Halloween stuff & a finish for an oldie

After I finished that Hearty Craft quaker stocking ornament, I wondered if I could use the same process for an old Halloween ornament that I liked, but figured it was too difficult to get it to come out right.  The ornament is the Prairie Moon Spot Motif Shoe from the 2009 JCS Halloween ornament issue.  It was finished as a stuffed ornament in the magazine, but I wanted to go flat.  I also skipped the corded trim and went with an Antwerp Edging stitch.  It's like a standard buttonhole stitch, but has an extra little knot.  I wish I'd had black beads for the simulated buttons, but I just went with what I had.  Worked out pretty well I think, even with all the curves and angles.

Next I had the urge to do a little stitchery piece for Halloween. This is an adaptation of a rubber stamp design from Whipper Snapper designs.  I stitched it up on a piece of muslin and made it into a little pouch to hold some Halloween goodies.  Not exactly sure what will go inside or who will get the pouch.  It just looked like such a fun thing to make.

Finally, while I was searching for something in my totally unorganized stash, I discovered this piece I had stitched, probably 15-20 years ago.  I think it was in an old CS & CC magazine or maybe a Cross Quick issue.  I had cut the fabric too small and I couldn't frame it so I had just put it away.  When I discovered it, packed away for so long, I couldn't resist sewing it up into a little tool case.  Plenty of fabric for that.  This was too nice a design to keep hidden for so long.

Halloween Cards and Stocking Ornament

It's been a sad week here in the neighborhood.  The McDonald's closed!  That was our only remaining fast food burger place in the commercial district near my home.  I never went there a lot, but it sure was my security blanket.  A bathroom when my toilet wasn't working, a place to get coffee when my coffee maker failed, dinner during the derecho, excellent $1.00 plastic ice cream.  In the worst blizzard, I knew I could manage to at least crawl those two blocks. Some of those employees had worked there for years, and I sure hope they've found employment elsewhere. The lot is going to be redeveloped with new office space, and supposedly the McDonald's will return on the ground floor at the completion of the project in 2014.   I think I'll survive, but there will be an adjustment period. 

Three quick finishes to show on the stitching front.  Every time I see something adorable on a blog or Pinterest, I have to drop everything and stitch it up directly.  Especially since I can do a lot of the little ones right from the Nook without printing.

The first is a fabulous design by Erynne who has re-entered the blogging world as 'Stitcheree'.  She has generously shared some of her great designs with us.  This one is called Creepy Hollow and just begged to be stitched for a Halloween card.  I love that crazy moon and the little skulls on the house.  I re-worked it a little bit to replace the tombstone with a cauldron and I added a crow to balance out that side of the piece.  I had those eyelets for some time and the crop-a-dile turned them into quick embellishments.

 

 

I had printed out this little design by Maria del Valle at Alarttexx some time ago.   It was perfect for a circular cut-out to frame on a card.  A little bit of ribbon and a couple of stars was all I needed to touch it up.

 
This little quaker stocking design is from Zinaida at Hearty Craft.  I had it saved for a long time, but it just recently popped up on Pinterest and grabbed my attention.  This is  stitched on 35 count linen, a fairly loosely woven type so it was easy to sew up those curves and manipulate the fabric. I just used a little interfacing for stabilizer, but no added batting.  I sewed on a row of red beads along the top that don't show up all that well in the photo.  Super-quick finish and flat enough to mail in a regular envelope!

Expect a Miracle

Last night was the series finale of a summer documentary series on ABC-TV called NY Med.  It was a fascinating look into the workings of New York City hospitals, every bit as watchable as the old ER dramatic series that I was so fond of.   If you missed it and are interested, I think you can actually watch episodes online here.

The final show featured some patients with very serious medical conditions whose odds of survival were very slim.  In each case, the outcome was wildly successful, and the word 'miracle' seemed like an apt description of each.  I had to laugh after I thought of that, because I had been finishing up a piece of stitching with the title, "Expect a Miracle", as I watched.

This is a design by Gail Bussi from the June, 2009 issue of JCS.  It's a square for a World of Charity Stitching birdhouse-themed quilt .  Looks a bit different from the magazine photo since I used the DMC equivalents instead of the hand-dyeds.  And looks different in my photo than the real life verson.  I think I like my photo better than the real life one actually.  In any case, it was a fun stitch with pretty colors and very delicate.

Meanwhile,  Pumpkin  let me know that she received the little gift I made in honor of her latest miracle, Junior Pumpkin.  You can see photos of him on her blog.. just the cutest little guy ever.  The card design is an old Halloween motif from San-Man Originals.   Seemed perfect for this little newbie.  And I had those scrapbook overall brads around for a long time just waiting for the right project.

