Cross Stitch Update

I have had a busy week…and am still having a busy week.  I’ve had company and did the live video.  I had grandkids here…and Thanksgiving with family that is staying extra days so not a lot of cross stitch happened.  I also spent a day organizing and revamping my cross-stitch plans.  I wrote it all up in a blog post.  If you missed that, you can find it HERE.

Before I get into what I got stitched this week, I thought I would answer a comment that came in after I wrote about getting myself organized.

Pamela said:
“Thanks for the tip about which end to pull the floss. I never knew that! I thought I had too many unfinished or unstarted projects but you really have me beat. OMG! I can’t imagine getting all of those finished.”

In the blog post I wrote I showed off my organized charts.  I showed the charts I had picked out and found the floss for the projects that I hope to be stitching in the next while.  I picked more charts than I’ll likely ever finish.  I know that…but I like to have options.

I’m guessing that one or two will get stitched over the next couple of months.  What doesn’t get stitched will go in a pouch and I’ll set that aside and save them for next year labeled as Christmas.  As time passes, I’ll likely pick up another chart and add it to the bag.  This is just kind of how I do things.  I like to have options.  I like to have something together that I can quickly grab and go with.

For quilters, having a stash of fabric is a real thing.  There are lots of people who collect and collect fabric.  They like having it on hand.  Some people simply collect fabric and don’t sew much of it at all.  Some do this because they love a fabric line and know the line is gone and will be unavailable if they don’t buy it when it is in stores.

For cross-stitchers the thing to collect is charts.  They too go out of print.  Some charts are going for over $100 on eBay because people want to stitch them so charts get collected and admittedly, I am a chart collector.  I’ve seen this chart, Queen of Freedom, go for over $250.  That is the chart only…no linen, no floss.

It’s because the chart is no long available but people would love to stitch it…me included.

Part of that has me collecting charts but the other part is, I just enjoy it.  Some people collect Fiesta Dishes, Salt and Pepper shakers, thimbles, and the like…me, it’s cross stitch charts.

I take them to bed.  I look at the color combos.  I dream and estimate in a perfect world how long it would take me to stitch.  I check out Instagram.  I look at the chart and then at the pictures of the finished projects people have stitched.  I see what kind of linen and flosses they use.  I compare and pick the ones I like best and dream about if I ever stitched it, what fabric I would stitch it on.

A whole love of entertainment comes from a single chart…so I collect them.  YES, it’s way more than I’ll ever stitch and I’m totally okay with that.  I still get a lot of entertainment value from them.  So I’m always going to have WAY more charts than I will ever stitch…

But happily, I do get some stitched…Here’s what I did this week…I was going to pack this one away but it just so happened that I had Gannon, my grandson, here.  He needed someone to sit by him while he fell asleep to take a nap.  I ended up getting two lengths of thread into this project.

Here is where I was last week…

Then I had our son Buck’s kids here Wednesday night and his daughter Lucy wanted to stitch with me.  We stitched and watched a Disney movie.

Not much progress…but some.

The outer border is now all the way marked off.

I’ve got the top of the border completely finished and have started doing the finished work on the side borders.

After that, all that’s left is the pumpkin.

You might remember that I debated about putting this away for the season and picking it back up again next year in the Fall.  I’ve decided I’m going to leave it out and only stitch on it when I’m trying to get one of the grandkids to sleep of if I’m needing something to take a doctor’s appointment.  I might outline the pumpkin and then just save the rest as fill-in work.

The piece is Autumn Alphabet by The Scarlett House.  I am stitching this on a piece of 40-count Heartland by Picture this Plus.

Here is where I last was on my Come to the Garden project by Teresa Kogut.  I am stitching this on 40-count Vellum by Picture this Plus with the called-for colors.  Here is where I was last week.

Great news on this piece…I didn’t have a lot of setbacks with this.  It seems every time I tell you anything about this, I am always telling you how something went wrong and never telling you about happy successes.

Here is where I ended the week on this.

I couldn’t figure out why it took me so long to finish the flower and then once I got it done, I understood why.  The flower is really a big motif and takes up a lot of space.

Once that was done I moved over and started working on the flower pot with the blue flowers.

Plans are to finish that next week and then move on and possibly work on the flower above the flower pot with blue flowers.

I don’t think I ripped anything out this week except maybe two stitches here or there.  YAHOO!!  Dare I hope I finally get some peace with it?

I started one of my Christmas stitching projects.  It’s one that I kitted earlier in the week.  This is Samplers and Primitives project Primitive Christmas.  I’m not sure but I think this is a company that does PDFs only.  You can find it HERE on Etsy.

I am stitching this on a scrap of linen that was labeled as Ale by Picture this Plus.  I am using the Belle Soie silk in the color Cranberry.  This amount of stitching was only two threads worth.  It wasn’t really enough to count as a start.

I can see this is going to be nice to stitch as it has little motifs that feel like an accomplishment as I get them stitched.  I’m in no hurry to get this done but will be working on it periodically.

I didn’t get a lot of stitching done this week and next week looks busy too so I’m guessing again, not a lot of stitching.  It’s okay.  I’ll take any progress I make.

What are you stitching on??  Did you get much stitching time in?  Please share.  I love to hear what you’re working on.