Framing, Stitching and Quilting

As usual, I've got my hands in both the stitching and quilting, and can't seem to make much headway with either of them.  But something is done.  I picked up Mary's Best Handworke from the framer's yesterday and here she is:

I was on the fence about how to frame her, but I love this frame even though, now that I'm looking at it, I'm almost wondering if I should have gone with something even simpler.  The design in the frame seems to be fighting the scroll work in the border.  Is it just me?  Anyway, I love how she came out and the colors are a much better representation than my finish pic of a couple posts ago.  Daylight always makes a piece look great - even though I fell off the porch into three feet of snow while taking it!  LOL

I've been trudging along on Ann Medd and it just amazes me how long this is taking me to stitch.  Fill-in isn't hard, just so time consuming.  Then there were the sheep.  Let's talk sheep, shall we?  The sheep in this section - well, there was a point when I was ready to throw this ole girl onto the bar-b-que (yes, we grill in the dead cold of winter).  The sheep were driving me absolutely nuts!!!  Making me crazy!!  I think that it took me all of four, maybe five, days to get them in.    And then one sheep had a leg that was all crazy and I discovered that I was going over three threads instead of two.  So a frogging we go!!  But, I seriously had mad moments just relishing the thought of this sampler going up in flames!!  Bar-b-qued sheep!!  But common sense took over and I trudged along.  

Last post:

Are we getting bored yet???  I'll tell you - there are days when I long to work on something else.  But I told myself that she has to be done - and I want her done - but there are just some days.  But those nasty sheep are done, so maybe things will be fine.  Anyway, there's some progress - the fish and fisherman are now outlined, the sheep are in, although not all outlined and a wee bit of progress on the Shepherdess/Mermaid.  The sheep were about the death of me though.   

On the quilting front - lots done!!  Well, kind of.  I took advantage of that big storm we had last week.  The kids had two days off and in the true fashion of teenagers, slept in late so I headed down to the craft room and took rotary cutter in hand and cut out all my BOMs and some extra:

All my civil war BOMs, the red and black quilt and Farmer's Wife blocks for the month.  In the background is the Bliss quilt that I so optimistically thought that I'd have put together.  Didn't get there!  I was on a cutting tear, so instead I cut out some others and almost have them finished:

Remember those red and white fabrics!  Well, here's just a peek!!  I'd show the whole quilt, but it's not done.  Reason why?  Well, the kit included fabric for the borders - a great polka dot fabric, but it was upholstery fabric!  Say what?  Just too heavy to border the quilt with so I'm waiting for the correct fabric to show up.  But this really brightens my day to look at it.  Reminds me of a quilt that you would sit on when you're having a picnic.  I used the Yellow Brick Road pattern for this one.  Quick and easy!

So because I couldn't go any further with that quilt, I started on this:

Another similar quilt, but with bigger blocks made from the pattern Turning Twenty, and Pillow and Maxfield's Whimsy fabric!  This is for my daughter - the crazier the fabric the better she likes it.  Just have to sew these rows together, slap on borders and it's a WRAP!!!  I loved making both of these - quick cutting and piecing.  A welcome break from all those tiny pieces that are in the Farmer's Wife and Civil War quilts.  But now the fun is over and time to go back to my other pieces.  Although I was kind of thinking of cutting out that Marsha McCloskey pattern............hmmmmm.

And to leave on a note appropriate for the season, I thought I'd show a little wallhanging that I did years ago in honor of Valentine's Day.  This is an old Thimbleberries pattern - if I remember right they used to have monthly kits that you could purchase and this was one of them.  This is also my first machine quilting project.  It was small so I managed to get through it.  Probably the last one I will ever do myself though!

So that's what's been happening in my part of the world.  The weather is absolutely frigid today - probably about 4 degrees with below zero temps with the wind chill.  But maybe the groundhog was right - it's warming up into the 30's next week.  Ya hoo!!!!  Better get that red and white quilt finished.  We may have to do a picnic!!

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend!!  

First Finish in 2011 and Challenge Follies (Pix Heavy)

Happy New Year everyone!  I wanted to do a day by day posting of projects this week, but things have been a little hectic around here.  DH is recovering from shoulder surgery and following me around every minute (What are you doing now???) so that has cut into my blogging time, and then DS has been terribly sick with something that has required two doctor's visits and is still running a fever after six days!  I think another trip to the Doctor's is warranted tomorrow.  So I never got around to posting every day or commenting on blogs, but here you have what's been going on in my neck of the woods with stitching this week.

