April Turtle Trot

We had some very severe weather in northern Illinois yesterday.  A little town northwest of Chicago was totally destroyed by a violent tornado.  At least one person died and several people were injured.  My thoughts go out to those families.  In our area, fortunately, all we got was rain.

Stitch-wise, it's Turtle Trot time once again.  For those of you not familiar with this virtual SAL, we all picked ten WIPs in January to work on, and we post before and after progress pics on the 10th of each month.

Despite the classes, workshop and new starts that happened in the last month, I did get some time to work on a few of my TT pieces.  I have to start out with Ink Circles' 99:

 Last month's photo.

Regular readers of this blog know that I finished this piece a couple of weeks ago.  Here it is framed, but I'm afraid that my framer and I did not do a good job on this one.  She will usually let me know if she thinks that something I pick out does not work.  The piece just looks like a dark brown blob on the wall.  The frame is dark brown but appears much lighter in the photo than in real life because it's reflecting the flash.  I think the reflection of the glass (yes, there is glass there) is contributing to not being able to see the stitching, too.  My plan is to first remove the glass, then if that doesn't work, I will go to a lighter-colored frame.  Gold maybe?  I didn't choose to mat it because the piece is large and I don't have all that much wall space, but a light-colored mat would probably have done the trick, too.  (Just a tip for those of you stitching this piece on the "ale" linen.)

Next, I wanted to stitch something that I hadn't worked on for a while, so I chose Laura J. Perin's Nordic Panel.

This is where I left off in February.

I did the next band

and extended the borders

almost all the way down.

I have a love-hate relationship with this piece.

Here's a close-up of the band I stitched.

Next up is Needle Delights Originals' Summer Logs:

Last month...

 ...and this month.  This piece is just so much fun to stitch!  It has no metallics, ribbons or anything to be laid.  No open canvas where you need to avoid carrying threads.  Even the border is simply a two-row repeat and is very zen.  But all the different stitches do make it look textured and interesting.  I think I'm going to be a little sad when this one is finished.

Lastly, I chose another piece I hadn't worked on in a couple of months (and because July is just around the corner!), Plum Street Samplers' Liberty Inn:

Here's where I left off in February...

...and what it looks like now.

The lighting isn't the greatest in this photo--

as I mentioned before, it was very stormy yesterday--
 and the piece looks much prettier in real life.
Once I uploaded the photo to my computer
and finished cropping, etc., I noticed
that two small motifs have one stitch missing!
(That has already been rectified.)

I like this piece so much,

once it's finished I may leave it up all year,
not just in the summer.

Well, that's it from here.
To see what the other Trotters have been up to,
go to the BAP Attack blog.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Thanks so much for dropping by!