UFO No. 1

This will be a short post (for me) since I am prone to blathering.

Earlier this year I posted a list of my UFO's with the intention of reducing its size.  Well, progress has been made on that intention!  First, I said good-bye to those projects which I knew I was never going to finish.  That shortened the list by five!

Then I picked three that I thought were doable and made finishing them one of my stitching goals for this year.  Here is the first of those finishes:

The "before" shot of Marsha-Papay Gomola's

Ruby of the Forest.

And we have a finish!

This was originally supposed to feature a spider web

and a spider hanging by a filament

in front of the cardinal's nose.

On the branches there were to be pink flowers.

Since I intend to use this as a Christmas ornament,

I decided to ditch the spider theme and make it more wintry.

The finishing isn't the greatest, but I did the best I could.

From this angle you can see how the cardinal

is somewhat three-dimensional,

with padding under his body.

I am hard at work on UFO No. 2, and hope that it will

be featured soon on this blog.

Thanks, as always, for visiting!

Stitching and Quilting

Hope everyone is having a great July.  It's been really rainy here, so I've been stitching away, although I really don't need an excuse to stitch!  Here's what's been happening.

Debbie Forney's Ho Ho Ho

I'm calling this a mini-finish (I have two more panels to stitch on this project).  It was my challenge project for my ANG chapter, due last month.  I knew that I wouldn't finish the whole project, but wanted to finish this panel so that I would have some momentum going forward.

As readers of this blog may remember, each June members of my chapter have the option of submitting three unfinished projects.  Their fellow members vote on which project that they want to see finished by the following June.  The larger the project and the less stitching that's completed is usually, but not always, the determining factor.  The project is disqualified if it's the size of an ornament, or more than 50 percent finished.   I submitted Ho Ho Ho for consideration again this year because I'm not even close to halfway done with it but, alas, it was not chosen.

Once everyone eyeballed this painted canvas from a design by Charley Harper (Rainforest Birds), poor Ho Ho Ho became Ho Ho NO.  The fact that I haven't taken a stitch on Rainforest Birds yet may have played a minor role as well, but everyone just seemed captivated by this one.  So Ho Ho Ho will be going on a long (hopefully not permanent) hiatus.

I finished this little July pillow from Little Dove Designs.

After I attached the fluffy chenille on the edge of the pillow,

I thought it looked like fur trim,
which is a little strange for July!

I'm making good progress on Jolly Robin.

There are a lot of color changes, but no confetti stitches.

He has been unexpectedly fun to stitch!

My kitchen has had light gray walls for about a decade.

(When I like something, I usually don't tire of it quickly.)

But it was time for something new,

so I chose my favorite color: orange.

The floor tiles have gray in them,

so I decided to quilt myself a little tablecloth
to go with the new color scheme.

I even had the Carrots piece,
on the wall to the left, reframed.

The old frame was red, and it wasn't working.

Then I had some fabric left over,
so I went all matchy-matchy with my bowl cozies.

(My old ones were red.)

I think my sewing machine (and I) need a long rest!

I've also been making progress on a couple of

long-standing UFO's.

I hope to be able to show you
a finish on at least one of them soon.

That's it from here.

Thanks for stopping by.