Oh my word…it happened. I went overboard!
I’ve been pretty good with my cross stitch stuff. Of course, I buy more than I’ll ever stitch but in the scheme of things and from what I see on Floss Tube, I have always thought I was pretty good. Yes, I had extra linen…yes, I had extra patterns…but I always thought I was in pretty good control.
Then not too long ago I was watching Rachel from Needle and Flax. She is a linen dyer and also has a Floss Tube channel. She had said in the past that there were shortages of linen. I mostly heard her talk about 32 count linen. I don’t use that so thought nothing of it.
Then she started talking about shortages of 40 count linen. Well, that’s what I stitch on so that got my attention. Still, I didn’t think a lot about it…but then I decided that maybe I should try to buy a couple of extra cuts of my favorite linen just in case the shortage got worse.
My favorite linen is Vintage Country Mocha (I had two pieces of that so felt okay) or linen from Picture this Plus. I started looking online and oh my. There was no Picture this Plus linen to be found. I ended up looking over the course of a month or so. I finally found some at Spun Sugar Quilts on Etsy. I ordered a couple of pieces. I found the colors Fog and Vellum. I love Vellum and used it on my Floral Motif Sampler. I had not tried Fog but I heard a couple of Floss Tubers mention it as one they liked.
The linen came and I thought Fog was a great color. I went to order another and then saw that they had Legacy which is a color often used by Blackbird Designs. I had a piece but you guessed it…I ordered another.
About then I heard from yet another dyer on Floss Tube that 40 count linen was hard to find. AHH!! I was nowhere near that but the thought of not having linen was one I didn’t like at all.
Well, then I watched Olivia at Pumpkin Hollow Quilts on Floss Tube and she had just finished The Winter is Past by Blackbird Designs. I just loved hers and she used the called for Picture this Plus Oaken linen. Darn. I had lots of other colors but not Oaken. I ended up calling around trying to find the linen. No luck. I decided to call The Attic. They didn’t have it and then told me that if they order linen from the company Picture this Plus, the wait for linen is about 10 months. She said they were at about month 5 of their waitlist. UGH. In the meantime, I ordered the chart and floss from them. They told me it would be a bit before they got my order out.
I hunted around trying to find the linen…then… Continue reading