching goals together :)

I completed all my April goals and I hope to do the same for May!

1. Finish CCN's "A Place We Call Home"
2. Start and Finish biscornu for MFC
3. Start and Finish Blocks 2-4 of PS 12 Days of Christmas
4. Start LHN's "Peach Tree Cottage"

I have decided what I want to do for my biscornu for May's Monthly Finishing Challenge. I'm going to do the frog biscornu freebie from Casey Buonaugurio. DH's aunt collects frogs and I have been wanting to do this for her. I'm not sure if I will be doing the flower motif on the back or if I will do something else just yet. But in the meantime I've decided on my fabric and pulled the threads I will need for the frog motif on the front. This will get started as soon as "A Place We Call Home" is finished up.

25 count cream Laguna

Progress Report

Things have been going very smoothly with my latest project - a Little House Needleworks freebie called "Thankful." I've been stitching it over 1 on 28 count linen and it's been a very enjoyable little piece to stitch up. And I mean "little" literally!

I've finished everything except the words. The design says "Thankful for Ewe" but I haven't quite decided if I want to stitch that phrase or something else depending on what I put in the finished tin to give to my sister. Hm. I haven't decided yet on what exactly to make the tin for. I need to give that some more thought. In the meantime, here's the design stitched up without any words:



I've really enjoyed stitching this 1/1. It's been very tedious but the effect is fantastic! It's so precious. I can't wait to give my first tin finishing a try.

Lately it feels like the weekends have been busier and crazier than the weekdays! Last weekend we had a memorial for my FIL, the Easter vigil, and then Easter. This weekend we had a mass and funeral for my FIL yesterday and then DH's cousin had her first Holy Communion today. I need a weekend just to recover from my weekends! Next weekend Cuddle Bug and I are going to visit my twin sister in Illinois. It's "siblings weekend" on campus where my sister is in graduate school. DH will be sleeping in next weekend. I won't be so lucky. But he was kind enough to let me sleep in late this morning and he even made me breakfast. They don't come better than my hubby :)

New Project

Yesterday I started stitching up something new. It's another small project and (assuming nothing comes up unexpectedly) this time I plan to finish it in a timely manner - unlike the Alphabet Tree.


Sorry about the shading in the picture. I'm stitching this little guy up 1/1 and I'm loving how delicate it is turning out! I know there's relatively no hope of frogging anything done over 1, but I'm taking the risk. I want to make it into a tin to include in my "Sister Box" to, naturally, my sister. Here's hoping it turns out and my eyes can manage the strain until it's finished. This is also my first LHN project - even if it's a freebie :)

In other news, the April challenge for the Monthly Finishing Challenge has been posted. It's a needleroll. I'm nervous! Thank goodness we have a full month for this one!

Well I'm off to finish making myself presentable. We are having a memorial mass this morning for my FIL and then we are going to the cemetery to bury his ashes. Sorry to leave you all on a sad note.

Thank you for visiting and for all your lovely comments!

Fun in the Snow and a Finish!

As I mentioned yesterday, we got some snow! It snowed for about 9 straight hours and we got around 9-10 inches of snow! It was amazing. I didn't step a single toe outside yesterday, but I so enjoyed the view from inside. Today it is sunny and in the low 40's, so Cuddle Bug decided he wanted to go out and play with the fluffy white stuff on the ground.


As for stitching, I finished my first linen piece! Thank you all so much for your suggestions on doing the single pink stitches around the outside. It is really nice to have experienced stitchers give their in-put. And I decided to leave the "e" alone. If it still bothers me when I get around to finishing it, I will do something about it. But for now I'm not letting it bother me. I don't really know what to do with it just yet either. It's too big for a pinkeep I think. But I would like to think of some cute way to display it. It's so pretty! It makes me long for spring!

Lovebird Freebie by Midsummer Night Musings
28-count DMC linen in winter white with suggested DMC thread

I really enjoyed working on linen. And as far as I can tell there's only the one little mistake in the "e" and nothing else in the entire piece. I kept checking as I went along to make sure all my stitches lined up. I was so pleased when I got all the way around the border and it all came together right!

Snow Day

It has been snowing non-stop since Cuddle Bug and I got up this morning! It's amazing. As a native of the desert southwest, the snow fascinates and terrifies me at the same time. I opened all the blinds and we have been watching with delight all day as the snow collects. But the thought of going out in it is enough to make me want to want to go back to bed and hide under the covers! So we are definitely staying in today. Here is the view of the backyard:
I have been stitching away at the lovebird freebie on linen. It has gone pretty well. I got everything done but the border by the time I put it down last night. I'm pleased with how it has turned out.

