The First Half

Hello People in Blogland!  It's been quite a while.  I wasn't sure if I was ever coming back to this little piece of stitchy paradise.  Those of you who are on Instagram know I haven't stopped stitching, but a lot of you aren't (on IG), so here I am!  It's the end of June and the year is half over, so I'm here to do a recap of The First Half of 2018!  Let's start with the finishes, shall we.  Where did I leave off?  Oh yes, somewhere toward the end of January.

(oh frabjous day, she finally figured out how to make a collage!)

From top right,

this is the PSS Merry Friends design I showed you,

all made up into a tart

(I took the tart class from Vonna, The Twisted Stitcher,

at the Fancy Works retreat in March);

next is Hands on Design's Winter Thyme;

then Summer House Stitche Workes' Liberty Starburst;

and finally, Heart in Hand's Monthly Mania-April.

Liberty Starburst was my contribution to the

Patriotic Pincushion exchange at the retreat.

Here's what I received...

Most of the pincushions were like this one:

cording, buttons, cute pins, etc.

Mine, in comparison, was pretty plain
because it was finished by me,
as were all of the above smalls.

And guess who ended up with my pincushion?

The queen of finishing herself: The Twisted Stitcher.

Of course she did!

But she was most gracious about it.

Back to the finishes...

Here are a couple of small things

that I did as gifts:

I did this Victoria Sampler ornament for myself last year
on an ecru fabric, but I like this red one better.

(It's gone now.)

The bookmark was from a Vervaco kit;

small, but a lot of color changes.
I even sewed fabric onto the back,
which I wouldn't have done if the
bookmark were for me.

Here's a cute sentiment from Lizzie Kate.

The fabric is greener in real life.

I cut and sewed a queen-sized quilt top!
(OK, a lot of the fabric was from precuts, but still...)

Bonnie Hunter came to our quilt guild

and taught her Pineapple Blossom design.

This is the largest item I've ever sewn,

and it was fun to sew it mostly from stash.

It's at the long-arm quilter's now until mid-September.

Yup, they said 12 weeks for the turnaround time.

These are all of the bonus blocks

(224 of them) that were created as I was

putting together my quilt blocks.

I have a number of potential projects

that I could use them for.

Stay tuned...

I finally got a chance to meet, 

and take a workshop from,

my favorite needlepoint designer:
Kathy Rees of Needle Delights Originals.

Here is her Highland Circle design,

all stitched and framed.

Yikes, I must have cropped out the frame!

(I may be too old to be blogging...)

And finally, I believe I showed you 

the P from my Prairie Schooler alphabet

that was partially done last time.

Here is how I've progressed on that project:

This is the P-Q-R leaflet finish.

If you're familiar with the design,

you'll notice that I left off the bars on the birdcage. 

The cage was too small for him, anyway.

The S-T-U leaftlet.

I'm not quite finished with the U,

which stands for -- are you ready? --

UNLOCK.

She will have to put her Umbrella down

before she can Unlock the door with that gigantic key!

But this is why I love Prairie Schooler.

And this segues nicely into my WIP pile.

First, last and always (for the foreseeable future anyway)
I'll be working on the Prairie Schooler alphabet.
I would dearly love to finish it by the
end of this year, but that's a tight schedule for me.

I am almost done with this blackwork chickadee,
from the brilliant but evil mind of Tanja Berlin.
I've been hankering to start 
a new little something-something,
but this is my blackwork entry for the Fair this year, 
and it's the eleventh hour, folks.
I must finish this before I start anything new.

Here is Blue Jeans and Daisies by
Blue Ribbon Designs.
The fabric is a much nicer blue in real life.
This was going to be my sampler entry for the Fair
(cue the insane cackling)
but it's nowhere near completed.
I do hope to finish it before the end of the year
so that I won't have to pick out the date!
No promises, though.

Here is good old Poppers by who else but
Needle Delights Originals.
I've been at this one for quite a while.
It's the project that I work on only at guild or stitch-ins, 
so it receives regular but limited love.

Last but not least, this is more of a UFO than a WIP
since I haven't worked on it for over 18 months,
but it needs to become a WIP fast
because this is the piece chosen by
the members of my ANG chapter
as my challenge project for 2019.
Of the three that they had to choose from,
this was the one that I thought should be chosen,
but I probably should have been a 
bit more careful of what I was wishing for.
Lots of bullions on this one,
with a bunch of weird threads doing weird things.
It should be interesting.

That's it from here.
Hope you had a fabulous June.
Thanks for stopping by.