NYS progress as of 9-29-22

That open unstitched area is getting smaller – but all the color changes definitely slow down progess but make it so fun to stitch on.

NYS progress as of 9-26-22

Here’s where I was when I last showed this on Saturday.

 

I am closing in on that open unstitched area.  A couple readers had commented and sent me emails  that the number 3 was missing in the chart.  It has all the alphabet letters and zero thru 9 but the 3 is missing, something I had noticed before and made a note on my chart but in case anyone is stitching this and didn’t see it in the comments, there is no number 3.  I plan to add it in somewhere, just haven’t decided where yet.  But here is where I finished last night.  

teh

I was going to just stitch on this thru last night and go back to The Huntsman but I think I will stitch on this all week and see if I can get it finished off.

New Year Sampler – Owl Forest Embroidery update

I got the whole top area on Prairie Life Sampler stitched and was starting on the covered wagon area below it and after stitching and ripping part of it in three different flosses (to get the lighter color to show up) I decided to set it aside and pull out my New Year Sampler and put some stitches in that.

Here’s the photo of where I left off when I put it away last time, which was after my Christmas in July stitching.

And here’s where I am at the moment.  I was working in the upper left area towards the centerbirds above Santa’s head adding motifs in and did the white around the birds above his head.

and just a close up of the area I was working in.

 

More Prairie Life Sampler progress

Here’s where I left off last night.  Just a little bit of those cabin logs to chink yet and then doors and windows. Oh and the chimney and smoke.  There also two small trees above the quilt and a couple tree trunks to add so the trees don’t look like they are hoving above the ground.   The big tree on the right  with unstitched/stitched alternating sections is actually supposed to be filled in with a second color.    I’m going to wait until later to decide if I’ll fill in the second color on that tree or not.  It sort of matches the tree on the opposite side at the moment.

Tonight, or sometime this weekend, I will pull out the New Years Sampler and work a bit on that.

Prairie Life Sampler

I thought I might get a little bit of stitching done this afternoon due to unforeseen circumstances, but it didn’t last long.   It was a work from home day and must have been about 2:30-2:45 when the power went out. Hmmm, I called the office to let them know and one of my attorneys of course said “oh sure, that old excuse.” LOL   It was actually the second time that the power was out today.  I woke up at about 12:45AM because it was too quiet.  I have the tv on for “white noise” and all was quiet – not tv, no fan, and when I looked at the clock – no time.  Took me a minute to figure out what had happened.  I got up to check the fuse box just to make sure nothing was tripped (and looked outside to see no lights anywhere, no parking lot lights, etc) so knew I wasn’t the only one without power.  But it was back on within a half hour.

Today, after letting the office know I was out of commission (no power means no internet, no remote link to my computer at the office) I grabbed the very first magnifying lamp that I had got (the goose next one that didn’t stretch far enough if I wanted to use the magnifier.  It also can run on batteries so loaded it up, got about 30 stitches stitched, decided I really should do something more productive and folded a load of laundry and put it away, sat down to stitch some more and the power came back on.  It was only off 30 minutes or so and I hope whatever the issue is they now have it resolved.  But I could get back to work which was good.

All that is a long way of saying here’s where I am on Prairie life.  I got the little nine-patch quilt stitched and the pole on one side of it.

I’m going to go back and rip out (or stitch over) the bear’s face features.  They are too light and stand out too much so will likely use some shade of tan or brown so they aren’t as apparent.

I also received a chart I had ordered from the new recent releases.   It’s so pretty and reminds me my trip along ago to Europe where some of the souvenirs I brought back were lovely little porcelain houses from Delft shaped like the one in the chart. And it’s such a soothing blue/yellow chart to look at.  I think it will be a very fun stitch.

