My Trips to the Framer

My framer reopened a few weeks ago, and I had five finished pieces that had been just waiting for that day!  I decided to take them in one at a time, however, because we've been having a lot of protests in the area and, quite frankly, I figured it would be bad enough to lose one piece, let alone five!  They (father/daughter framing team) understood.  But my pieces are all back home safe and sound now, so here they are:

The first piece that I had framed was Spring Robin

by Widgets and Wool Primitives.

I didn't get it in time for this spring, but I'll have it next year.

Next up, Rainforest Birds, my Charley Harper piece.

My framer actually took this piece home with her
one night for safekeeping.

I can't say enough nice things about these people!

This is my "Covid" piece that I designed myself.

I just took a quote that I liked,

and added some motifs from a

folk art embroidery book that I've had for decades.

I did it the hard way,

scratching the chart out on graph paper by hand

since I don't have any cross stitch software.

This is my favorite piece;
they couldn't have found a more perfect frame!

Pandora's Box, a freebie from Blackwork Journey.

The photo doesn't do it justice.

Last but not least, I decided to double-frame
this needlepoint piece.

The canvas is by Eye Candy
and the design's name is self-evident.

I was really surprised when I went to pick it up
and they said, "No charge."

I do give them a lot of business, but I wasn't expecting that!

These folks are the best!

And finally, a small pillow finish...

...from the Little Dove's Year series of monthly patterns.

What do I have in the works now?
So glad you asked, because I have more photos...

I'm actually done stitching this one,
but it still needs to be pillowfied,
hopefully before July.
Little House Needleworks, Freedom

Plum Street Samplers,
Serial Bowl Collection, Lesson Two.
Here's another future pillow.
Once I've finished "painting" the house,
there's a huge bowl of flowers on the roof,
and a large swath of grass on the bottom,
so I've got a bit more to go.
There are five charts in this series,
and they all come with over-dyed threads,
but the suggestion is to use one strand
because if you use two strands you might run out.
I do use two strands and
I've had good luck so far not running out,
except with the red in this piece.
I was able to stitch all the letters except one,
and believe me, I used every scrap of thread.
Since the kit is five years old,
I figured I might not be able to match
the color, even with the same thread.
So I pawed through my stash first and,
lo and behold, I found an almost exact match
with a different color from a different manufacturer.
And since both threads are over-dyed,
no one, not even DH "the color guy" as I call him,
can tell the difference.
So you might keep that in mind
if you run out of an over-dyed thread in the
middle of a project.

This is a workshop that I took through my 

local ANG chapter last year,

Jennifer Riefenberg's Pumpkin Patch.

There's a lot of laying of threads involved

which I'm not fond of

so this will take a while, I think.

This is one of the 35 projects in the book

"Splendid Samplers to Cross Stitch" by Chris Rankin.

It's called Caribbean Sampler in the book;

I call it Southwest Sampler.

I love the rainbow bands between the squares.

Last but not least, this is my start on

And Heaven and Nature Sing by Kathy Barrick.

I usually like to stitch seasonal pieces

closer to the season, but since I'm using

the called-for silks, summer stitching it is

because silk catches on my dry, flaky fingertips

in the winter and drives me crazy crazier.

The linen photographed blue

(and a lovely blue it is)

but in real life it's light gray.

And the wreath is stitched in 

two shades of green.

That's it from here.

Thanks for stopping by.

I Love Charley

Harper, that is.  In case you're not familiar with him, Charley Harper was an American Modernist artist, best known for his highly stylized wildlife prints.  Luckily for me, many of those prints are available as painted needlepoint canvases, and I have two of them.  I have a finish on my first one...

This is called Rainforest Birds.  Painted canvases alone can be quite pricey.  I saved a little money by doing this piece almost entirely in DMC #3 Pearl Cotton, which I like to work with.  Some needlepointers may look down their noses at that, but I don't care.   Rainbow Gallery specialty threads can add a lot to the cost, and there are a few of them that I avoid like the plague (or should I say Covid-19, hah!), such as Neon Rays, a rayon ribbon. I did the eyes in black #12 Kreinik, but the sparkle doesn't show up on the photos.

Here are some close-ups:

Some canvases have stitch guides, but if this one did, I wasn't aware of it, so I wound up choosing which stitches to use.  At first, it was a very daunting task, but I had a little book called "Stitches to Go" by Suzanne Howren and Beth Robertson that has diagrams for hundreds of stitches.  I relied on it a lot.

I decided to do a different stitch for each color.  In retrospect, that may have been overkill.  I did the background all in basketweave.  A lot of needlepointers avoid basketweave because it takes a long time to stitch and can be boring, but I view it as zen.  When I couldn't decide on a stitch to use, I did a bunch of basketweave, a no-brainer.  That worked out well because once I was done with the birds and flowers, I had only a little corner of basketweave to finish.

