Cross Stitch Update

When I left you last week with my Floral Motif Sampler, I was getting close to a finish.   I think I had seven flowers left to finish.

I had three really big flowers to stitch and the rest were smaller.  I felt pretty crappy all week so my solace was to stitch.  I got this big flower below stitched.  This is a flower that called for a white floss but it didn’t show up on my linen…so I subbed in the color Chablis.  It’s a light pink and I’ve really loved how it looks in the sampler.  The other color in this flower is Raspberry Frost and they compliment each other nicely.

On Sunday I was to the point that my last flower was the big corner flower.  I half decided that I would stitch part of it Sunday and finish on Monday…but I decided to stick with it and finish the piece Sunday night.

I stayed up until 10:15 pm to make the happen.  Oh my.  I love it.

Here it is all ironed and looking good.  I started this at the beginning of my cancer treatment with the intention of stitching one flower a day.  I did that all of December but once I got home from the hospital in January and was feeling so terrible, I started stitching full steam ahead.

I am so glad I picked this one to stitch.

Here is a closer picture of the right side where all of this week’s stitching happened.

I stitched this on 40 count Vellum by Picture this Plus.  It’s a new favorite linen of mine.  I love the light color and modeling.  So pretty.

I took this with me the last time I went to The Stitchery Nook and already have a frame ordered for it.  YAHOO!!

The next time I go, I’m going to drop this one off…and hopefully, pick up my Heaven and Nature piece.

I’m so excited!!  I’m really on a roll with finished cross stitch pieces as of late.  It makes me SO HAPPY!  My sampler wall is happening one piece at a time.

So to make this official.  This is:
The Scarlett House Floral Motif Sampler
It is stitched on 40 count Picture This Plus Linen
Called for colors except for Chablis by WDW instead of WDW Whitewash
I used DMC for Dark Chocolate and Wood Trail as I couldn’t find either of the overdyed flosses.
I started on December 8th and finished on January 23rd.

I apologize to those of you that were stitching along with me working on one flower a day.  I did jump ahead.  I think part of me decided to keep stitching with the hope that once it was stitched, I’d truly start feeling lots better…kind of what it was supposed to represent.

So…now I am at a spot that many stitchers hate.  I need a new focus project.

I started this on the 25th…

Lori Holt and Cross Hatch Quilts are hosting a Christmas stitch along the 25th of each month.  The premise is to stitch on a Christmas piece on the 25th of every month and hopefully have a finish or two by the time Christmas rolls around.

I picked a small piece…  This came out as a PDF download from Beth Twist of Heartstring Samplery just a week or two before Christmas.  I liked it…

But…then I saw a person on Heartstring Samplery’s Facebook post it stitched in these colors.  Oh my word.  I loved it LOTS.

The person who stitched it was so sweet and shared that they had stitched in Belle Soire silk using the colors Collard Greens and Cranberry.

I have yet to stitch with silk and I thought this would be a great opportunity being I only needed two colors…so I ordered them.  Well by then, Christmas had passed and I wasn’t excited about stitching anything for Christmas.

Then Lori Holt and Christi from Crosshatch Quilts announced their 25th of the month stitch along.  I figured this was PERFECT.  So…I picked out some linen.  I have 40 count Legacy by Picture This Plus.

…and I started it.  This is only one night of stitching, not a ton, but the stitching will add up over time.  I’m super excited to be stitching this.  It will be so nice to have a finished piece for Christmas.
I actually think I might be able to finish this when February 25th rolls around and we have another Christmas stitching day.  I’m loving the designs and loving the colors.

I haven’t completely decided how I feel about silk and am going to wait until I finish this project before I give my opinion on it.

I also stitched a bit on my All Creatures Great and Small by Barbara Ana…just one night so again, not much progress.

Here is where I was…Just barely a start…

I extended the top border over quite a ways and then started in on the motifs at the top.

I stitched the key, the baby and started the mom.

This one I’m committed to stitching the entire thing in 2022.  I think I can do it but I’m going to need to stitch faster than I currently am.  I do think that this project will catch and I’ll get excited about it.  I loved stitching the Floral Motif Sampler in that I could stitch a motif or two each evening.  It always felt a bit of an accomplishment just getting a couple of them done!!  With all the motifs in this, I’m guessing I’ll feel the same way.

I picked up my A Changed World Sampler from The Scarlett House.  I think this will be the main piece I work on now that The Floral Motif Sampler is finished.  I only worked on this one night too so again, not much progress.

