Spring assortment et al.

If you follow me on IG, you will have seen all of this stitching.  But here is a summary of finishes since my last post.

Spring took a long time to show up this year, and we were all happy to see its arrival, wet as it has been.  I stitched this cute Spring welcome card to send in honor of the season change.   It's a freebie by Silver Cute Dwarf and you can get the chart here.   It's on 36 count linen and uses a few beads for the flowers. 

My niece took a vacation to Paris this spring and I stitched this Bon Voyage card for her.   The original design had Notre Dame in the the upper right.  I found a nice little charted Arc De Triomphe online somewhere that I liked better, so I substituted it. Although my niece did not take her dog with her, she does have a little dog like the one in the design.   The design is from the DMC Europe SAL and you can get the chart here.  I used 18 count Aida for this.  Hadn't stitched on Aida is quite some time!

I needed a 'boy' birthday design so I searched for something nautical.   I found this cute ship in a bottle  by La Comtesse et le Point De Croix.    You can get the chart here.  I had planned to use an old vintage world map in the background, but the map I had was too big.  So I just hunted through my folder of stickers for some 'sea' things.  Then I got the bright idea to cut the opening in the shape of the bottle and I think that worked out pretty well. This is on 36 count linen also.  Neither of these two photos shows the real colors, but that's the best I could do.  I incorporated the words 'Smooth Sailing' on the inside greeting after seeing something like that elsewhere on line.

I started Plum Street Samplers "Turkey Bay" about a year ago just for stress relief at the time.  I needed something colorful and easy to stitch.  Didn't care if I ever finished it.  Eventually I did complete the stitching, but only now turned it into a pillow.    It's done on HDF Old Gray Mare 32 count linen.  A simple finish, but I'm very happy with it.

Another design that I stitched a while ago, but just finished is "Honey Bee",  number 3 in the Blackbird Designs Garden Club series.  I'm just using this as a little mat on which to rest my glasses, keys, remote, whatever.  It's on 32 count lambs wool Jobelan if I remember correctly.

Happy Stitching to all as we head into June!

Primitive Wizard of Oz

I finished up this piece over the weekend. This is the Primitive Wizard of Oz by Midsummer Night Musings and it was a really fun stitch. So relaxing with no back-stitching or fractionals. It's such a clever design too. If you've never looked at this pattern closely, see if you can identify all of the motifs. Note how each is positioned near the letter of its initial. Took me a while to figure out 'hurricane' since I always thought of the storm as a cyclone, tornado or twister, but I looked it up and it all depends on the version you read or see. And since the 'T' already had the Tin Man and Toto too, there was more room near the 'H'. Look how the flying monkey is neatly positioned between the 'F' and the 'M'. Same for the Wizard himself with the 'O' and 'W'. And what a perfect winding yellow brick road.

This is stitched in my own DMC substitutions on Vikki Clayton 32 count linen in Bunny Brown. I had a small amount of the trim and backing fabric in my stash, but not enough for this pillow. I loved the look so much that I went out and bought more for just for the purpose.



On another note, I stumbled on the coolest little household tip for storing those plastic grocery bags we keep around to use for wastebasket liners and other things. Maybe you have switched to the re-usables and don't accumulate so many now, but I still seem to stack up my share of them and never had a decent way to store them. I love the method described here at Polka Dot Pineapple and I'm storing my little folded up bags neatly in an empty coffee can now!

January Carousel Horse

About a thousand years ago I stitched the January horse, a unicorn, from Donna Kooler's "Carousel Horses in Cross Stitch". I had originally planned it as a gift for a baby born in January, but I didn't complete it in time for that. So I decided to make it into a pillow for me. Bought all the supplies, and then let it sit until til today. We had a monster snowstorm here in DC. Started Friday morning and it's still snowing! In the last few minutes, it just started getting a bit heavier, but I think this is supposed to be the tail end. So in honor if this record-setting event (I'm really tired of breaking records with snow totals!), here's my finish. The first photo is before I inserted the pillow form... easier to get a good picture that way.

It's done on a pale blue Zweigart Aida. I suppose if I was stitching this today, I'd go for linen or evenweave. But my heart really still belongs to Aida I think.