Fabric box and quilt square

I used to adore stitching Linda Coleman's Cross Country Stitching pieces.  They are so adorable, but I often felt she over-did the back-stitching thing.  She has started offering some of her small designs as freebies on her FB page and her little summer fruit bowl caught my eye.  It just showed the chart with no finished model and I find it hard to visualize what it will really look like when that's all I have.  I was in the mood for bright colors, so as an experiment, I decided to stitch it up and use the least amount of back-stitching I could get away with.  Turned out just fine and it's making me re-think the designs in some of my old magazines.

I was tired of finishing x-stitch pieces the same old way.  I looked around the web for new ideas.  I prefer simple sewing projects.  Just can't get excited about painting, staining and gluing.  I have sewing supplies and no room for more 'stuff', so I'd rather go in that direction.  I found a cute little fabric box tutorial on Pinterest and decided to substitute my x-stitch piece for one side.  Made a few mistakes, but I'm really happy with the finish.  A little heavyweight craft interfacing made it pretty sturdy.   I'll probably keep it by my stitching chair for a while as an ORT collector.  Almost too pretty to use that way.
The stitching is over-two on 35 count HDF linen.  

You can get the chart by clicking here to the FB photo.
The tute for the box is here.

I continue to do an occasional quilt square for WOCS.  This one is for a quilt with a sewing theme.  Little House Needleworks "Needle and Thread" was just the right size and a quick, enjoyable project for this quilt.  This is done on 32 count lugana with my choice of DMC colors.  I thought my ironing job was pretty well done til I looked at the photo!