 

Saturday Nite Stitching and Flosstubes

I got some good progress on Prairie Life Sampler last night while catching up on several flosstubes.  They are so inspiring to see what others are stitching on.  Many of the ones I watch stitch things similar to what I stitch, but I also enjoy watching some that have totally different tastes than mine and are things I would never stitch; for instance I’m totally in awe of some of the huge, full coverage pieces some people stitch (absolutely beautiful!)  tho I would never stitch one myself (unless it was a full coverage ornament size). 🙂   But it is like going to a quilt show – I can appreciate and enjoy seeing the beautiful quilts, the different fabrics used, the different styles and all the work that went into each stitch, but there are many of them I would never consider making because they are just not my style.   So there are a group of flosstubers I usually watch but then I’ll pick one I’ve never watched before to see what they are working on.  And it’s a good way to get finishing ideas seeing what other stitchers have done.   And of course there are similar videos for all kinds of crafts.  Always something interesting to watch since I don’t watch the regular tv channels except for the news.   Anyway – I ramble – here’s what I got stitched last night.

The house roof is basically only outlined (and then a few more stitches to finish off the length of thread I was using) because I’m working on one page of the chart and that’s where the first page stops.  The chart is printed nice and large and easy to read on landscape orientation, letter-size paper so I want to get everything else in that tree/cabin area stitched left of center before moving to the next page and  completing the outline of the house.   I’m afraid that if I fill in just that section of roof on the first page now, it might look like it has a line down the roof where I stitched that side before moving on to the next page due to the hand dyed flosses I’m using.   So I’ll wait and fill in the house and roof all in continuous line after moving to the next page.     It’s definitely easy stitching so far – outline a tree and then just fill it in.  I do really like that tree that is only partially stitched – the alternate spots do not get filled in with floss which adds a nice look among the filled in trees.

Prairie Life Sampler – Plan B

Well I thought I’d be able to stitch the faces that are charted for linen fabric one over one just as normal  cross stitches on aida and then just use small french knots for the eyes.  So I decided to try stitching one in the margin of the fabric to see how it looked because having zombie looking people was not going to do it for me, so the look of them was going to make or break that section of the chart.    Nope – definitely did not look right  – they would be very scary looking bug-eyed people and pretty much just as scary without the eyes.  Hence the need to go to Plan B.

In Plan B, pretty much everything as shown in the chart will be gone.    Ma and Pa and the family are having dinner INSIDE the cabin so they do not appear in that row.   The horses and Jack the dog have been securely locked away in a barn behind the trees to keep them safe from that wandering bear.  But I do like the covered wagon.  So the new plan, which should be easy to execute, will be to evenly space out three horseless covered wagons across that section and hang quits on a line strung  between  the wagons.  I may look in the Brenda Keyes Ultimate Sampler Motif book to see what other motifs might be in there on keeping with the prairie theme but for the moment – wagons and quilts are the plan.

Here’s my start after making a zombie face. LOL  But this photo is actually a good one showing the color of the fabric in natural light (it looks darker indoors).   I did have more of that tree stitched (it’s the tree just to the left of center, right behind the house, but for some reason the strand of floss I was using was looking fuzzy as I stitched like it was worn out, shredding floss so I took it back out and restarted.

That tree is done in Weeks  Sage and it’s one of my favorite light greens.

Prairie Life Sampler Start

Before talking about Prairie Life – I did stick with The Huntsman last night.  Finished the sky and started on the peacock.  I put the finishing touches on the peacock this morning, changing up some of his colors.  The green  and gold were called-for but I thought he needed a bit of blue and the eyes of his feathers I changed to an orange color and a light bluish-green color.

So although I’m going to start a new sampler later today, this one will be set aside but not put away.  I will still work on this one – switching off with Prairie Life Sampler because there isn’t much left to do on this one.  There’s a tree, doodad and year to add next to the peacock and then above that it is basically a reverse image of the family/tree on the other side except it’s a man and dog next to the same style tree and of course the rest of the border.

