11/25/19

Finished the stitching on Snow Happy last night.  I left off the border and gave it two doors (because I can't count to three haha!).  I like it.  

Double, Double got a bit more love last night.  Halloween is my favorite stitching theme, so there's a smattering of it all year round.

Both fabrics are washed out.  The blue is a lovely ice blue and the orange is darker.  I'm thinking about tea dyeing over the top of it when it's finished, as I couldn't get it as dark as I wanted.  It's more like a deep cantaloupe than burnt orange!

After seeing a few Starflake by Stephen West, after his mystery kal finished, I knew I had to knit it!  It needs to be wound into hanks next, for dyeing.

The red yarn is fingering weight.  The white was advertised at Webs as DK.  The label says Sportweight DK.  It's not a problem for this project, as the pattern calls for fingering.  It is a case of buyer beware, though.  If I was knitting a jumper or cardigan, it would have been a problem.  Sport weight is 12 wpi and DK is 11, which would throw out the size of a jumper.  

For future reference, do you know if Sportweight and DK are interchangeable in the US?  I moved here a few years ago from Australia, where they are not.  

That's it for this week.  I'm off to clean the house and stuff Christmas balls.  Happy Thanksgiving to my US friends.  I hope everyone has a wonderful week.

11/22/19

Hello my crafty friends!  Thank you for visiting my blog.  If you're here for the first time, welcome!  If you've been here before, welcome back!

Another four Christmas balls are ready to stuff.  Another eight to go.  

A fake flange was added to this little pillow.  This one will be ready for fall next year.

Any scraps that are big enough to sew, but too small for a hexagon are being added to crumb fabric.  The fabric will be the center of economy blocks, with black as the background, to make the centers pop..  

Let It Snow by Prairie Schooler was made into a pillow, as I didn't check my measurements before cutting and one side was too short to fit in the frame.

This is another design from Cross Stitch Christmas Ornaments Collection 1997 - 2013.  

A bit of mooching on Abe Books led to this CD finding a new home.  Samplers have always been one of my favorite things to stitch, whether modern or antique.  They're also a gold mine for alphabets, motifs and borders.  

This one also found a new home.  It's a great read about the history of Fair Isle Knitting as well as a collection of motifs.  As an added bonus, colorwork patterns read the same way as cross stitch patterns, which doubles the fun!

I hope you have a lovely day and your stitching be frog free!

11/11/2019

The middle cushion is one of the things I was working on last Friday Night With Friends.  The little one on the left says "a fallen leaf is summer's wave goodbye".  It's a freebie from La-d-da.  The right one is from the JCS Halloween CD.  

Butterflies At The Crossroads Farmer's Wife block is done...kinda lol  There's one hst that is too big.  It may or may not get fixed.  I played fabric chicken with the floral orange and came up short, which was fine, as I really like the way the two oranges go together.  They're both from the scrap box.  

This picture frame just needs a couple more coats of white paint to cover up the black and it will be ready to hold this little snowman cross stitch from the JCS Christmas CD.  No idea who the designer is, as it's been sitting ready to FFO since the beginning of the year.  When it is framed, it will be without the glass, as there are little bead snowflakes.

This is another one from the JCS Christmas CD (and I can't remember who did this one, either!).  The fabric is the same as Let It Snow, but what a difference lighting makes!  The true color is in the top pic.  They're both stitched from the same aida that I hand dyed a while ago, with the last spoonful of blue dye from Dharma Trading Company.  Not sure what the name of it is, but the link will take you to the page.

One of these days I will hand back my Queen of the Last Minute crown.  DH and I have a stall in a few weeks at a 2 dayChristmas craft fair.  This year I'm making Christmas balls.  They take me about 3 hours to knit.  I need to bang out one a day for the next couple of weeks, as I'd like to make 20 altogether.  These two are ready to stuff and another four are ready for hangers.

Here's to a lovely week!

11/2/19

Last night was Friday Night With Friends, hosted by Cheryll.  Thank you, Cheryll for taking the time to organize this.  Ever have one of those nights when you want to make something, but not sure exactly what?  I was in one of those moods last night.  After a quick rummage through my stash, wasn't long before I had thought of something.

I whipped out some dark neutral scraps, attached fusible webbing.   Then whipped them through the Sizzix machine with Tim Holtz tattered leaves die.  

I was completely distracted by playing with fabrics and get any further than making the parts for little display pillows.

Can you blame me with all these pretty fabrics?  

They'll be made into simple pillows sometime this week and up on the blog in my next post.  

What do you do with your scraps?  These are 3/4 inch hexies made from scraps last night that are smaller than 1 1/2 inches.  

Over time, they'll be glue basted to these 1/2 inch templates made from thin card junk mail and made into hexi flowers.  Seven flyers made over 100 hexies, which is not too shabby!  I

That was my Friday night!  It was fun.  Thank you for visiting.  

Last and definitely not least, I'd like to say thank you so much to everyone who have left comments and started following my blog.  It makes me smile.