Week Thirty-Nine - September 29, 2016

I took the birth sampler in last week to be framed and it was ready on Saturday:

Husband mailed it off to our niece on Monday and it should be there by now…

I am having to force myself to work on this wedding sampler/belated gift. It is all in red on white and it is all backstitch. Each letter has to be started individually so as to not have loose ends showing through, which is using an awful lot of floss. What is more, it is just plain tedious counting. Still, I have finished a third full strand of floss (I suspect the pattern is being a little skimpy when it called for only two skeins of the variegated ad I can see running out of the first skein VERY soon… with not even two lines of the sampler finished!) and here is where it stands right now:

I will keep plugging away at this as I really feel that, once started, it MUST be finished. But it won’t be my favorite-ever stitched piece.

Week Thirty-Eight - September 22, 2016

Having completed the birth samplerand taken it off to the framer, it was time to get to work on the wedding sampler. I chose “Love Is” by X’s & Ohs (by Jo Gatenby). It is the passage from 1 Corinthians (13:4-8a) that I read at my niece’s wedding back in April (before I took a flying header off the podium and sprained my ankle!). I thought it would work in the variegated red DMC floss called for and chose 32 ct white linen as my fabric.

However, this is as far as I’ve gotten in the last three days:. 

I hadn’t realized how much of it was backstitch, in two strands at that! And it is a constant stop and start, complete with waste knots, in order to keep that red thread from showing behind the white linen. I think I shall HATE this before it is done!

WIPocalypse 2016 - September 16

The discussion topic for this WIPocalypse period is “Tell us a story about the journey you took through one of your completed pieces.’ Sadly, I can’t answer this as, for me at least, what I stitch doesn’t necessarily reflect a story about me or it’s stitching. It just is/was… It may have traveled with me (usually a needlepoint piece) but that is just in case I am left alone in a hotel room while husband is out on his conference duties and I need something to fill the time if I’ve run out of reading material. My traveling pieces may take years to complete (for example, the last completed traveling piece was “Butterfly Beauty”, started in May, 2005, stitching completed in May 2006,  and finally finished as a pillow in January 2012!) and may have been all over the country and even on a cruise or two. But it doesn’t reflect any specific “journey”.

In my last WIPocalypse report, http://210920746822434353.weebly.com/my-stitchery-journal/week-thirty-three-august-18-2016-and-wipocalypse  I had proposed the following goal - to finish the birth sampler and send it off to my niece. Well, it is finished (except for blocking and pressing, that is):

Once framed, THEN it will be sent off to my niece… So I didn’t meet that goal… but I came close!

My next project is a belated wedding sampler for another niece. I need to kit it out, my plans for today. 

The long-term WIP onboard is the “Save The Stitches” blackwork sampler, designed  by Elizabeth Almond (in the works since February 2014). I MAY or may not get it out and work on it. 

Week Thirty-Seven - September 15, 2016

I set myself a goal to try to have the birth sampler ready to frame by the end of this week. So, once I finished all the cross stitch, I set right in to the backstitching and now have all the basic backstitch and French Knot bits done:

All that remains is the personalization, which I will have to chart out before starting.

Meanwhile, that wedding sampler  (for the wedding last April!) I ordered needs to be kitted so I can start on that. It’s only one color so it ought to move along nicely… just need to decide on fabric and color.

Saturday will be a day lost to stitchery — home football game!

Week Thirty-Six - September 8, 2016

Some progress made this week on the birth sampler, mainly on the single-stranded cross stitching of the grass and waterr, despite one night of stitching foregone in favor of binge watching the last series of "Lewis"! Only three more pairs of animals to stitch (one is started) before the backstitching. Man, do I ever dread that!

This coming weekend is going to be a real test of my mojo since there is quilt guild tonight and the Friends of the Library book sale and the Volunteer Firefighter’s “steak out” on Saturday. That means at least two days where I won’t have the energy or time to stitch. Sure am hoping to get this done and to the framers as the kid is already a week old!

Week Thirty-Five - September 1, 2016

What a week! Here I was, stitching away on the birth sampler for a great-nephew who was supposed to be born next week. Naturally, he must have heard I have deadline issues because he was born on August 30! And I am nowhere near finished. Oh well, at least I have all the data needed to finish the sampler when the overall stitchery is finished!

Here is where I stand so far - only three more rows of the sea to do in the single-strand cross stitching and a flag on the flag pole and the I can move on to the left half.

Oh, by the way, I’ve been calling it “Two by Two” and I got that wrong, it’s “All Creatures Birth Sampler”, a “lite” version of “Two by Two”! Good thing it's a "lite" version too! I'd NEVER have attempted the full-blown version for this deadline!

Back to the stitching grind-stone — there’s a lot of green grass on the left that will probably take several days (all that space in one color! AAARGH!) and several pairs of animals before I can move on to the backstitching!