Ornament for Chelsea and Birthday Village Update

Some of you may know the story of Chelsea, a stitcher who passed away recently after a battle with a rare pulmonary disease and heart-lung transplant. Her parents own a dive shop in a suburb of New Orleans. You can read her story on the Harry's Dive Shop web site. Some of the stitchers on Vikki Clayton's message board have volunteered to make some ornaments for the family. I chose to do a door-hanger with a nautical theme as several others have. The design is from the now-defunct blog of Carmela. Carmela's blog was in French, so I left the wording in French. Seemed fitting since they are from Louisiana. The family referred to Chelsea as their little mermaid so I appliqued the crocheted mermaid and the little crocheted fish I made some time ago to the back. I used a very pale blue-green piece of 35 ct linen from a grab bag of Vikki linen. The ornament is stuffed with thread clippings.




The July installment of the SMO Birthday SAL, brought a much-needed bakery to the town. I believe there were some zoning problems, since the town regulations limit the height of gingerbread men on signage to be somewhat shorter than the average person in the town. But rumor has it that some pastry pay-offs convinced the town council to approve. It's a rumor.. you just never know.

Maison Fleurie

This little freebie, "Maison Fleurie" by Chantal Jordan, caught my eye and just cried out to be stitched. I had a lovely piece of pale pink hand-dyed Vikki Clayton linen that was perfect for it. Of course, my camera had other ideas about the color. The first image is closer to the pink color, but not nearly as pretty. I don't know where that little flaw in the center came from. It's not on the real thing.

I used to make these coasters all the time. I guess this kind of finish has gone out of fashion, but it's so easy to finish a design this way. The stitching is protected, and this particular type of coaster is large enough to hold a mug comfortably. I have a lot of these all over my condo.

Milady's Needle with CQ

Can't seem to get this CQ type finish out of my head, so I stitched another little piece to try again. I have plenty of fabric scraps in my stash from ornament finishing over the years, so this is a good way to make use of them. The little sampler is by Milady's Needle from the 2010 JCS Ornament issue. I stitched it over-one on 32 count Bay Rum Jobelan. The thread was a sample freebie from Rosace, a Spanish company trying to compete in the standard DMC floss space. This was a 115 equivalent. I really did plan to have the sampler straight up and down, but life's too short to worry about they way it leaned. And this is crazy quilting so, why not have the piece askew? The embroidery stitches include chained cross stitch, feather stitch, slanted blanket stitch, long and short blanket stitch, and loop stitch. I used a stem stitch to embroider around the butterfly and dragnonfly wings on the left. Plus I added a few stems with green beads on the ends. Of course, all the colors are more vibrant in real life (or whatever passes for real life). Might as well send this one to Attic for the fundraiser as well. It's quirky, but interesting I think.