I started off the new year right - with a finish!  And then promptly started something new for a New Year's start.  Then I kept going and before I knew it, even though I said I wouldn't, I joined in on the 15 Project Challenge, or as I call it the 15 Project Follies, but with my own twist on it.   But here's my finish:

Mary's Best Handwork

With Thy Needle and Thread

30 ct. Parchment and DMC Threads

I started this piece when I was in Utah for the Shepherd's Bush retreat and can't figure out why it took me so long to finish it!  It was a really run stitch.

Now comes the fun part and the follies.  I decided to do the challenge my way, and the further I get into it I'm wondering what the heck I was thinking.  But here are the first eight days with before and after pictures (where applicable).  And on days the progress was quite pathetic have pity on me - with DH and DS home, well, you probably understand!  LOL

Day 1 - After finishing Mary since she was a WIP, I went to something new - Elizabeth Sheffield by the Scarlett letter.  She was my New Year's Day start.  I love working on this one:

Elizabeth Sheffield

The Scarlett Letter

DMC and 40 ct. Mystery fabric

Day Two - I picked up And All Was For An Appil.  In looking at my notes as to when I started it - well, as I hang my head here - it was my New Year's start last year!!!!!!!:

Before

After

Okay, let's keep chuckling to a minimum here!  Not too much progress - but I'm a slow stitcher on 40 count fabric.

Day Three - A new start and one I wanted to start last year - Ann Rayner:

Sad, but a start.  Again on 40 count fabric.

Day Four - Back to a WIP and this one I did get some progress in - Susanna Lane - I love this sampler a lot and it will probably be my next finish:

Before

After

Day 5 - A start and a disaster at the same time - Jane Atkinson by the Scarlett Letter:

Not much stitching on this one.  The light thread so closely matched the fabric (again 40 ct and I have to ask myself what I'm thinking with all these 40 ct fabrics)  that I was having a hard time seeing it, so I decided to start filling in the flower and then do the lighter color.  That's when I found that I had made a mistake in outlining the flower with the lighter color.  As you can see, I was working it in a hoop to just start it.   Not a big deal with the miscount - I hadn't gone very far, but when I took it out of the hoop I realized that I started on the selvage edge and not the top edge!  UGH!!!  I called it a night and it will be revisited later - on scroll rods - and stitched in the right direction.

Day 6 - A WIP - Angel Song - again, not much progress:

Before

After

Day 7 - A new piece - LHN's Traveler's Companion:

Is this not pitiful or what?????  But again, I don't think I sat my rear end in the stitching chair until almost 9:30 or 10:00 some nights and I go to bed about 10:30 - not much time to stitch!

Finally Day 8 - I actually got a lot of things done yesterday.  I decided to hide out in the craft cave and get some quilting things done.

Worked on a WIP - cut out this month's Farmer's Wife Blocks:

Started a new Project - cut out the first installment of Civil War Chronicles (love, love, love the fabric):

Worked on another WIP - put the next couple borders on the Red and Black quilt and cut out the next set of borders:

And started another new quilt - Civil War Tribute:

So now I'm faced with this - Piecing Happiness!!!

Later in the day I literally ran out of steam - unfortunately I think that I'm getting what my son has - finger's crossed that I'm not - but I did get in some stitching on Elizabeth Clayton:

Before

After

Again, not much stitching, but a little bit.  

So there you have it - the first week of the challenge.  Only 7 more days to go.  I'm not sure what new ones I'm going to add into the mix next week.  I find that having all these projects going on at one time has been a real challenge to organizing!  But the one great thing about all this is that I haven't bought anything new except for a few fibers to round out a project.  That's a beautiful thing.

I've also enjoyed watching what people have been doing with this challenge and the projects that they are coming up with.  Some I had forgotten about and some I've never seen before.  I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I seem to have made quite a list of projects that I'd like to do in the future.  In the far distant future!  Very far distant future!!!  LOL  I think I have enough on my plate right now, and we're barely over the half way point on the Challenge (or Follies).

