I have been stitching but ...

Even though it's been awhile since my last post I can't show much today.   I've been stitching some surprises for friends -- all of which are now finished and in the mail.  As soon as I can, I'll posts pics of them.  But for now here's what I can show you:

Heart Note Alley -- I love this one!

Purple Garden -- I love this one, too!

Small sampler for a Habitat for Humanity family
 that will be moving into their new home soon.

And last but not least I have a new start!  I decided after doing all that gift stitching, I needed to reward myself with this lovely called Tree of Stitches, designed by Abi Gurden.  I'm using the black fabric from an aborted piece that drove me crazy because of my color choices.  This will only be the third time I've stitched on black.  The first was The Castle by T. Wentzler (which came out great but drove me crazy stitching it), the second was aborted, and now this attempt.  So far so good.  The stitches are larger - which helps.  I'm stitching really slowly.  And I'm only using 3 threads, #13 Perle Coton, a gold thread and a Caron Wildflower -- all larger, easy to see threads.  Here's the result so far (actually I've done more but didn't photograph it yet):

I love this one, too!
Are you sensing a pattern here??

Finally, here are a couple pics of Spider and Meadow, just hanging out in the yard:

Poor Spider is teething now and I swear he's grown since I took these pics.  He and I have been taking a puppy foundation class once a week to get him ready to be a good adult beagle.  He has two classes under his collar and since he gets lots of cookies, he's having a blast!

Hey -- I added this later.   A current pic of Tree of Stitches.

Have a good one .....

Finished ......

.... except for the date.  I need to find out if the house is to be completed this year or next. 

Have a good weekend!

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!