satsuma progress

This set of four calling birds (teehee) is finished except for some beads to stitch on. I’ve never done that, so it will be a fun new thing to experience. Stitching went quickly and enjoyably. Each time I picked it up the progress was significant. The colors substituted from stash turned out looking wonderful, I love the grey background, and I am SO glad there is no backstitch outlining to do. 

I went drawer diving to see if I had a hoop in an appropriate size and alas, no. It’s a toss up as to whether this will actually end up fitting in a hoop even if I do get a bigger one. When I cut the fabric I basically forgot to take into account the room around the design that would be required. I may end up making this into an ornament by stuffing instead of hooping. My preference is for a hoop though, so I’ll go out and pick one up soon and give it a try. It feels good to have this much progress on it and to have found a designer whose work I enjoy stitching up so much. 

Immediately after setting this down I picked up my Clint. I’m done with the center quilt squares and on to adding background strips around it. After that comes the wings. Very exciting. 

my first satsuma street

I have the itch to cross stitch! Mom got me hooked on some FlossTube channels and has also made me some very pretty pieces lately so I have felt inspired to return to this craft, quite possibly my first craft? Satsuma Street is a designer who uses color and whimsy in a way that appeals to me. Not only are the colors bright, I enjoy the way she combines her colors in the designs. Some of her work, the cities and some of the season samplers, are geometric and bright in a way that gives me It's a Small World vibes.

Mom told me just at the end of last month that there was a Xmas in July sale going on, so I popped over to see what I could see. I quite like the small ornaments she has designed for Halloween and Xmas when I have seen them on the various YouTube channels I now follow. When I looked through the sale collection, I saw two bird themed ones I particularly liked. Turns out they were individually available but also bundled up with two others, so for just a little bit more cost I got four charts instead of just two. Yes please. I have a partridge with a pear, two lovey doves, a hen with an Eiffel Tower (so cute), and four birds on a telephone. That last one just totally got me with both whimsy and color. 

I resisted the impulse to go with the exact colors called for, despite the fact that I enjoy her colors, and instead opted to dive into what I already had to see if I had colors that were close. I was pretty pleased to be able to pull satisfactory colors for everything, even some of the actual called for shades. I already had appropriately sized Aida as well, so away I went. 

 

I really enjoyed starting this chart. This is just one evening of stitching! The last time I worked on a cross stitch project, my proud plant parent sass, it seemed like it took forever even though it was relatively small. For some reason this one has been more enjoyable and I could not put it down. The phone is starting to take shape and there's a couple of birdie bellies making an appearance. I am pleased to be using my newest project bag, also with birds on it.  This will definitely be done by Xmas. 

tiptoeing through the mushrooms

Mom brought a finished mushroom cross stitch. So, rather than hoop it or frame it, we decided to do a "collab" (is that what the kids call it these days??) and make a quilted pillow cover. 

It was fun to stash dive and pick out some appropriately woodsy fabrics to use. I love that these have all come from different places. The low volume print has been in my stash for a very long time and I find it satisfying how perfect it works here as the background. I also got to break out my little mushroom templates for some iron on appliqué! How cute is that? The HSTs in the patchwork are the leftovers from making the flying geese, so it was technically a "no waste" technique even though I just made them the traditional way, not four-at-a-time, to get the fabrics facing the way I wanted. 

  

We took a slight detour to a version that had a different border on it, but decided it was taking too much away from the actual piecing in the middle. It would have looked fine, but I much prefer the print background fabric as the border. Not sure yet how I will finish it, so it's still hanging up on the design wall, but this was a fun afternoon of stitching today. 

See, look, it turned out just like the sketch! 

plant parents of the world unite

Wow, I finished the stitching on this just after Valentine's Day and I finally got it in a hoop! Goodness that's a lot of procrastination. This lovely thing is a design out of a library book called "Self Care Cross Stitch" and it made me giggle. I did not completely adhere to the called-for colors since I have a pretty decent stash of colors that were rather close. 

The time between last stitch and today was spent fretting about the "right" way to soak and block it (answer: just like my knitting, no big deal) and then having it be a bit wrinkly on the ironing board for literally weeks before I finally got some water in the iron for steam to smooth things out. It looks great now. The purple hoop is pretty awesome for it - a yard sale find - and I am looking forward to finding a fun spot on my wall for it to sass people as they pass. 

cross stitchin' away

I started this sometime in early May, just around the time of horse show distraction I think, and haven't shared it yet. I'm in the midst of a fun and sassy cross stitch project that I found in one of the books I checked out of the library this Spring. Most of the stitching has been in the latter half of June. 

