A beagle and a heart

I kept forgetting to take a picture of  this one.  I bought this beagle pin at a conformation show last year but don't have occassion to wear it much.  Since I think it's cute, I decided to stitch a frame for it so I can display the pin even when I'm not wearing it.  The "frame" is based on Wessex Stitchery and took me about a day of laundry and stitching to do it.  The difficult part was turning the first corner -- it took me about 4 or 5 tries to get it right.

I realize most people don't care for the baying of beagles but every time I hear a beagle howling after a bunny, I can't help but call the sound 'a joyful noise' .... and smile.

Switching now from beagles to Heart Note Alley, this SAL is almost finished.  I love this pattern (even though it was plagued/cursed/hounded *wink* with multiple frogs) and am very happy with my version of it.

Thanks for visiting!

5 down . . . . 3 more to go

I worked diligently Friday through Sunday morning to finish 5 Christmas ornaments.  One of which I forgot to take a picture of before sending it off in the mail Saturday morning.  Bummer!  The other 4 are here for your enjoyment.  And all I have to say is, thank goodness for those little pre-finished pillows.  Yes, I cheated and used them to finish my ornies.

The Christmas Trees are freebies from Alexandria and the gifts are my own design, I needed a break from trees.

Thank you, dear followers, for the kind comments on the tree from my previous post.  The interior decoration is a type of embroidery called Wessex stitchery.  I bought a book (I love books) about it a couple years ago called Wessex Stitchery by Gay Eaton just out of curiosity.  It is such a fun thing (at least the way I do it) because you just kind of make things up as you go along -- no cumbersome pattern to hold while I'm stitching.  I don't do many of the more complicated designs (at least not yet) because I have so much fun with the simpler stuff.

The Embroiders' Guild has a beautiful example of this type of stitching.  Nordic Needle has a nice tutorial of a few stitches in case you just want to try it.   Notes from under the Mountain also has a lovely example of it.

I use it to make borders:

Or to add a decorative line:

And now I'm filling in objects.  It's a fun, easy technique -- I highly recommend giving it a try.

Halloween craziness and a beeginning

I finished one of my Crazy Challenge pieces -- yippee! -- the Sampler Girl's "The Old Black Cat" with some changes to the border.  This is such a cute piece.  However, I decided the black spiders look more like ticks to me (bleeechhht!!)  --shiver-- way creepier than spiders.

And I started a new project (Busy Bee Tuffet by Chessie & Me) that needs to be stitched by my next EGA meeting on Monday.  We are going to learn how to assemble it into a biscornus.  I'm looking forward to learning a new (to me) finishing technique.  And as you can see, I've changed the colors:

 I love the little bee keep scissor fob and plan to stitch it also -- though probably not before Monday.

The weather man is threatening us with nice weather for the next couple days -- party sunny with temps near 50.  WooHoo!  Break out the shorts and flip flops!  I hope your weather promises to be just as pleasant .....

Wow!  I just noticed I have some new followers -- how cool is that.  Welcome!

Two do-overs

I picked up Toccata 3 a couple weekends ago and decided I did NOT LIKE it.  Furthermore, by the time I went to bed, I decided I was NOT going to finish the d**n thing.  If I wasn't having fun stitching it, I was DONE with it.  (In fact, I so disliked the original version that the next day I ripped it apart, washed and ironed the fabric, and set the linen aside for another project.)  After a night's rest, I thought I would just start it over again with stuff from my stash.   After all, it's a lovely pattern and I really wanted to stitch it.  However, I have now fallen so far behind, I will never catch up with the other ladies from my EGA group.  Sooo, I decided to change the pattern a little by just making a sampler of squares and border lines from the original pattern.

Here's my original start.  It's on linen (which shredded the thread for the pulled areas).  The big square in the middle houses an alphabet which is surrounded by the different  blocks and borders.

Here's my do-over.  It's on grey evenweave with an overdyed Needle Necessities thread for the non-pulled sections and a polyester Sulky thread for the pulled areas.  Already I like it better.  The plan is to stitch the blocks and rows from Toccata 3.  Nothing fancy -- just make everything fit.

The above pic is what I did last week.  It looks nicer than the picture and I'm much happier with it.


Another problem piece is When Stars Collide. 

I decided to do it on black evenweave using sparkly threads and beads.  It looks lovely -- I love it but ...... and it's a big BUT ..... it is killing my eyes.  Whatever posessed me to stitch on black material again?  After stitching The Castle by Teresa Wentzler on black aida about 20 years ago, I vowed to never ever ever stitch on black again.  But after seeing so many beautiful things stitched on black, I thought I would give it a go.  Bad idea!

So the plan is to abandon my original plan and restitch When Stars Collide on black canvas and instead of backstitching each star, I plan to lay the sparkly threads.  Hopefully, the larger holes and changing the stitch-type will make it easier on my eyes.  Since I haven't started this yet, I don't know if this will work or not .... will keep you posted.


I also spent part of the weekend stitching  part 2 of the lovely little SAL 'Baumchen' from the Stick Lounge group ...... no problems here :) .....

and the sampler I'm making for a Habitat for Humanity soon-to-be new homeowner.

The letters are from an old pattern (below) in Cross Stitch & Country Crafts magazine (I think that's the name) and the border is Wessex Embroidery.  So except for the letters, it's kind of an original design.

Good Stitching!

Busy as a bee .....

That's what I've been the last few weeks.

I have "Grow with Love" almost finished.  It just needs a line between the wreath and flower pots and something above the hearts.  The pattern calls for words but I was thinking maybe a butterfly would look nice there.

I'm current with See the Star -- finally! 

With Fall fast approaching, I've been getting things ready for the local fairs, stitching gifts for Halloween and other events.  These pics are the ornies for my nephews this year.  Both are from "Just Cross Stitch", one is from this year's Halloween edition and the other from last year.  Aren't they cute?  Love that purple fabric!

Over the weekend I stitched a gift for a friend using Wessex embroidery almost exclusively.  It's kind of fun and I'm happy with the way it turned out.  I want to add some beads to it for a little sparkle and it will be done.

I need to get going on a sampler for Habitat for Humanity and I'm thinking I'll put some of the Wessex embroidery on it.  Hopefully, I'll begin it this week.

And then there is stitching to be done for Christmas -- yikes, I'm so far behind this year!

Jane Austen

These two small samplers are from The Sampler Girl .  They were to be Christmas presents for a college friend who is a big fan of Jane Austen.  Unfortunately, with the amount of snow we had over the winter and then with my job, we couldn't get together until this past weekend.

I'm really happy with them, even the frame job -- which I did, my very own self, if you can believe that.  The first one I chose for Sandy because she makes an excellent apple pie and the second one because I thought it funny.  The geometric motiffs are changes from the original patterns.  They came from a book by Gay Eaton entitled Wessex Stitchery.   Very pretty stuff.