Deck the Halls Completed

This stitch just moved along so quickly and it was so much fun.  Those cardinals and the font of the words – love them.  And I like that it’s a nice little compact stitch.  On 14 ct. the stitched area is just under 5″ square so it will look great in the black Mill Hill standard 6″ square frame I have coming.   And although, I generally don’t like backstitching – with two strands I like it so much better than one strand and I love the combination of backstitch and cross stitch to make the lettering.   Yes, you guessed it, I love this one.

Now what do I stitch on?   Actually I may start my St. Nicholas Day stitch if I can decide on a fabric.   If I start it now, I may actually have the stitching finished ON St. Nicholas Day.  We shall see.   I’ll be stitching this.

I had ordered all the called for flosses, which are hand dyed and one was out of stock.  I wouldn’t have any problem substituting another floss, but I did want it to be a hand dyed floss because its the darker blue of his robe and hat and I think that look was what drew me to him in the first place (although I do like his donkey friend too).  Anyway, as I was moving some floss rings for projects I’ve completed that the floss needs to go back to the proper place in the stash, I had the floss from Owl Forest for the New Year Sampler I had finished and that one had the right shade of blue in it.  I don’t know how variegated it will look when I stitch it but its a good color match I think so I’m going to go with that.

And check out this chart – I have had this in and out of my cart so many times over the last year or more.  I love it but oh the color changes.  But I love it and I love the colors.  I usually don’t like brighter colored charts but this one I love.  I love the border even tho I don’t usually like big, involved borders.   I think it’s because, again like some others, it reminds me of a quilt border.  Anyway, I finally ordered it and the floss and it will be a project for 2023.   Judy might be ordering it too – have not gotten a final word on that but I sent her the photo to tempt her. 🙂

I have been watching Helen D’s flosstubes and her progress on this and she just finished it and it is stunning.  That was the clincher that made me get it now.  It’s called Cardinal Points, designed by Long Dog Samplers, in conjunction with GAST as it’s all GAST threads used in it.

Deck the Halls progress

Well the the way my Sunday Stitches projects started out is they are a project that I would stitch on on Sundays.  But the problem I have is that I enjoy stitching on them so much that I don’t want to put them down.  That’s what happened with Deck the Halls.  I started this late Sunday afternoon or early evening, and then stitched on it last night and here’s where I will pick it back up tonight.

I love the mottling in the fabric – not a lot but enough to add a bit of interest.  And it’s nice to stitch on a larger count for a change – this is 14 count with two strands. I’ve got the lighter green to add to those half dark green leaves, the words “Deck The” and then just some berries to add.  The berries are done in a specialty stitch so I may do a “as close as I can” aida equivalent, just do some regular crosses or maybe french knots.  I haven’t decided on that yet.

Sunday Stitches 11-27-22

It’s a Sunday Stitches Day so I’ll show you where I left off on the Sunday Stitch I started last weekend.

Here’s the chart again for what I’m working on.  I had previously stitched the little Joy bonus chart and am working on the larger chart, although that one is also pretty small.   I’m using a darker fabric and was liking the floss colors for the words but realized after I had finished stitching this far on it last Sunday, that if it were hung on a wall those words likely just would not show up well (they do under my nice bright stitching light). Duh.  So, I’ve come up with an alternate plan, rather than ripping all the words out.   Here’s what it looks like right now.

Rather than doing the complete stitch with the tree and the snowflakes and the lacy bit along the bottom, I’m going to put the words “the Lord” under the word “Christ” and keep this a small rectangle so it can be made into an ornament, likely for me to keep.   I can’t really get a true color photo, but I do like the two shades of floss used in the letters on the dark fabric – but they are hand dyeds so don’t show up as well in a single thread as they change shades as if you toss the entire floss on top of the fabric.  If I were making it for someone else, I would like change that to make it stand out more but I’m okay with this for me and I should be able to finish those letters later today.   Goodness, then what do I want to do for my next Sunday Stitch project?  I’m going to have to dig thru the charts and get a new one ready to go.

The two I’m considering next are these.  I think I would add a bit more color to the first one but will have to wait and see after I pull the chart.  I also have an idea for finishing this in a tree shape when it’s done with an antique tall thin bobbin spindle for a trunk.  I think this one will end up being a future stitch because I’d like to get some Treasure Braid to maybe add a few sparkly accented words and just ordered a few colors of that so this one will likely be a sometime in January Sunday Stitch.