Getting through the lettering and one complete plant feels like I am no in the homestretch. The problem is that whenever I want to work on it, it's evening, and I can't see the stitching as well as I can during the day. I used to wonder at my mom when she said "I can't do light colors at night". Ummmmm. I get it now. Darn.

a unicorn birthday hoop

Yesterday I took a trip over to Michael's to get some aida cloth for an idea that popped into my head. I've really been enjoying cross stitching lately, and I've been spending way too much time on Pinterest looking at witty sayings in embroidery hoops. Combine those facts with a friend's birthday this weekend and you have this quick little project. 

DMC has a lot of free embroidery and cross stitch patterns on their website. I've spent the spring downloading flower and succulent patterns, which made me wonder if they wouldn't have a unicorn simple enough to make in a couple of days. 

Ta da! I didn't follow the colors in the pattern, though I'm pretty close. I have a pretty large thread stash that doesn't need to get bigger right now, and many of these colors fell under the "close enough" category. I also modified the horn, which was supposed to be a rainbow, to be a swirl of yellow and peach, which I like better. The original pattern also has some starbursts and hearts in the background but all I really wanted was the unicorn head. So there we have it. 

I finished the last stitching and final touches this morning and it is so very cute. I would totally keep it for myself, but it's perfect for the birthday girl. The hoop is a bright yellow plastic one I also got at Michael's. I finished off the back by tidying up the aida cloth with a trim and cinching it closed with a running stitch using white thread. I considered but ultimately abandoned a felt backing because this particular hoop design makes it difficult to stitch on and I did not want to use hot glue on the plastic. 

I envision peppering my walls with little hooped vignettes now... it's probably a good thing that I have a lot of other projects going or else that might actually happen! Hopefully at least a few more will make their way out of my imagination and into real form because this was a really fun and really quick project. 

Now back to the last rows on that mosaic baby blanket.... 

stitching progress

Playoff football and grand slam tennis might seem like odd bedfellows for a Victorian cross stitch sampler, but there you go. I've been making steady progress on this since I got going on it in November.

I took a break from it for the enormous bucket of holiday knitting I ended up doing this year, and it has been nice to pick it up again. I am almost done with the last items on the shelves and after that it's the actual shelf, some trailing ivy, and a LOT of backstitching to come. 

another kind of stitching

One of the first crafts I can remember learning from my mom was cross stitch. I've done quite a bit of it in the past and finished some pretty cool looking pieces. My favorite was a clownfish in an anemone that I made for my grandpa. It took forever! But it looked so cool. It's not something we see very often anymore, but I have noticed it more and more recently - especially witty motifs in small hoops. Maybe some of those will have to make their way onto my walls!

Along with the unfinished felt embroidery I found in the storage ottoman, I also found a small cross stitch project that was nearly finished. This is one of those wall hanging pieces stitched on plastic canvas. All I needed to do was cut it out, make the red cording, and assemble all the pieces. Quickest finish of the year!

Having gotten a taste of it again, I went looking in my closet for more. It is a great break from knitting for my hands while still giving me something to do in the evenings. I found a couple of options, including some Christmas ornament kits, but I settled on this non-holiday project. 

This is a kit I remember my grandmother giving me. It is a scene of a shelf full of Victorian items. She had already sorted and labeled the thread and started it, but did not want to keep working on it. She did the swan, and now I get to add on the rest! It's a pretty special find, and one that I'll enjoy working on in the months to come. Witty avocado pictures will have to wait. 

little birdhouse in your soul

As I write this, They Might Be Giants are playing on repeat in my head (you're welcome.): 

Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch

Who watches over you

Make a little birdhouse in your soul

Not to put too fine a point on it

Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet

Make a little birdhouse in your soul

In looking for something to occupy myself this evening, I ended up tilting out the contents of my little storage ottoman where my craft projects hang out here in the studio. Hankering for some hand stitching, I had to pass on the hexagon blocks for Jasmine's quilt because my basting thread and needles snuck away to Palo Alto. Too bad, because I haven't actually wanted to work on that for a while. Go figure. 

Instead what I found was this little guy hanging out at the bottom of the ottoman. I haven't picked up any cross stitching in quite some time, but I've been finding all sorts of needlepoint and cross stitch that I like popping up around the great wide internet. (Coincidentally, Amanda just recently posted some on Everyday Fray…) This is kind of a cross between the two, as it's cross stitch on flexible plastic canvas. LOVE. It's much faster than traditional aida cloth because there's no question about poking a needle through where it doesn't belong. I had some of the birdhouse started, but got through quite a lot more tonight as I relaxed on the floor with my strawberry smoothie. 

I think I'm actually near the home stretch with this, and should make short work of it over the next week or so. Exciting! A finish on the horizon! It's long overdue here… I'm pretty sure I've had this kit since high school. Yikes.