Some of the stitches I used were:  brick, byzantine, milanese,  French knots, jacquard, diagonal mosaic, scotch, reverse scotch, kalem, nobuko and serendipity.  Don't you love those names!  I did the little guy at the top in basketweave because he was so small and far in the background, and probably because I didn't want to make any more stitch decisions, if I'm being honest.

Well, that's it from here.

Thanks for listening to my blatherings.

And thanks for visiting!

Stitching While S.I.P.

Hello, My Fellow Shut-Ins!

Of course, the S.I.P. in the title refers to sheltering in place, which most of us are doing right now.  So while I have a captive audience, I'll take this opportunity to show you some finishes and also what I've been working on lately.  Let's start with the finishes...

I love the robins on this pillow.

March is the month when you start to see them again

around these parts.

From Heart in Hand's Square Dance series.

Jeanette Douglas taught this class last year

at a retreat in Bloomington, Indiana.

I just recently got these two pieces back from the finisher.

About five years ago, Plum Street Samplers 

came out with a series of Sampler Lesson bowl fillers.

I, of course, bought all the charts (with thread).

This is the second one that's completed.

And yet another March pillow.

This is from the Little Dove's Year leaflet.

In the chart, the fourth sheep was on a hill

that was floating above the ground.

I decided to extend the hill downward

and backstitch the month over the cross stitching.

Now for the WIPs...

I'm close to a finish on this Charley Harper piece.

Just a couple of sections on the large bird and

a small piece of the background need to be stitched.

The name of the piece is Rainforest Birds.

I'm getting close on this one as well.

This is a freebie (!) from Blackwork Journey

entitled Pandora's Box.

In addition to the blackwork motifs,

there are boxes with cross stitch,

pulled work and pattern darning.

This book is from 1995,

and I came across the cover piece on Instagram.

It was love at first sight.

There are a lot of enablers on Instagram!

I found the book for sale on Etsy,

and started kitting it up right away.

Here is my start.

It was somewhat of a challenge.

The book was in perfect condition,

but the printed chart was so small

as to be unreadable.

So I enlarged it on my copier/printer.

The model was stitched with Anchor yarn,

which doesn't necessarily correspond to DMC colors.

I matched colors from my fairly large stash

of DMC floss to the photo as best I could.

Finally, the chart did not have every tenth

line bolded, and no stitch count was given.

So, after manually counting and

marking every tenth line, I was ready to go.

I know that two empty boxes

are not very exciting, but just wait.

Here is my final WIP, Spring Robin

from Widgets and Wool Primitives.

The chart was gifted to me by Averyclaire

a couple of years ago.  Thanks, K!

The fabric is 20-count "Summer Sunset" Lugana.

So what is on my staying-at-home horizon?

More small pillows, of course.

I have a very fun painted canvas

that I plan on starting when

Rainforest Birds is completed.

And after that, who knows?

Thanks, as always, for visiting.

Stay well.

Goodbye, 2019

It's been a while since I've posted, so I thought I'd scoot in here before the end of the year/decade to catch you up.  The stitching never stops here at Southpaw headquarters, so here is the latest update.

Finishes

A trio of pillows made an appearance.  First up from the

Heart in Hand Square Dance series: December.

Not my best finish (or photo), but there it is.

This one turned out a bit nicer:

Be Merry from Chessie and Me.

The fabric that it's sitting on is the backing.

Finally, just in time for January,

another one from the Heart In Hand

Square Dance series.

Those designs are so stinking cute,

I love them all!

WIPs

You may remember this start

from my last post:

Well, this has gotten some love...

and

You'll notice that I added a finish date here.

The last time I did that on a project,

I had to rip it out because I was 

a little overconfident

in my speed as a stitcher.

But with this project, I think it

should be finished in

the first quarter of 2020.

We'll see.

This is In All Things be Exceedingly Diligent

from Needle Work Press.

This was going to be the start of my blackwork piece.

The framework that you see there is

the four-sided stitch (a pulled stitch).

The ground was 32-count linen.

But as I arrived at this point,

I recalled all the problems I had

with my blackwork project on linen last year.

It's a little too diaphanous to hide

even the shortest thread carried where

there's no stitching.

Did I learn nothing from that project?

Apparently not.

So I decided to trash what I'd done and start over.

Those are a lot of four-sided stitches,

but I needed to cut my losses.

Here's where I'm at now.

I have just a tick more of the four-sided stitches completed

than are shown in the first photo,

and three of the areas are filled in.

This is 32-count Jobelan (an evenweave),

and it's working out much better.

The design is Pandora's Box from

Elizabeth Almond's Blackwork Journey.

It incorporates not only blackwork and pulled work,

but also cross stitch, Assisi (a type of cross stitch),

and pattern darning.

There are two sets of instructions:

one for Aida and one for evenweave.

Yes, she even specifies evenweave!

And it's a free pattern!

She is one of the most generous people I know.

(Well, I really don't know her, but I know of her.)

She has all sorts of free charts on her website here.

