Stitching from Stash in July

Hey Blog Buddies,

It's the end of July already and that means it's time for my Stitch from Stash report.  This is a Stitch-a-Long hosted by Mel of Epic Stitching where we all try to stick to a $25/month budget for new stash acquisitions.  I have three finishes and a new little start to show you, too, but first the stats.

I spent a total of $10.25 this past month,
all of it on this one little chart:

I guess I was just in a patriotic mood.

And, it's very cute!

This month I've been stitching on the usual suspects:  Mates, A Tree by Itself and, currently, 99.  And I stitched and finished...

 ...my Semaphore quilt.  My self-imposed deadline was September 1st for this autumn-colored cutie, but I beat that by a lot!  (That usually never happens around here.)  The bottom part of the quilt that's in the shade shows the quilted fern design a little better.  You can click to make any of the photos larger...

...and here's Nancy Buhl's Flowers from my Needle from the workshop I took in back in May.  This had been my traveling piece, because it was so mindless and small--and it was stitched on 18-count canvas so it was easy to see.  What looks like a frame is really the top of a lovely music box.  All I had to do for finishing was trim the piece a little and pop it into the top of the box.  Easy peasy!  It was fun to stitch--I'll miss it.

Oh, don't worry!  I have another small 18-count canvaswork piece in my stash that's been kitted up since last year and which I'll start the next time I go a-traveling.  This is why the Stitch from Stash SAL is so easy for me.

And finally, finally:  The Long-Lost Pumpkin.  That's not its real name, but that's how I was starting to think of it, since it took so long to get it finish-finished.  Remember this?

If you've looked at this blog at all in the past year, of course you do!  And you were probably hoping never to see it again!  I posted about my June 4th finish of this weeks ago.  It was at the finisher's until the day before yesterday.  It took a long time to be finished--much longer than the three weeks which was promised--and then it was weighted wrong (very lopsided) and the green crocheted stem had it's wire poking out.  It was a mess.  Why would the finisher/store even think that a customer would be happy with something like that?  I had the store send it back to the finisher to be done properly, even though I had wanted to enter it in the Lake County Fair and didn't think that it could be fixed in 10 days' time, which is all the time that was left at that point.  But it was more important to me to get it finished properly.  So I did get a call on Friday that it was done (again) and went to pick it up.  Saturday was the Fair deadline.    Did I mention that it's a 120-mile round trip to the store?  The weighting issue was fixed and the stem was fixed, but overall it was just OK.  To be honest, I probably would have been happier with the result if I had not been mentally comparing it to the stitched model that Debbie (Stiehler, the designer) had brought with her when she taught the workshop last year.  And the store owner did give me a 10% discount for my extra trip.  All I have to say is it's a good thing that paying for finishing doesn't count against the Stitch from Stash budget, even with a 10% discount!

Debbie Stiehler's Autumn Pumpkin Patch.

Yes, it looks fine in the photo.

All's well that ends well, I guess.

Last but not least,

here is my new little start (from stash, natch):

This is Blackbird Design's Bird in Hand.

I seem to be in a bird mood recently.

My friend Anne gifted me the chart a while back.

Yes, I just finished another small piece called "Bird in Hand,"

but that was from La D Da.

This will be just a bird, a branch and a border, no words.

I'm using a dark blue floss instead of the red

which was used on the original model.

The ground is a 40-count piece of mystery linen from my stash.

So that's it from here.

I'll be back in a week or so with 

the Lake County Fair report.

Hope you had a wonderful weekend.

Thanks for visiting!