Week Thirty-four, August 27, 2015

Put in one evening of stitching after International Hermit and Stitch Weekend pt 2, and got one more color done in "Cindy":

Nothing else to report on except late autumn weather in August. Weird! This was one of the wettest summers on record, and one of the coolest, I suspect (only two days at 90 or over, and low 50-degree nights are pretty unusual too!). Bad weather for vegetable gardening, but the daylilies loved it!

International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, pt. 2

It's IHSW pt. 2! As per my promise last weekend in IHSW, pt 1, I concentrated on placemats for my quilt guild. I pieced another placemat top, sandwiched and envelope-turned all three. All that remains to be done is to whip-stitch closed one side on each and quilt:

and "Cindy" the third "Spawn" of the Roll Your Own mandalas. I finished "Cindy's" outline and completed 2 of the 12 colors of filling stitches:

IHSW is good for my stitchery mojo. Now to keep up the momentum...

Week Thirty-three, August 20, 2015

Not a lot to report on since the weekend when I reported in on IHSW pt1. I did work on the outline for "Cindy" the third (and last) of "Spawn" of Roll Your Own:

Didn't get very far, but then one wouldn't watching the complete, re-digitized, entre'act music-and-all version of "Gone With The Wind"! On the other hand, my next stitchery binge will likely be a week from now when Turner Classic Movies is celebrating Ingrid Bergman's 100th birthday! I have something like 8 movies set to record for that one!

International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, Pt. 1

IHSW was posted early this month as part 1 (I assume there will be a part 2 coming on the assigned date of August 21-23, 2015.  At any rates, I was stitching this weekend so here is what I accomplished...

A completion! "Jan" the second of the "Spawn of Roll Your Own", a series of mandalas designed by Tracy Horner, if now finished:

It was started back in the first week of April, 2015, and shouldn't have taken THIS long but other events intervened (nasty sinus infection, road trip to Florida and Georgia, etc) and I really didn't get back to it until the last weeks of July. It is in the "Tropical Ocean" colorway on "Iris Garden" dyed 32-ct Jobelin. Here is how it looks with it's "sister", Marcia, and the first three large mandalas, "Roll Your Own", "Reloaded" and "Bride of Roll Your Own":

The outline for the third "Spawn" ("Cindy") is now started to the left of "Jan" and there are three more large mandalas which will be lined up below the spawn (eventually!).

I also spent some time with my sewing machine this weekend. The quilt guild I belong to is making place mats to take along at the holidays for the local version of "Meals on Wheels". I cut and stitched two place mats and they are ready to sandwich, quilt and bind:

These place mats and "Cindy" of the Roll Your Own mandalas will be my projects to stitch on this coming weekend.

Week Thirty-two, August 13, 2014

Another completion! The August Crazy Quilt/Bead Journal block:

It's not really very imaginative, but as I said, August is always a problem for me as nothing much ever seems to happen to me in August (that I want to journal about in beads, at least!). And it means I'm caught up with Crazy Quilt Journal/Bead Journal Project for this year! Woo Hoo. 

I also stitched on the fifth motif ("Jan") from the "Roll Your Own Mandala" series and seven (out of 12) colors are now filled in (finally got to the blues --- I was beginning to worry that it would be all green!):

Husband has a garden tour today and I have quilt guild tonight so no stitching this evening. But I have lots of plans for the weekend! 

Week Thirty-one, August 6, 2014

A completion, and ALMOST on schedule, finally! The July Crazy Quilt/Bead Journal Project block was finished on August 1! 

Because it is July, it HAD to commemorate July 4, even though we didn't go to a fireworks display or parade this year. However, we could see fireworks from our house --- some farmer apparently got permission set off  a really good aerial show! So... the batik stars, the (VERY PALE) white-on-white stripes and the scattered star-shaped buttons are meant to be a patriotic reference!

Meanwhile, I played with lazy daisy flowers using beads on one seam treatment, beaded a stem stitch on an adjacent seam, and added beads to the strip of lace on a third.. 

That means I had to get cracking on August, and this is how far I got...

I don't really know how to embellish this to make it relevant to me in August. There is the fair, but I'm not entering (that sinus infection really put me off my game and I don't have anything to enter and there is no other reason to go, IMO). I'm no fan of the National Tractor Pulling Championships!  And I have no kids to send back to school (hard to believe it starts August 24!). There's always the garden, I suppose... August is, as always, a puzzlement...

As for other works in progress, they weren't touched.

WIPocalypse 2015 - July 31 Blue Moon

August 3, 2015: Edited to add: This month's WIPocalypse topic is: "What makes you pick up a long-abandoned UFO rather than beginning a new piece?" My answer is: Practically nothing! I have some (four or five, I think)really long-standing WIPS/UFO pieces (decades, at least, not counting some backstiching on some needlepoint from even longer ago) and I just can't face them. My tastes have changed, mainly... So unless someone on a forum or blog I follow offers up a challenge to finish a certain number of UFOs in a certain period of time, I simply will not ever touch those again!

The question was changed and I didn't notice --- originally it was "It’s a blue moon today. Show us your favorite WIP that features a lot of blue!" And I answered in detail so I'm leaving it in the blog...That one was easy for meto answer because it seems like pretty nearly every big project I've been working on for the last several years is dominated by the same colors of blue, purple and green! Heck, once upon a time a long long time ago in Saudi Arabia, my quilting teacher told me that blue was probably my signature color as it appeared in nearly every quilt I pieced in her classes!

The two current WIPs in my project basket both have blue. "Save the Stitches" (which hasn't been touched since April 9, so if I'm not careful, it could turn into a UFO...) uses blue (and green) as the accent colors in several of the blocks. The thing is, the dominant color is the black blackwork stitchery so it isn't that obvious in photographs. But if you look closely at the blocks, especially the top right corner, you can see a little blue:

The "Roll Your Own" mandala series I'm working on, on the other hand, is blue, blue, blue. It's stitched on blue (and green and purple) overdyed fabric and uses several shades of blue (and green) floss inside the black mandala outlines:

And my crazy quilt pieces for 2015 have a lot of blue (and purple and green! LOL) in them as well:

Very fitting for a blue moon, don't you think?

In my last WIPOcalypse report, I said "my plan is to get caught up on Crazy Quilt Journal/Bead Journal blocks (which means I have to cut and assemble a block for July and stitch on both June and July. Then, if time allows, I will probably take out "Roll Your Own Mandala" and get cracking on the second of the three "brats"."

Well, I finally lived up to my goals - almost! I 

• finished the June Crazy quilt/Bead Journal block
• assembled basic blocks for July, August and September's Crazy Quilt/Bead Journal Projects
• finished the outline for "Jan" in the Roll Your Own mandala series and started on the colors (one down, eleven to go)
• started stitching on the July block

So this next month? Well, let's continue as we started - July and August Crazy Quilt/Bead Journal blocks and finish "Jan" in Roll Your Own!