Check it out, if you're interested in blackwork.

My Charley Harper piece has been

a bit neglected.

It's a little hard to tell right off

what's been stitched on a painted canvas,

but I've got one flower, two birds

and the tail of a third bird stitched,

as well as a bunch of the basketweave background.

A lot of needlepointers of my acquaintance

would not choose the basketweave stitch

as the background,

but I actually enjoy doing it.

It's very Zen.

Last but not least, here is

a January design from Prairie Schooler's

A Prairie Year leaflet...

The chart shows the clock at 11:45,

but I figured that that was still December,

so I changed the time!

This is on a fabric called Molino,

and the reverse of the fabric is a

variegated light blue.

I'd never seen anything like that before.

Weird!

I'd show you, but there's no sun today,

and the colors are not photographing well at all.

This is actually a little more purple than it looks.

Alrighty then, we are all caught up.

Molly wants to wave a paw at you

one last time this year...

From the looks of things,

she will not be awake at midnight to greet 2020.

Have a safe and happy New Year's holiday.

We'll chat again next year.

Thanks for stopping by.

UFO No. 3

At last, another one of my UFO's is finished!  You may remember this little project in my UFO list from earlier this year...

This was the progress I had made on a reversible cross stitch cyberclass piece from 2015.  Well, I got bogged down with the instructions and gave up on the piece.  This year I figured I should just finish it using the regular cross stitch technique.  So now I present...

...my two new coasters?  Yes, these two were meant to be coasters.  But when I went online and looked for small plexiglass coaster covers, the largest I could find was 3" x 3", and these are 3.75" x 3.75".  They are kind of cute, so I think I'll just set them out and see if anyone uses them.  It's fine if they do; I'm just glad to finally be done with them.

Continuing on with my Year of the Pillows theme, the small Halloween piece that I mentioned in my last post was finished and pillowfied:

This is from Prairie Schooler's Hocus Pocus leaflet.  I love all the designs in that leaflet and I plan on doing more of them--probably not this year, though.

And here is another recent pillow finish...

This is my favorite design from the Little Dove's Year leaflet.  I have seen many falling-leaf designs for October and even September, but around here, most of our leaves fall in November, although most of our trees turn a single color and not many, like the one above!  It's artistic license, I guess.

My last finish is not embroidery and came from a workshop given my by quilt guild:

We all got 24" x 24" pieces of plywood to paint a barn quilt!  It was a great make-it-and-take-it class; everyone left with a finished piece.  OK, we're pretty urban around here so most of us don't have barns, but I do have a shed in the backyard - which I would not hide this on.  It's going to go up on the front of the house.

So, last time I mentioned that I was just about out of WIPs... well, I fixed that problem!  The weird thing about this batch of WIPs is that I have four needlepoint pieces and only one cross stitch.  Usually, I have more cross stitch pieces than needlepoint, and I like to keep the number at or below four total WIPs.  You'll see why I have five in a minute.

I am sooo close to a finish on this one, just the little border which I've already started.  This was a design that was created and taught by a member of my EGA chapter quite a few years ago.  I had it kitted up all this time.  I think the reason that it sat around was that she had stitched the model in all white, which is fine because the textures of the piece are highlighted that way, but it wasn't calling to me.  I like this design a lot, and it was fun to stitch.

This is from a workshop hosted by my ANG chapter that I took this past weekend.  Jennifer Riefenberg is the designer who taught the class.  I like that she gives her students lots of time to actually stitch on whatever areas they want to in class, which is not how most other teachers I've encountered do it.  Well, she did want us to at least start on the large pumpkin, which was the most challenging part.  And between the compensation and the exotic threads used, yes it was.  But almost all of it is behind me now.

This is the gorgeous model that she stitched.

I hope mine turns out half as nice.

Pumpkin Patch is the name of the design.

I've been working on Rainforest Birds for a little while.

It's a Charley Harper painted canvas,

and I find myself spending way more time

puzzling over which stitch to use in each section

than the actual stitching of said section.

But it's a fun, learning experience.

The Tomorrow's Heirlooms ladies

attended the Pumpkin Patch workshop, too,

and they brought me a goodie bag

with this in it, all kitted up...

If it had been anything else,

it would have gone in the voluminous

Soon But Not Now pile,

but I had been itching to get my hands on this one

ever since I first saw it, so...

...yesterday, I couldn't resist; I had to start it.

I'm hoping to get it finished by Thanksgiving

(it falls a little later this year).

There's a surprising amount of

basketweave in it, so we'll see.

Last but not least,

here is my cross stitch start

which has stalled a bit lately.

The design is

In All Things Be Exceedingly Diligent

by Needlework Press.

I don't have a photo of the finished piece.

It's very, very wide, and it contains

several alphabets.

Well, that's it from here.

The meteorologists are predicting

nasty weather, including snow,

for Halloween.

Although it's a day early,

I'll leave you with this...

Thanks for stopping by!

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.