WIPocalypse 2014 - November 6

This month's theme questions is "What are your favorite and least favorite materials to use in your stitching?"

Well, my favorite fabric to stitch on is evenweave, usually Lugana but often slubby linen comes into play as the Lugana I favor is pretty pricey and I don't always want to put out that much cash for something small and simple, like ornaments. The threads I use most are stranded cotton, usually DMC, because I have most of their colors (there's always one or two I don't have --- isn't that always the case?)  and because the local craft stores stock DMC and little else. 

The fabric I like the last is AIDA. Not that it's hard to stitch on (except when it comes to partial stitches and backstitching), but I don't like the look it gives unstitched backgrounds. And the thread I like least is a toss-up between rayons and metallics. They create so many issues with me, from fraying to knotting and tangling and I have tension issues with both as well. 

Last month, I said I would like to continue with:

• Take a Stitch Tuesday
• Bead Journal Project for October 
• Crazy Quilt Block for October 
• Color in the RYO mandala "Bride"
• The outline and some fill for "Save the Stitches" installments 10 - 19
• Participate in the fourth, and final, fInishing online class from Funk & Weber (Pillow Palooza)

In addition, there was quilt guild retreat the last weekend of October for which I needwed to have a competed challenge block (itwas pieced - needed to be sandwiched, quilted and bound) and where I hoped to make progress on the wall hangings for my Crazy Quilt Journal Projects for 2013 and 2014, the placemat(s) for the Meals on Wheels donation and maybe even my Chinese coins top which I completed at the last retreat and have made no further progress on. Also, I hoped to take one of my traveling embroidery pieces for a break from quilting while at retreat ...

Well, this is what I did accomplish from that list in the last month of stitching:

• Take a Stitch Tuesday - Stitches #134 (Fern Stitch), #135, (Beaded Fern Stitch), and ##136 and 137 (Knotted Buttonhole and Beaded Knotted Buttonhole stitches)
• Bead Journal Project for October 
• Crazy Quilt Block for October and for November 
• Color in the RYO mandala "Bride" - three colors done and fourth started 

I also made up five 4" crazy blocks for a swap at the guild retreat and finished the quilting on the challenge block for that retreat.

While at retreat, I assembled the Bead Journal Project pieces from 2013 into a top for a wall hanging, assembled the Crazy Quilt Journal Project blocks from 2013 into a top for a wall hanging, and assembled Crazy Quilt Journal blocks January - September 2014 for a top for a wall hanging. I probably could have accomplished more at retreat is a)I had remembered to bring along my handwork and the placemat project and b) itf I weren't so sleepy (apparently I was coming down with a cold even then but missed the symptoms until the following week). 

I also made a healthy (no pun intended as I did most of the stitching with a raging head cold)  start on a piece for next year's fair theme of sports - a John Clayton Golfer called "Fairway".

I never made it past reading through the last lesson in the Finishing Class from Funk & Weber and all I managed for the "Save the Stitches" blackwork piece by Elizabeth Almond is to print out blocks 20 and 21!

Plans for November? More of the same, head cold permitting:

• Take a Stitch Tuesday
• Bead Journal Project for November 
• Crazy Quilt Block for December 
• More Color in the RYO mandala "Bride"
• John Clayton's "Golfer - Fairway"
• The outline and some fill for "Save the Stitches" installments 10 - 21