I hope that everyone has a great stitching week whether you're doing the Stitching Challenge or not.  While I haven't left many comments this week, I have been doing quick glances into everyone's blogs to see what they're doing before DH comes in and asks "What are you doing?"  LOL  He goes back on the 18th!  I love him dearly, but.................the 18th can't come soon enough!!

Have a great stitching week!

What A Slump!!!

Have you ever been in a real stitching slump - no mojo, nothing interests you?  Well, that's about what's happened to me the past few months.  I looked at my blog this weekend and realized that I haven't really had anything stitching related to say or show in the past few months.  I haven't been reading blogs either.  Just in a huge slump!  Well, I think I finally got out of it.  I guess they call it "Life Gets In the Way".  It happens - we all go through it - one thing after another - some good, some bad, but enough to just throw you off your mark.  When I get like that I retreat and just be.  I also tend to pull things apart - organize, throw out - it's calming.  While I'm throwing out the unnecessary items in my cleaning, I also seem to deal better with what's going on at the time.   Anyway, one day after weeks of purging both material and mental things, I decided to completely tear apart my stash and catalogue it.  What a process!!!  But the spark came back and I finally got the itch to stitch again!  It was like finding an old friend.

I started with Mary's Best Handwork that I began in Utah:

I still wasn't ready to start stitching again when I picked this up, but it seemed like the path of least resistance.  I had to stitch on something at the SB retreat get-together.  Ya just can't go to a stitching retreat and not stitch!  But my heart wasn't in it.  I didn't even put her on scroll rods - my favorite way to stitch.  But I worked on her for a while and now she'll get attention when DD dances on Wednesday.  So then I started Angel's Song with Loraine:

Not a lot of progress, but some - this is one night's worth.

In all my sorting and cataloging, I realized that I am a sufferer from startitis.  Going through all my things made me want to start something new, but I decided that I needed to get rid of some WIPs  I thought about going back to an HRH piece because I'm so lame I have three going and have the perfect wall for them:

But instead, I went back to Elizabeth Clayton:

I stopped working on her originally because I got bored after I finished the left side and the house.  I didn't feel like stitching the trees, etc., on the right side.  Lame!!!

Then one thing leads to another.  I start putting my craft room back together, which has laid in a state of upheaval since my sister left in August!!!  Once everything was back in the closet and things rearranged (pictures another time), I started getting more of an itch to create - do something.  Which made me look at all the quilting goodness laying around in there.  So I picked up the rotary cutter and had at it - I caught myself up on cutting out my Farmer's Wife blocks - all three months of them:

Cut off the selvages - still don't know what I'll do with these.

Cut out the blocks (all 18 or so of them - and a huge process because a lot have to be template cut).

And put them between the pages of the book.  This only took me three days of work because if you notice, the fabric is marked for template piecing - not my favorite thing to do. And I better remember to be careful when I pick up the book.  Last time my mind went blank, forgot all the pieces were in the book and they flew all over the craft room.  Took me hours to get all the pieces together again.

Then before I know it, I'm on to another quilt - Sheer Bliss!

I could not resist getting started on this quilt when I saw it on Cluck, Cluck, Sew.  I know it's springy, but a little spring never hurts in the fall.  And since I had this Jelly Roll of Bliss fabric, it was a no brainer.  I cut out my sister's quilt too in the hopes of having it finished by the time I go visit her next month - finger's crossed (but don't hold your breath Cin!! :o)

So my mojo is back and I have a ton of catching up to do on blogs.  I know that I've missed so much.  I had some comments last time about stash that I picked up in Utah.  I didn't pick up that much.  Common sense was probably telling me that I didn't need anything (and if you saw my Excel spreadsheet of stash you would have to agree with me), but I picked up a little:

Not too much actually, although now that I look at the picture, there may be more things around here.  The fabric at the top I picked up because SB made the cutest pillows out of Ewe Eye & Friends Petite Examplaries that I've had in my stash forever, and I thought they were adorable:

So another thing to add to my to do list!

So that's what's been going on with me.  It feels good to crawl out of that dark hole I've been living in for the past couple of months!!!  Thank you for all your comments and emails that you left on my last post.  It always gives me a smile to see them, and I will catch up on everyone's blogs soon.  I know that I've missed tons!!!