Take a Stitch Tuesday 2013 - Stitches 91, 92 and 93

These three stitches are the Straight Feather (#91) and two variations (## 92 and 93).

Here is the Straight Feather Stitch:

variation #1, the Crossed Feather Stitch:

and variation #2, the Plaited Feather Stitch:

I stitched them side by side on my stitch sampler page and you can see how they compare here:  

I also caved and went stitchery surfing on Black Friday and bought a few things. Four new charts on sale for 20% off, for example: 

I've been wanting one of these Vickery Collection Celtic crosses (I bought the Celtic Garden Cross as well as the Celtic September and Celtic December) for some time, so this seemed a good idea. And I couldn't resist Chatelaine's. Celtic Garden Mandala. I have no idea when I'll stitch ANY of these! 

There were also some beads in this shipment for my final BJP of 2013 (Some may also show up on my December Crazy Quilt Journal block as well!) I bought some 12/0 magnificas to add some dimension to my seed bead collection (Christmas Green, Cherry Red, White Opal, Silver Fox, Opal Honey and Opalescent Periwinkle ) ... also 20% off! 

What can I say? 'Tis the season!

2013 - Reconnect to My Stitchery, Week Forty-Seven

No TAST this week so all I had to stitch on was my November bead journal butterfly. Well, not all, but all that had a true deadline assigned to it. And here is is: "Fallen Leaves"!

When I finished this up Sunday night, I didn't want to start on my BAP of "nine Roll Your Own Mandalas so I pulled out the first chart in my project bag and it turned out to be another blackwork designed by Valentina Sardu for Ajisai Designs: ""Ladybug & Butterfly". Here you can see the start of the ladybug's head and three legs:

Once the cross-stitched ladybug is finished, it will all be blackwork fill patterns and backstitching. I need to get some more DMC 310! LOL

Thanksgiving is at husband's nephew's in Toledo. I'm to bring my "rice dish", a brown and wild rice stuffing with apricots and dried cherries that I found in "Bon Apetit" about five years ago. Total surprise to me that a) it worked and b) it became an instant favorite with my husband's family! SO now I need to find the recipe/magazine and create a shopping list so I can assemble it on Thursday morning.

If I don't see you again before the holiday, don't eat too much and be thankful for all the blessings we have in this increasingly dysfunctional world.

WIPocalypse 2013 - November 17 (a full Beaver Moon)

The topics in WIPocalypse for this month include : Themes: Designer – Allessandra Adelaide, Style – Ornaments, Colors – White and Purple.

I have never done a Allessandra Adelaide chart, nor do I have any in my stash. There are no ornaments in progress (although I have some possibilities in a stack of printouts on my work table that I MIGHT get around to someday soon). And I have no white and/or purple stitchery in progress or even planned.

Last month, the unfinished projects in my project bag were gradually reducing so that, when I reported in, I only had the following:

• the blackwork "Puppy Dog" from Ajisai ,
• a cover for a fabric book (which will be made from my 2010 Bead Journal Project squares)
• a Chinese Coins quilted throw - top in progress

What I completed since the last check in are:

•  the blackwork "Puppy Dog" from Ajisai 
• TAST: Turkman Stitch, two versions of the buttonhole picot and two versions of twisted satin stitch 
•  October BJP butterfly
• November Crazy Quilt Journal block 

In progress is the November BJP butterfly and the Chinese Coins quilt top (top completed, now I have to tackle quilting it! AAARGH!) 

Not touched were the BJP 2010 "book",  the January challenge for quilt guild, the 9 "Roll Your Own" mandalas,  and the online classes from Janet Perry on background stitches and on stitch guides. So while I may have actually freed up some stitching time, the backlog is still pretty immense.

So what do I want to tackle for the final report of 2013?

• I want to be caught up with TAST2013
• I want to be finished with BJP November *and* December butterflies
• I want to be finished with the Crazy Quilt Journal Project December block
• I want to have made progress in the "Roll Your Own" mandalas (I want to do all 9 on the same large piece of fabric so I need to grid them out so they balance)
• I want to finish the Chinese Coins quilt
•  I want to get a start on the 2010 BJP "book" (it requires a LOT of planning and a LOT of hand stitching)
•   and I want to start a new cross stitch piece (but not sure which one yet!).

2013 - Reconnect to My Stitchery, Week Forty-Six and IHSW November 15 - 17

This week, I managed two more completions --- my November monochromatic orange crazy quilt block for the Crazy Quilt Journal Project and the two TAST stitches that were assigned. Otherwise, I tried calculatiing  how to place the nine Roll Your Own Mandalas and think I have come up with a plan, using Iris Garden overdyed 32ct linen (even though my husband is no fan of the fabric) and the Tropical Ocean color scheme. The I forced myself to work on two neglected pieces --- the Chinese Coins quilt and the November BJP butterfly. The Chinese Coins top is finished, even though the top and bottom borders had to be sewn on twice because I forgot to put right sides together when pinning! 37 inches x 2 (because I didn't catch my mistake until I had done both borders) of ripping! AAARGH! Here it is laid out on my craft space floor:

and as you can see, I am at the limits of my "design floor" so basting it will be an issue... You can get a better idea of how it looks, hung from the two Chinese armoires in my craft space:

At present it is roughly 37 inches wide and 41 inches long so will probably finish nicely at 36 x 40...