Here is where I was when I put this one down and focused on other pieces.

I’m not quite halfway finished.  I think the bottom of the sampler is more stitch heavy so it might look halfway in size but it really isn’t when it comes to the actual stitching.  Those houses have a lot of stitching as does the black fill-in.  The above photo is the true color.

I ended up stitching that tree on the left…There are dogs near the trees and I’m debating about coloring them so they look like beagles.  Hmm.  I’ll probably stitch on and let that decision wait.

Then I stitched down the left side border.  I got to the spot where the box for the flower is…then I look over and realized I previously stitched too far down on the right border.  I’ll have to pull some of that out.  It’s not a lot and is easy picking.

I was super excited to see that though as that means I’m getting close to having the border stitched.

I might stitch everything except the black area and then keep the project as fill-in work.  We’ll see.  I’ve been thinking about that but knowing me, I’ll want to finish so might just power through and do the fill stitching right away.

This project is small compared to what I’ve been stitching lately so I’m excited that maybe it won’t take too long.  One thing I know for sure is that I am going to get the border stitched up on this so I can order a frame for it the next time I go to The Stitchery Nook.  That way I’ll have a frame ready for when it is finished.  That cuts a couple of weeks’ time off of the framing as they don’t have to wait for the frame to arrive.  YAHOO!!

I spent one morning doing a lot of organizing.  I had floss that wasn’t together with projects. It wasn’t in bags and labeled.  I had the floss in the project bag but not together the way I like it.  I put away all the leftover thread from the last two projects I had been stitching on.   I had projects that needed a working copy made and put with the projects so I tackled a lot of the organizing stuff that comes with cross-stitch.  I just love doing the organizing.

I trimmed down the linen on my Floral Motif Sampler and got the leftovers relabeled so I know what linen it is when I go to stitch on it later.  I love saving these small pieces for a pillow or other small project.

Some people pitch these…not me.  I used everything I can.

I told you that I keep track of my stitching in A Needlework Enthusiast’s Book of Days.  I was a little frustrated because I didn’t have a Christmas sticker for the 25th when I stitched on Comfort and Joy the Christmas piece.

I thought about ordering some type of Christmas stickers but then I remembered that a blog reader from Greece has sent some canceled postage stamps and said I could use them for the childcare kiddos.  I wondered if maybe there was a Christmas stamp in the bunch.

There was!!  I was so excited.  You can see I put that in on the 25th when I did the Christmas stitching.

I ended up sorting through the stickers quickly deciding that I was going to trump the childcare kiddos and keep these stickers for me.

Look at the sticker I found in the mix.  It says “Crusade against Cancer”.  WOW.  I quickly grabbed that one and stuck it on the 7th.  The day I have my Radioactive Iodine treatment.

Coming up the 1st weekend in February is Blackbird Design Weekend.  I’ll be stitching on the piece We Live in Hope in honor of my relatives that first came to the US.  I pulled some USA stickers and put them on those days.  SO FUN!!

I ended up sorting all of the stickers into categories and put them in floss away bags.  I am just so happy with the canceled stamps.  They are going to work perfectly in my book.  In the misc bag, there are some stamps that say “Historic Preservation”.  Won’t they be great if I’m stitching on a reproduction sampler??

Thanks so-so much to the blog reader from Greece who sent the wonderful stamps.  I am using them and am so excited about them!!
It’s always a hard transition when I finish one project and move on to the next.  It seems I kind of flounder for a week or two, waffling between what to stitch.  I think this week is that week of floundering.  We’ll see.  I hope I can settle on something and get to my full steam ahead mode that I love to stitch in.

That’s what has been happening here on the cross stitch front.

P.S.  Remember I told you about Deborah Harry’s project bags. Check out THIS blog post if you missed that.  She has been putting out some great teasers about her bags being available soon.  I follow her on Facebook and she announced, “NEW listings will go live this Sunday, January 30th at 7:00 pm Eastern in the Etsy shop. www.Etsy.com/shop/DeborahHarrys”

She saves all of her bags and then lists them all at once.  You have to have a fast finger to get one.

Oh, I just love looking at the bags.  I’m not an orange girl but this bag totally has me rethinking that!  SO CUTE!!

I love that this doily was see-through!!

This one might be my fave…It totally gives me a 70s vibe.  I am so impressed by her work.

Remember I thought I needed one more bag because I usually have four projects going.  I am going to see if my finger is fast enough on Sunday.  Let’s hope!!