Three fully finished stitches today

Iwas waiting on an Etsy delivery today from StarryNightsStudioCo.    I had a couple smalls I wanted to finish on fabric covered boards or easels or something and was looking for ideas – Etsy is a great place for inspiration – and had originally intended to make my own.  I haven’t done a fabric covered board or easel yet but there are great tutorials.  However, when I came across that Etsy store I absolutely fell in love with one of the fabrics she offered in an easel.  But thought no, I have hoards of fabric here but I couldn’t get that fabric out of my mind.  I really wanted it to finish off my June Cross Stitch Camp Winter Bird stitch.  So, after thinking about it a couple days I decided to just order it.  And, since it would have been lonely shipping alone, I ordered a couple other finishing things and I’m glad I did.  They are all so well made.

The Winter Bird one is finished but it’s under a stack of books letting the glue dry so I’ll show you that tomorrow.  But here’s the other two I finished.

This is a easel – there is a front fabric covered chip board and a back fabric covered one and there is a ribbon that attaches the two on the bottom so it will stand up properly.  This one was a premade one so it came with the wired ribbon and leaf button on the top.    I really wanted to use this easel for the owl stitch so I had to cut the foam core I attached it to so it was tight against the edge of the stitching, There’s only about 1/4″ of the fabric board showing around the edges on the front but I like the way it turned out.  And it will be easy to pack away if not in season since it just folds flat.

The second one fully finished is my June Stitch Camp Project Memorial Weekend stitch.   For this one I got one of the wooden block houses that came finished with a gingham fabric covered board on the front.  I had a chose of fabric cover.   I love how this looks – again I didn’t leave any border around my stitch piece but stretched it so the edges of the stitch were right at the edge of my foam core.  And that peak of the house was just perfect for a little something so I glued my wooden eagle needle minder to it.  I love how this turned out as well.

Two Stitchy Finishes Last Night

Yes two of them!    First I finished the 2016 Prairie Schooler Santa I started Monday.   One holiday gift crossed off my list except for fully finishing it.

I made just a few changes to this one.   I gave Santa black boots belt and button.  His boots were supposed to be the color of the antlers but everyone knows Santa has black boots.  The belt and buttons were supposed to be green if I remember right.  I added two rows to the top of this hat – it just looked a bit too flat on top as charted and since I didn’t add the backstitched outline all around the stitch, it didn’t matter if I made the hat taller.  Plus I added the cardinal to my stitch.  I also decided to put in the words after all so now to figure out how to finish this one.  I have a plan but need to do some measuring to see if it will work.  I also like the use of non-stitched stitches in this chart.  The dots on the deer chest are left unstitched so the fabric color shows thru.  Same thing with Santa’s mustache and and areas in his beard – adds a bit of interest.

So then I moved on to finishing the white on Miss  Bingley’s Library and here it is.  Finished off that house this morning.

I changed the way the words were laid out on this one and the floss color for the words and also changed the color of the flower pot on the house.    My thought as stitching this was that I might want to put a row of all different colors books standing up across the bottom below the words but I couldn’t remember if when I ordered the frame I had included room for that or not.     Here’s the frame I got for it which goes so well with the fabric and roof color.  It looks exactly as I was hoping it would.

I haven’t put my initials/year on this one and just had a really brilliant thought as I was looking at the photo above  (if I do say so myself) 🙂   I will stitch just one book laying down on it’s side below the words (larger than the other books  used in the chart) so that I can stitch the year and my initials in the book spine.  Yes, I really like that idea.

As for the rest of today – who knows what I’ll get up to.   It’s lunch time and I haven’t had breakfast yet and I’ve puttered with various things not accomplishing a lot so need to get busy with those usual weekend chores which I keep procrastinating on.   Yesterday was a lovely day here (although I was working so didn’t get to enjoy it much) and of course today is gray, dreary and my computer tells me “rain coming.”  Looks like it shouldn’t be long before it starts.  Seems like it rains every other day for the last several weeks but at least I don’t have to be out in it today.