That means I think this will be the one I pull the fabric and flosses for this afternoon.

I think there are only about four or five colors in Deck the Halls, and it is so pretty.  I love the font of the lettering and of course those cardinals.

This one actually contains two versions of the chart.  One that has over one – that is the one show in this photo.  The over one is the branches/vines.  The non-over one version has those branches/vines as backstitching.   The berries are also a specialty stitch that won’t work well on aida, but I have a plan to substitute for that stich.  And this one is actually a very small stitch so I plan to stitch it on 14 ct with two strands and it should fit in a standard 6 x 6 frame.

And here’s how far I got last night on Turkey Trot.  I’m closing in on a finish on this one.   I did change some more colors – those three large stars on the bottom were supposed to be all in a straight line with stems and then some quirky tiny urns that they were growing out of but I didn’t like the look of the urns so I left those out and lowered the middle one so that there wasn’t a lot of space at the bottom.  I have the last star to finish, another turkey to add and I’m going to take out and replace the star-like/snowflake sort of motif by the letter D.  It was supposed to be a star like above the turkey but I didn’t think I had enough room to put it there because my initial D took up more space in that area than the charted letter L.   But I think I actually can get it in there and want to change the color to one of the burgundy colors used in the larger star so it shows up better.  This one should be finished up later this week.

And lastly for today, the ribbon I had ordered to add to the top of the wooden snowflake finishes arrived and I got one of them fully finished.   (Note to self – stand outside on the patio when actually making the bow from the ribbon so I don’t have to deglitter the carpet again.)

So here it is fully finished.

And of course, another close up of the stitch because it’s just so adorable and I love the fabric it is on.    I still have one more of these that I need to get fully finished soon.  And looking at the photo above – I just decided that I may switch the bow on this one to a red one – I got the same ribbon in both red and green – and use this green on the second one.

A Wonderful “Barn Dance” Quilt

I got an email yesterday from Pam who had made her version of my Barn Dance quilt pattern.  That was the one we did on this blog as a Quilt-a-long in 2016.  You can still find the link for the pattern down the right sidebar.   Pam said I could share her photos here and sent me some more close ups.  I have a love of all things Charley Harper and when she sent me the original photo, I thought I spied some Charley Harper fabrics and she confirmed that when she sent me the close ups.  Her use of those fabrics is clever and I love the Grunge fabric she used as her background.  Enjoy the photos of her quilt below.  Thanks, Pam, for sharing!

Just Beautiful!

Finished House -On to the Turkeys

Finally, I have finished filling in that house and got to move on to other motifs. I decided to leave the turnkey colors similar to the chart expect I added two shades of sort of a reddish color to the ends of his tail feathers, but I changed the colors for most of the other motifs.

I love it when the original chart, if it doesn’t contain a full alphabet, uses letters that I can easily figure out how to convert to my first and last initials.  This chart had the letter B in it so it was easy to keep the same style letter but change them to mine.   I also really like the border, the way it has a straight line and then varying sizes of  “chain links” for lack of a better description.   So the top half of this is done and once I get all the border in place, I’ll get to work on the bottom half.

I may get around to some fully finishing/framing today if all goes according to plan.

Building (stitching) a house

Why is it that the gold houses I stitch seem to take forever to fill in?

Winter Rose Manor ’22

You might remember this one.  That was a very huge house so it should take a good long time to fill in all those stitches – and it did.

Turkey Trot is probably a bit less than half that size but has more gold because of the lack of large windows and doors.  And my problem as I was stitching last night working on the left side of the building was I kept stitching straight rows and then realized I should have left the window openings so had to rip back several times due to doing that (I was watching a very suspenseful movie and not paying enough attention) 🙂

I very nearly decided to switch from the house and start on a turkey last night but I haven’t pulled the colors I want to use for the turkeys yet and really wanted to get that house completed.   I think I want to make the turkeys a warmer brown than those sorts of taupe-like browns but will have to take a look thru the floss to see what I come up with.    And the star flowers will be different colors too.  I like my fall pieces a bit more vibrant.

So although I didn’t get it totally stitched last night, I did make some progress with all my ripping out and resttiching and ripping out again.

I do like this floss – it’s GA Toffee and it has some nice variegation in it to a sort of brownish color which actually goes well with the roof floss.