Here's what I finished last night: And this is what I have done up until now:

I did run into a bit of a snag as I was working on the border, and now I'm dealing with a frogging dilemma. To frog or not to frog? When I got around by the "e" at the end of "love," I noticed a little error in the letter. Now I can't decide if it is going to annoy me enough to just rip out the letter and do it over. Here is the boo-boo:

See the stitch on the far right in the loop of the letter? I went one thread too far, and didn't realize when I was finishing the adjacent stitch. So the stitch on the far right goes up one too many threads, and the stitch next to the left and above it is too short. Any thoughts?

I only have about an inch on each side of the stitching since I didn't calculate the size of my fabric right. But Jennifer suggested this fabric calculator and it looks great! It takes all the guess work out of it for you by letting you put in the margins you want and the stitch count and voila it tells you how big to cut your fabric. I will definitely be using it from now on.

When I'm done with the border, this pattern I'm working on has little speckles of pink around the curvy border line - just one stitch all by itself. I figure I'll use the loop method to start off that Michele told me about, but I'm wondering how on earth I will secure the stitch at the end?? Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas? How does one put a single stitch out by itself and secure the ends of the threads?

Adventures in Linen

First, I want to extend another thank you for all the wonderful comments I have been getting on this modest blog. It has increased my enthusiasm 10-fold if that was even possible! You are all so wonderful and warm. Michele told me I would feel welcome and she was absolutely right!

In other news, I ran into a wonderful new blog this morning called Snippets and Stash by someone who has reportedly been a lurking blog commenter for a while now with no blog of her own, Staci. That officially makes me not the newest stitching blogger - but still more than likely the newest stitcher. I can already tell I'm going to enjoy her blog quite a bit. She's considerably more crafty than I and now I get to oogle her work along with everyone else's!

And now on with the linen show -

Last night I stitched for the first time on linen. And even though I chickened out and didn't make it to my LNS for fancy linen (K in NY says LNS linen is nicer), I was satisfied for my first dabble in the linen world. Baby steps! I had planned to start with a Blue Ribbon Designs freebie Michele sent me, but quickly got ahead of myself and decided to try this lovebird freebie from Midsummer Night Musings since the colors are so yummy and I'm desperate for spring! It took me over 3 hours to finish the bird and that's all I have accomplished at this point. I get a little ambitious and a little over-confident. But I think I did well all things considered. Carol's advice about picturing a tic-tac-toe board proved very helpful, and it quickly became natural to stitch over-two, as everyone said it would. I didn't cut the linen as big as I feel like I should have. I used a fabric calculator from CyberStitchers.com to determine the size of the stitched piece, and I thought I had measured several extra inches on all sides. But it's looking like I'm not going to be left with a great deal of extra fabric around the outside. How do you all measure fabric for your pieces?


I'm going to keep practicing with smaller projects on the DMC linen before I make it out for a special trip to get the nice stuff. Any suggestions on good linen brands for when I do make that giant leap to that dreaded LNS?

It's Not Terrible

I've been admiring all these cute little scissor fobs I see all over the stitching blog world. Today I decided to undertake one of my own. I used a freebie design from The Floss Box and stitched up a front and back. Originally I wasn't going to do it as a little biscornu, but I decided to make things a little more interesting. I finished a biscornu a few weeks ago and it was much easier than I thought it would be. But doing one on such a small scale was a little more difficult since the extra fabric bunches a little more at the corners. And I under-stuffed it a bit. But I'm proud of the result since it was my first scissor fob and only my second biscornu.

Mini-biscornu scissor fob stitched on 18 count white aida with DMC floss.
Chart available here (the 7th pattern).

Doing such a small design really emphasizes all the little holes in aida. I'm even more anxious to give linen a try now. I'm hoping to get some this weekend and stitch a small freebie Michele sent me to try it out. I've never stitched over two, so it may take a bit of adjustment. But I know the finished product looks so much tighter and cleaner on linen than on aida.

I've also been doing this technique Michele told me about called "railroading." She warned me it might slow down my stitching, and it definitely has. But there's no denying my stitches are straighter and the threads are lying parallel to one another making for better fill. It's worth the extra time it takes to complete a project!