So the start for later today will be Prairie Life Sampler by Heartstring Samplery.  There’s a lovely story in the chart about how it came about – designed at the time for the designer’s 10-year-old daughter who was obsessed with the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Prairie series of books.   I don’t remember how old I was when I read that entire series one summer but our neighbor’s two daughters, who were quite a bit older than me, had the entire series.  I took care of their dog, Lizzie, when they were gone and they offered that I could borrow the books to read.  So I would read one, take it back and get the next one in the series and was totally enthralled by them.   Of course my favorite book was The Little House In the Big Woods, which this chart appears to depict, because that book was based on life in Wisconsin.  The Ingalls lived about 230 miles north of me in the Pepin, Wisconsin area.

Here’s a close-up of the chart.  I do plan to make some changes.  I will leave off the animals names and I think will leave off all those flowers in the border.   I do like the shape of  “vine” outline of the border so will definitely stitch that but right now the flowers make it a bit too busy for me.  I’ll leave that final decision to the end to decide if I will add the flowers but I’m thinking maybe just making that border outline 2 rows wide or may be three to make it stand out a bit more.  But I’ll stitch in the single line and wait to see what I think when all the rest is done.

Here’s my floss colors – all the called for WDW.  I was going to stitch it on a fabric similar in tone to the chart cover but I think I’ve decided to try it on this  – the color is Revere Pewter – gray with a hint of blue.  It’s a little blown out in this photo – more darker gray – but try as I might I could not get a good photo of it outside today.

It was charted for linen and there is some over one in the chart (which would be fractional stitches on aida which I hate to do) but I think I can modify that.    The faces are over one but I could stitch them in regular stiches for aida and then just use little french knots for the eyes.  There’s a candle in Ma’s hand that’s over one but I think I know how to deal with that, the fiddle has some over one in it – again I think that can be changed and what is stitched inside the embroidery hoop motif is over one but I can change that as well so I think it will all work out.   On my chosen fabric the stiched area will be 11.25 x 11.25 so a nice sort of medium sized project.   A lot of the time I start on the bottom of the chart but I think I’m going to have to start with that woods scene at the top.

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Whole lot ‘o stitching going on

I had very little of the grass and sky done in my prior post photo but look!  I’m nearly done.  I have just a little bit to fill in between the deer and huntsman and all that area will be done.  That is a whole lot of stitches.     My original plan for Sampler September had been to stitch on this one until the 15th of the month and then pick back up my New Years Sampler to work on for a few days or start another sampler.   The Huntsman is for Sampler Camp which actually runs to the end of the year so there’s no rush to get this one done.   We shall see.  I plan to stitch on this one tonight to at least get all the sky filled in and then will decide if I want to carry on with this one, switch to NY Sampler or heck start something else.

Ever since Judy mentioned The Prairie Life Sampler I’ve been thinking about that one because I thought I had all the floss for it so searched the “stitch me sooner rather than later basket” and yes, I do have chart and floss and I would just need to pick some fabric from the stash so maybe I start that???   Must go concentrate on finishing that sky first on The Huntsman………..but don’t be surprised if you see a new start tomorrow. 🙂

And, my prefinished, fabric-covered easel I had ordered arrived this week.  I was going back and forth between framing, doing a cube finish or some other flat-fold finish with Stitchin’ Witches but when I saw this fabric choice I knew it would pick up all the colors of the fabric and floss I had used in this stitch so ordered an easel.   I wasn’t thinking because I could have ordered just a single fabric-covered flatfold piece and not the easel because I actually do have an easel that I could have set it on but oh well.  I save that though for future flat-fold finishes.  The stitched piece is just folded and sitting on top but you get the idea.   One of these days I’ll do some finishing and get this one all done but I’m also waiting on some variegated floss that has all those colors in it so I can make my own cording to go around the edge of the stitched piece.  But I think this is going to be so cute on that easel.

Sherry Bobak is the lucky recipient of the last FCA – The Tree Farm – so congratulations Sherry. I’ll be sending that to you next week.

9-12-22 Progress

Gosh I love this sampler.   Just one little thing to fill in yet on the left side but I’ll finish that next time I use the called for color somewhere else.  This is where I left off last night although I did fill in a little bit of ground in the upper scene during lunch today.