I also started the November butterfly, which will be in shades of brown and yellow - probably turn out to be anoher "camoflage" butterfly!. The body of the butterfly is done and the wings are (barely) started:

Spent a good portion of Sunday (roughly 4 PM through 7 PM) watching live coverage of the storm that passed through here, getting ready to bail to the basement when our tornado warning sirens went off (and they did).. Needless to say --- NOT conducive to stitching! 

Luckily, all we "lost" was a decorative flag that blew UP from the lake onto a sidewalk, but there was significant damage to the east and south of us, much of which has yet to be assessed. Lots of people without power, many buildings with roofs blown off and windows blown out - there were reported hurricane-strength wind gusts in nearby Bowling Green from straight line winds... and one house collapsed onto four inhabitants who were watching a football game and were slightly injured), and many road closures due to downed power lines, lack of traffic signals, cars blown into median strips and other debris not only in the roadway but also still blowing around in 35 - 30 mph gusts (sustained winds around 20mph).

Take a Stitch Tuesday 2913 - Stitches ## 89 and 90

These two stitches are variants of the Twisted Satin Stitch --- the Twisted Satin Stitch makes up the cross and the vertical row of stitches in the picture below while the Twisted Satin Stitch with Bead is the four stitches in the row at the bottom:

The beads are a cloudy clear color so they don't show up well in this photo...

The November Crazy Quit Journal Project Block

The last monochromatic orange:

Heavy on the buttons, low on the stitchery. Hope it fits with the others but I suppose I can always embellish it more later if it doesn't...

Snowed last night. Not a lot but enough to cover the grass and cars and roof... Guess winter is well and truly here!

2013 - Reconnect to My Stitchery, Week Forty-Five

A completion! "Puppy Dog" is now ready for framing!

And I started on the November block for the Crazy Quilt Journal Project: 

Of course, I had all these plans --- I'd work on that November butterfly, I'd work on that Chinese Coins quilt top, I'd work on that BJP 2010 "book", I'd work on the January challenge for quilt guild. Didn't even come close --- except for shuffling unfinished pieces around on my work table!

And I do so want to start the Roll Your Own mandalas, but that requires plotting out how to place each mandala on the fabric so it balances out and I just don't feel up to that right now, especially as it involves gridding out 32ct fabric!  Just thinking about that gives me a headache! 

Snow predicted for tonight! Winter is here! AAARGH!

2013 - Reconnect to My Stitchery, Week Forty-Four

For some reason, I simply couldn't motivate to stitch this week. I had all sorts of plans, starting with kitting out the November Bead Journal and Crazy Quilt Journal blocks (which I did):

and working on my Chinese Coins quilt and my 2010 Bead Journal book (which I didn't); and with stitching the two stitches in last (and this) week's Take a Stitch Tuesday.

Then I stalled! didn't get back to anything until Sunday night when I finally finished up one page of the backstitching on "Puppy Dog":

Maybe it was Halloween... It lasted four days here  (not counting all the events that occurred the weekend before!). Our HOA trick-or-treat was rained out Thursday (we were ready for people who were made enough to brave the wind since only the HOA residents knew it had been rained out, but no-one came), postponed to Friday (we had maybe 30 kids in all, from the hayride the HOA put on to transport them safely around our very dark neighborhood). No stragglers that we know of... But there was always the off chance that stragglers from outside our neighborhood, whose Halloween's were postponed to Saturday or even Sunday, would come by so we had to be ready for that as well. Needless to say, I read a lot on my iPad and ate a lot of mini Reese's dark chocolate cups! (Yes, we weren't PC --- all our candy had nuts in them!).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v29/thatyank/thatyank%20siggies/November%202013/Halloween2013.jpg

Take a Stitch Tuesday 2013 - ## 87 and 88

Take a Stitch Tuesday 2013 - ## 87 and 88

Two stitches this week ---actually two variants of the same stitch --- the buttonhole picot.

I think I got the first variant right --- one that uses a bullion knot, but my tension suffers in this one and since I HATE bullion knots, that meant a lot of undoing and redoing to get the short line of stitch done. However... you can see this one on the left:

On the right is a failed attempt at the second variant, one using chain stitches. I couldn't make sense of the instructions, I fear, probably because I stitches this late at night. I only used one chain, instead of two or three because I simply couldn't figure out how to do more than one. Anyway, it's on the right.