 

The birth sampler is the JBW French Country Pumpkin design, appropriate for the purpose, and not too girly for a boy.  I won that trimming fabric in a contest a couple of years ago, and I've been hoarding that too.  Glad to see my stash treasures finding a good home!

 

Time for Tea Zippered Pouch

One of my Jazzerbuddies took a pretty nasty fall during class a couple of weeks ago.  She has no idea how she lost her footing, but she went down during the cardio portion of the workout and broke her ankle in three places.  Required surgery no less.  Luckily our class is in the same building as the Rescue Squad and they gallantly carried her to the ambulance and whisked her to a nearby hospital.  I think the worst part for her is having to miss class for so long.  Meanwhile, as all good stitchers would do, I made a little stitchy gift for her.  The sampler for this little zippered case is from a freebie called "Tea Time"  and you can find the pdf on Echevette's blog.   My friend should have plenty of time for tea in the coming weeks.   This is stitched on 36 count Edinburgh linen (and re-stitched, and re-stitched due to excessive frogging I might add). 

 

These are the finishing fabrics I used.  The blue is the back side of the case and the  red is the lining:

 

Hope this brings a little cheer to an unfortunate situation.

By The Bay SAL Camera Pouch

Seems like my stitching and finishing go so slowly lately.  Part of it is just not being able to stitch for long periods anymore without my eyes getting too tired and part of it is the dreaded frog.  I always try to find away around mistakes without frogging, but sometimes the mistakes are just too egregious to deal with that way.  So I have a small piece in progress that is taking way too long and hopefully I'll show that when it's soon done.

In the meantime, I finally got the motivation to do something with my By The Bay Mystery Sal finish.   The stitching was finished a while ago and the fabrics have just been staring me in the face for too long.  This weekend I made a pouch for my camera using the same method that I used for my Nook Tablet pouch (tutorial).  This one fits its intended device much better.  Of course, I couldn't take a photo with the camera inside, but you'll get the idea.

Unseasonal Holiday Cards

So it's not really the time of year for winter holiday stitching, but a few things made it seem appropriate.  First, the weather has been very hot and humid, so I thought if I stitched winter themes I could trick myself into feeling cooler.  That actually did not prove to be successful.  The AC is best for that.  Then the JCS ornament preview issue arrived with a couple of designs I couldn't resist stitching.  And finally,  the World of Charity Stitching Yahoo group started a July project to collect stitched cards to distribute to nursing homes in December.  I've been a member of that group for a while and finally found the time and right project for participating.

So here we have four stitched cards as a result.  I decided to try ribbon trim on these.  A very quick finishing technique and I was only in the mood for quick finishing.

The first is the Blue Ribbon Designs ornament from the JCS preview.  I think this is the cutest in the series so far.  I love the white owl, the bunny and those teeny birds.  

 

Next is the Full Circle ornament from the same magazine.  I changed the "Ho Ho Ho" to "Peace", but otherwise I don't think I changed anything.  I like the long, skinny shape. Works well on a card.

           

At long last, I stitched my first CEC Mitten design.  This was a freebie called the Mitten Mitten.  The chart was in black and white and I didn't have a color photo of the finish, so this was a mystery stitch.  I had no idea how the colors were going to mesh.  I don't think I would have chosen that particular green for the background, but at least all the other colors show up pretty well against it.  And not having enough contrast always bugs me.

And for the last in the series, we have one more Full Circle design from the 2011 JCS Ornament issue.  Such a little cutie.  I never got around to it last year.  The red ribbon has gold glitter on it that doesn't show up so well in the photo, but in real life I think it makes a nice border.

Altoid Tin, Pillowcase, Graduation Card

I'm one of those many victims of the East Coast surprise storm.   Limited electricity so I have a few lights and working power outlets.  But no AC, no hot water,  and no refrigeration (good bye  to my yogurt collection - staple of my life).   It's played havoc with my head and I spent a lot of time sleeping yesterday.  This morning I went out for the first time since the storm and got some shelf stable, ready to eat,  food to keep me going til the power returns.  But in in my good moments yesterday, I did finish a couple of projects.

I was a little late to the party, but when I saw this adorable design for a Sal by Manka Minta, I just had a desire to stitch it up immediately.  Manka was nice enough to send me the little chart even though it was past the deadline.   I decided to use it for an Altoid tin top to give to a stitcher friend whose son is getting married soon.  As a scissors case, it seemed like a nice small favor to commemorate the occasion.  I just love how many different color variations that the stitchers used for this piece.  Here's the gallery of finishes on Pinterest.

My cousin just received his Master's Degree from Stanford and I expect to be going to a Taco party for him next weekend.  I wouldn't dare try to pick out a gift for him so I'll give him a check tucked into this card I made.  This a part of the "Reach for the Stars" design by Barbara Ana.

