One Autumn Saltbox finished

 

 

I finished putting in the final stitches on one of the Autumn Saltboxes from this Plum Street Samplers design.    

I changed it up a bit – swapping out colors, and adjusting the chart a bit in some places.  I left out the sun behind the smoke from the chimney.  I stitched the smoke itself in tent stitch rather than full cross and I also just filled in that upper square on the house where the pinwheel design was as a dark window.  The pinwheel is the only area that was charted for linen stitching 1 over 1 and as I’m an aida gal that simply wouldn’t work. I also added my last name initial in the pumpkin on the roof and added the year down the side.    Since I have all the four seasons of these charts, I may use the other fall one and one from each of the other seasons and stitch them all side by side in one piece.

Now if I could only find the bitty black hornbook I plan to mount this one – searched and re-searched all the same places again so will stop searching because apparently it wants to be found in its own good time.

Oh and Breaking News!!! the mailman just dropped a couple  bubble envelopes outside my door – my Honest Abe Sampler should be in one of those and a bunch of Victorian Motto floss I plan to use for a different project.   The Victorian Motto when I first stitched with it seemed to be tangling more than other floss.  I think that was partly due to the aida I was using it on – not one of my favorites and more stiff so the thread doesn’t glide thru as smoothly but once I started running the thread lightly over a waxer that solved the issue.    And the Victorian Motto colors are gorgeous and come in much larger hanks so for projects where you need more yardage they would be really good.  Can’t wait to rip into that package.  Hmm the other package I think is a chart I had preordered (not in connection with Expo).  I’ll try to remember to share all the goodies tomorrow.

And speaking of sharing – let’s try this just for fun.   If you are a regular reader you know what Chart Adoption Sundays are.  Well today isn’t Sunday but how about  a little game anyway and you can get the opportunity to receive one of the charts I’ve finished the stitching on if you guess correctly.   I was going thru the projects in my to be fully finished pile (thinking maybe the hornbook got stuck in there)  and had some projects in there I forgot I had finished.  So I pulled all the charts that I  am completely done using and can pass on to someone else to stitch.     I think there are four or five of them that I have finished the stitching on since August 1, but I’m not going to tell you which four or five those are so this will be a test of your memory (not that I believe anything I write is worthy of your remembering) but simple sleuthing skills can give you info to place a guess.   If you are interested in playing along , leave  one comment only  on this blog post before 12 midnight central time (tonight) with your guess as to the the name of  one of the charts I have completed and is ready to be passed on from my chart library.    It should of course be one you actually want to stitch since if you are the first to guess the chart I have set aside for this purpose, I will send it to you (must have a US mailing address).  And it doesn’t need to be the exact name – if you give a little description so I can recognize what you are  talking about that will suffice.    if you leave more than one comment for this game (and there are those that always do when I say only one) – you will be completely ineligible.

The lucky person will be announced tomorrow during the normal Chart Adoption post (if anyone is daring enough to play along and venture a guess on this) and there will of course be a normal Chart Adoption tomorrow.

Happy guessing – I’m off to rip open Stitchy Mail.

Harvest Blessings completed

This was a fun stitch – hmm I say that about pretty much everything I stitch don’t I but heck why stitch it if it isn’t fun!  This one seemed to go speedier than normal, I think because it didn’t have a huge amount of color changes.  The chart is actually called Celebrate Harvest by Brenda Gervais and it’s an exclusive included only in the Coming to America, The Women of the Mayflower, kit.  The fabric is a  it darker than shown in this photo – it’s a very sunny day here and it was washing out the colors (and it’s going to be a hot/humid day again).

I did change some of the colors and the year at the top was charted for  one over one on linen in the chart – the only thing that was charted that way – but I just pulled a different number chart from my Brenda Keyes Sampler Motifs book and finished that off.

I’m going to have to remember this chart for the corn in it – Judy and I had been talking about each doing our own personal sampler – stitching items into it that have meaning / invoke memories to each of us.  For instance, we agreed mine needed to have a little bed on it since when we were at a quilt retreat and shared the top floor of the cabin, she short sheeted my bed.  🙂   Well the corn part of this chart will come in handy since I had a part time job involving corn.  In a village of about 500 where I grew up summer jobs were few and far between but we had a huge farm down the road that grew corn for the cannery and there were always summer jobs detasseling corn.  It paid well but was the WORST job ever – at least for me – because did you know that if you sunburn your lips walking up and down corn rows all day, they will swell up very badly.   When I was recently visiting my parents somehow that came up in conversation and we were all laughing about that summer job.   I survived that summer  (wearing a bandana tied over my mouth  to keep the sun off it the rest of the days) but may I say again – the worst job ever! 🙂  So I definitely will need to stitch some corn into my sampler.