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.

Two AAQI Quilts

It's been so long since I posted that I almost forgot how to do it. Seems like my blog sometimes ruled my life. It's not that I haven't been crafting, I just haven't worried about finishing and blogging on such a regular basis. It's less stressful. I've completed two more mini-quilts for AAQI. I never seem to find a day when the sun is shining and it's not too windy to take photos outside, so these photos aren't all that great. Plus it's hard to get those quilts to lay nicely and not look totally wonky. Anyway, both designers were very quick to answer my e-mails and allow me to use their designs in this manner. The first is "The Quilter" by The Floss Box. Emily's designs are just too cute. I stumbled on this appropriate finishing fabric too and couldn't resist buying it even though I'm really trying to use up the fabric I have. This is stitched on 36 ct linen from Vikki Clayton. I think I only changed one color from the designer's suggestions. I made the little girl's dress a slightly darker shade of pink. It didn't show up well when I was stitching it in the original lighter pink, but that may have just been a fluke of the lighting in the room at the time.

Next, I stitched the "Take Time To Collect" design from the Jan/Feb 2012 issue of JCS. This is by Jeannette Douglas. It had lots of different embroidery stitches. I decided to use a sample of Vikki Clayton's 28 ct linen for this. It's very stiff. She calls it "canvas light" since it's so close to needlepoint canvas. I wasn't sure I would like working with it, but it's great for these different stitches. It has enough body to support them. Since this was a sample, Vikki hadn't paid much attention to shrinkage when she dyed it. Turns out that it shrunk in one direction more than the other. The design is 68 stitches on a side, but as you can see, it's certainly not square. I didn't realize this til near the end, but I did think those spools at the top seemed oddly tall. Luckily it made no difference in this case. I would have been disappointed if I had been planning to use this for a pre-purchased square box or frame. I did this one all in DMC and changed all the colors so it doesn't look too much like the one in the magazine. I added a button and charm instead of the personalization shown in the original.

Happy Pi Day!

Pi Day... It's a good excuse to eat some pie! Bet you didn't know this fun fact about it. Personally, I always like to stitch up a little something to commemorate. This little fridgie started with a motif from an old Cross Country Stitching magazine. My collection of that magazine had about four pie designs to pick from after only a cursory search. Glad those weren't the magazines I threw out in my recent purge!



A little fun with the Picasa editor:



Enjoy your day and go find an appropriate dessert!

Strawberry Snow

Sometimes I make something so sweet that it feels like my teeth are going to melt. "Strawberry Snow" is a San-Man Originals chart that I won in a contest on the SMO message board. I always feel like I have an obligation to stitch a chart that I won, and I only enter contests where I really want to stitch the chart so it usually works out fine. This was such a cute theme, perfect for the transition from winter to spring. I've turned it into a quilt that I hope to send to AAQI if I can get Sandy's approval. I had fun adding beads to snowflakes, rick-rack to the seam and the cute little bow around the snowman's neck. The fabric is 28 ct Cashel linen in light mocha, and the threads are mostly DMC with the exception of WDW Strawberry Fields for the berries. It annoys me that the camera seems to pick up all the wonky parts that aren't so noticeable in real life. I think this is the first time that my mitered corners all came out like they were supposed to though.

Baby Sampler & Holiday Ornament

Those Jazzercise instructors of mine keep popping out babies, and they always seem to be boys. As a stitcher, I always hope for girls because there are so many cute designs that really are only appropriate for a girl baby. I have to look harder to find boy designs. Kind of a sexist attitude, but I feel it's safer to have that attitude when you are giving a gift. The design I picked is the "Too Tiny Alphabet" by Drawn Thread, stiched on 28ct Light Mocha Cashel. I like the striped mattress ticking type of border. It gave it a kind of airy feeling. I've had that little bear button in my stash for ages, and I thought it looked kind of cute on this as well.



While I was waiting to receive some fabric I ordered, I was going through old magazines, cutting out pages I wanted to keep and throwing out the rest. I really needed to make space. I came across this little ornament from the Jul/Aug JCS 2011 issue. I never noticed this the first time around. It's so kooky and adorable, I just had to stitch it. Perfect little piece that filled out the rest of the time til my other fabric arrived. This is called "Holiday Hootie" by Fresh Threads Studio, stitched on a scrap of 36ct Rue Green Edinburgh linen, with some red rick-rack for the edging.




And finally, the winner of the "Queen of Hearts" chart, selected by the time-honored "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" method, is Margaret! As soon as I get a snail mail address, I'll send it right out.

Queen of Hearts

Not too much crafting happening lately. I started this piece sometime in December and began to think I'd never finish it. I'm generally a one-piece-at-a-time stitcher so that was rather unusual for me. But it's all done now. The design is "Queen of Hearts" by Prairie Moon. I may have selected a fabric that's just a bit too dark, Zweigart 36 count Dirty Linen, but I like it anyway. I used a mish-mash of various pink flosses that I had in my stash. I think that queen is so cool, especially the teeny feet! I've turned it into another mini-quilt for AAQI.



I made a teeny cross-stitch label for the back. Next time I try that, I'll make it a bit bigger.



And in honor of Valentine's Day, I'd like to give away the chart to someone who would like to stitch it. Just note in a comment that you are interested, and I'll do a drawing if there is more than one person who would like to have it.