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope you are having a lovely day no matter what you may be doing.  I have not been very ambitious this morning.  Watched part of the Thanksgiving Day Parade on tv, got dressed, called my parents and then have been puttering around ever since then.  It’s a sunny day here and when I glanced out the door thought it was raining but it’s just the snow melting off the deck above my door.  All the snow will be gone before the day is ended.  I’ve decided to save the making of my “Thanksgiving meal” until tomorrow as I have other good leftovers I need to finish up.  But I did break into the pumpkin pie last night and its quite tasty.

So here’s the great progress I made on restarting Holy Night by Barbara Ana Designs last night and it is a miracle – a true to color photo for a change.

That snow pops on this fabric and I really like the change I made to making the houses blue.  I am going to set this one aside for today because I had planned to stitch on my Turkey Trot I showed a few days ago since it seems Thanksgiving is a good day to stitch on that.   I’m hoping to at least get all the gold house done today.

Take 2 on Holy Night

I’ve pulled a different scrap of fabric to restart Holy Night by Barbara Ana Designs on.  It’s leftover from Penny Autumn and it’s the piece I had originally considered and in hindsight should have done with.

New DMC have been pulled.  The houses will be the two shades of blue on this one.  I chose a bit darker green than I had used on the other one. Aha and I forgot to add the black or blackish color for the roofs so need to get that on the ring.

I have also decided on my Christmas Eve start or actually the Eve of Christmas Eve I’ll likely start it.  So I guess it will just be my Christmas holiday stitching.  I had thought about starting the Owl Forest Embroidery Red Cardinals chart but I’ve got another cardinal chart I want to start over the Thanksgiving holiday so will wait for the Owl Forest one until sometime later in 2023 but it’s all kitted up with their flosses and ready to go. I also wanted a smaller start since Judy and I will be starting the Three Things Sampler for New Years and that’s a whole lot of stitching.  The chart I’ve decided on (I’m going to kit this one up and NOT change my mind again), I’ve had in my Sunday Stitches group of charts as it also fits my criteria for that.  

 

It’s a sweet little stitch.   If I stitch it on 18 count, it will fit in a standard 5 x 7 frame.   I do plan to change the colors a bit and have it not so prim looking (i.e. to me drab colors).   The deer will be a different brown and her dress a different color too.   I’ll just pull some colors I like from the stash.   Chart is available as a pdf on Etsy at Primitive Stitchin if anyone wants to join me in stitching it.

Dagnabbit! I need to restart

 

I hate stitching snow – or more specifically, I hate stitching snow that does not show up!   I was happily stitching along on Holy Night and had all the houses and trees done and when I started on the snow, it’s just not showing up.    As you can maybe see in the chart, the snow area on the bottom has places left unstitched that create star shapes, etc. (larger photo on prior blog post).

I had gone back and forth on what fabric to stitch it on and clearly, I picked the wrong one.  

 

Here’s where I got to last night before I decided, nope – I need to start this one over.

The other fabric I had originally chose I thought might not let the color of the houses pop on it so that’s why I started with this one, which is a bit darker than it looks.   So, I’ll be restarting this one on a darker fabric and I think I’m going to change the color of the houses.  I think I will pick some shades of blue to stitch the houses in.  I may start with the snow first when I restart this one.

In the meantime, I found this frame and I really like Penny Autumn in it but there’s too much space on the left and right.  I don’t want to stitch the penny border up those sides, but I’ve come up with a brilliant plan if I do say so myself.

Since there are several partial large stars in the design (lower left of house, top of stitch and right side) I’m going to repeat the half star design located at the top in the area outside the left border line in the general area of the top blackbird to the side acorn below it and then on the right side, outside that border line, between the bottom crow and the side acorn above it. I think that will make it look more centered in the frame and I love those star designs anyway so it will be a fun addition. The frame is a 6″x 8″ from Mill Hill and has the peg you can put in the bottom on the back so that it can stand up on its own and not have to hang on a wall.

Holy Night – a new start

So I put away my Sunday stitch (after continuing to stitch on it on Monday) and made good progress.  Nearly all the words are done and the pot of flowers and bird so I likely can finish it off on Sunday when I pull it out again.

I had this Holy Night chart from Barbara Ana Designs that I had recently received, and I want to add to the center of one of those wooden snowflakes, so I started on it last night but fell asleep way earlier than normal so didn’t get much accomplished.  I hope to make great progress on this tonight.   I don’t have all the called for DMC so I’m just substituting similar shades.  I didn’t want my trees to be brown so changed them to green and it’s just some leftover 18 count but I’m not sure of the color.  But here is what it looks like.