Cross Stitch Update

I’m so happy for our daughter Kelli that she caught the cross stitch bug again.  Kelli was actually the first of us Kramer girls to get into cross-stitching.  We had gone to Spring Green WI to Country Sampler.  I was going thinking it was a quilt shop so imagine my surprise when I learned they had lots of cross stitch too.  Kelli grabbed onto cross stitching then.  She proved to be good at it and got lots of stitching in.  Becoming a mom kind of put a damper on all of that…but I’m happy to say she’s stitching again.

Kelli is currently working on Take Heart by Beth Twist of Heartstring Samplery.  She messaged me earlier in the week.  She had a page finish.

This is my finished piece of the same chart.  It was so fun to stitch.

Kelli recently bought a new chart.  It’s called…

Peacock, Unicorn and a Badger by Scarlett Letter.  The piece is full coverage meaning every color you see floss that has been stitched into this.  It’s an EPIC piece.

The good news was that it was charted with DMC floss making it MUCH more affordable to stitch.  Kelli went through her floss and was short a few colors.  She sent me a list and happily, I had the rest of what she needed.

Over the years people have gifted me DMC so I have a good supply and don’t mind sharing one bit.

She doesn’t have plans to start this soon but is starting to kit it up so she’s ready to start it if a whim comes along.

Speaking of whims.  I ended up joining Teresa Kogut’s Patreon.  I don’t know that I’ll keep it up.  I’m not much of a Santa or Halloween stitcher and she designs a lot of that.  But…I am a flower stitcher and this was one of her Patreon charts for the month of September.  I am totally in love with it.  I printed it off and am excited to kit it up.  I might change the remember me verse.  We’ll see.  I’m in love with the border.  In my world, that’s a top 10 border.

Happily, this too is mostly stitched with DMC floss.  That makes another one easy on the floss budget.  I’m going to try to get it kitted as I’ll be in a town that has DMC over the weekend.  I’ll pick up any I don’t have.

….but enough of that.  Here’s what I’ve been stitching this week…

Being I finished All Creatures Great and Small last week, I was a little worried I might flounder this week and flit between projects.  I really didn’t.  I’m so proud of myself.

I was hoping for another finish so I picked up my Season of the Heart by Brenda Gervais of With Thy Needle and Thread.  I thought I could finish my fall piece.  Here is where I was last week.

…and this week, it’s a finish!

It took me three nights to finish it up.  These small finishes are so gratifying.

Below as you see them is more of the true color.  I stitched these on the called for Vintage Country Mocha with the called for floss colors.

As tempting as it was to run to the sewing room to finish these. I opted to run to the computer instead.  I’ve been wanting to order trim from Purple Paper Mountain on Etsy.  You can find them HERE.  The trims are VERY reasonably priced.  I bought a whole bunch to have on hand and I’m super excited about them.  Hopefully, I’ll find something in what I ordered to be trim for these.  Fingers crossed I can finish them next week and my order already shipped.

There are two more patterns in the book to stitch but for now, I’m setting these aside.  I have other Fall stuff I’d rather be stitching now.  I’ll pull this out in January as the New Year rolls around.  That will give me plenty of time to have them stitched in time for their season.

From there I went on to work on my Red Bird Sampler by Brenda Gervais of With Thy Needle and Thread.  This is our stitch-along piece.  Here is where I was last week.

I am stitching this on Shrekies Tan by Needle Bling Designs.  I am using the called-for colors.

This is how far I got.

I’m liking this more and more as I stitch it.  On this, I stitched the berry basket in the center, my initials, the little flower on the right, and the vase for the next bouquet of flowers.  That was one night of stitching.

I was a little frustrated that there wasn’t an alphabet included so a person could personalize this piece.  There was plenty of room in the booklet to include one but there wasn’t.  I just guessed and stitched my initials in.

I’m finally getting more comfortable with these color choices.  It takes me a bit sometimes.
I was super tempted to just finish this but I didn’t.  Who knows…I might just finish it one day or I might stick to my schedule of stitching the bouquet this month and the birds next month.

Wednesday I had a sick day.  I think a flu bug caught me.  I wasn’t so sick that I had to be on the couch all day but did take the day off from any people or kids being here as to not spread it and did knock off early to take it easy a bit.

Being I had extra time and was pretty miserable anyway, I picked up my Come to the Garden piece by Teresa Kogut.

The true colors are in the photo above.

You might remember back at the end of July I was working on this.  I started it in June as part of a stitch along.  I went to do the border and the darn thing wouldn’t match.  I was so frustrated.

You can read about that HERE.  If you plan on stitching this, please go back and read it as there is a pattern fluke that I explained there that might save you some headache.

I have an unwritten rule for myself that all mistakes have to rip out before I can set a project aside.  I ripped it out back then but then let the project sit.  I was so frustrated with the project because after ripping out the top, right, and half of the bottom border, I discovered that I only needed to rip out the border from the middle bottom to the left.  UGH.

I was finally ready to give the border another try on Wednesday night.  I stitched down the right side and headed from the right to the left corner.  I have to rip out a section from the bottom middle to the left corner.  I had forgotten to rip that part out before.  When I got this far, I was really hopeful.  I could see those old stitches (Look close you can see what I had ripped out before) and my stitches were now completely lining up with the old.  That’s what they needed to do.

Everything worked as the pattern called for.  I don’t love those three stitches in a row and think it was poor design but oh well.  It works and matched and is stitched as called for so I’m going with it.

Here is where I am now.  When I originally started this in June, the plan was to finish it by Christmas.  I maybe could do that if this was the only thing I stitched on but I have other projects I want to stitch on too.  For now, the minimum I want to stitch on this is one flower a week.  Hopefully more, but one flower a week will keep it moving along so that once I do decide to work on this as more of a focus project, I’ll be able to have a fair amount of progress on it.

Of now, I am head over heels happy that I have the border done and can move along at my own pace without that border hanging over my head.  WHOOT!!  WHOOT!!

Plans for next week…We’ll see.  I think I am going to pull another Fall piece and get some stitching done on it being I finished the small pillow last week.  I’m in a Fall stitching mood and now is a good time for that.  Hopefully, I’ll keep my other pieces moving along as well.  I’m tempted to take my last two pieces to Hobby Lobby and check on frames for them.  I just don’t have anything here that is calling to me.  We’ll see.

Check back next week and see what project I started and see if I finished my pillows…or found frames.  I have so irons in the cross stitch fire.  I LOVE it!!