Finally, one my bucket list items was to embroider a pillowcase.  Not the same as bungee jumping or seeing the top of Machu Picchu, but I have more moderate goals.  I bought two inexpensive white pillowcases from Sublime Stitching to work with.  This design was the illustration used for the 2011 Collaborative Summer Library Project.  I just re-worked it to create a line drawing for embroidery.  I did modify the little girl's hair to be a bit wilder than the original.

Pink and Purple Bookmarks

I'm in between bigger projects and thought it was time to use up some of that incredible fabric stash I've acquired over time.  There's a lot of multi-colored hand-dyed Aida that I don't use much these days, so I thought it was time to start finding projects for it.   Once Aida is hand-dyed, it has a wonderful soft feel, but still with a lot of body.  It's like the comfort food of stitching for me to work on it.

I decided to make a couple of bookmark gifts from older freebies.  I picked out this 18 ct mint fabric from the long-defunct Enchanted Fabrics.  Then I just reached into the floss for pretty colors.  The photos make the fabric look more blue, but it's really a beautiful variegated mint color.  I'm using it for the By the Bay Needleart Mystery SAL also.

First is this lovely bird design from a freebie on the Stitches Crumble blog:

Next is this older design from Papillon Creations called Bookmark 1 on the freebie page.  Thanks, Heather, for finding it for me.  It only has three colors and I see that a lot of stitchers have chosen their own combinations.  I just wanted something pretty with a lot of contrast against the background fabric:

Tortoise and the Hare AAQI Quilt

I had my eye on the "Tortoise and the Hare" designs by The Prairie Schooler for a while.  The leaflet had two designs in the same theme, but each was quite different in nature.  I decided to use the smaller one for an AAQI quilt.  I have a perfect spot on the wall for the larger one so I'll do that for myself. 

I love this fable, but I do sympathize with the hare.  "Seize the day", "Strike while the iron is hot", "He who hesitates is lost" ... those are all the inspiring adages we hear all the time.  "Slow and steady wins the race"  seams so boring and not in the spirit of "No guts, no glory".  The bunny messed up, as risk-takers sometimes do, but I suspect there will be a re-match with lessons learned at some point.

Anyway, the small design was charted with the words "Rabbit Hare Tortoise Slow".  Needed more I thought.  So I stitched the two opposing adages, "Time waits for no one" and "Haste Makes Waste" instead.  Of all the adages I thought of, these fit the best in the space I had   The two runners can argue about this over a beer during a teachable moment.

The fabric is 32-count peach butter linen from Vikki Clayton.  She doesn't offer that shade anymore and I really like it.

 

 I experimented with a new way to do a quilt label. I had been doing x-stitch labels, but I was tired of stitching my name and city over and over.  So this time I decided to just write the wording on with a marker.  I used Word to print the text so I could more or less get the spacing right.  I found two little clip art images for a tortoise and a hare and included those in the printout.  I then pressed some freezer paper to a piece of muslin to stabilize it.  Using an ultra-fine point Sharpie, I kind of traced the wording onto the label.  Really I just used the letters as a guideline.  Then with a washable transfer pen, I traced the tortoise and hare and drew a free-from border followed by a little back stitching with 1 strand of DMC.  I folded under the edges and stitched the label down on the quilt back.  Lots of possibilities here.  Sometimes I'm more into label-making than quilt-making.

Nook Tablet Cover - Little Women

I finally broke down and bought a Nook tablet. I had been so indecisive, poring over reviews and specs on all these little devices. The deciding factor was the gift card I had at Barnes and Noble left over from my last birthday. The tablet is a completely fun little thing. I love having access to the internet without having to fire up the laptop. It's a great accompaniment to my TV watching and stitching from an arm chair. I haven't actually read a book on it yet, but that will come.

The tablet gave me a perfect stitcher-tunity to make a little cover for it. Recently while browsing for the new Little Women tribute cross stitch design by the Primitive Hare, I came upon a captivating drawing by the illustration artist Richard Hogg. His drawing of Little Women is unrelated to the Louisa May Alcott version. His drawing is a set of fashion illustrations done in a stick figure style. It's amazing to me how he gets the point across and so many types of women in so few strokes of the pen.

 I couldn't resist turning this into a little stitchery piece to use on the Nook cover. There are so many blue and brown themed designs around lately, blueberry chocolate as it seems to be called, that I picked that color scheme too. I loved stitching this. I noticed all the details I missed by just looking at the original admiringly.

 I saw this tutorial on Pinterest and a finish for the Kindle on the Sampler Girl's Blog and it looked pretty basic so I used that one. It came out a bit snug -- the batting really contributed to the bulk. If I make another I'll increase the size. But for now, it works to protect my new baby.