More Winter Preparations

That's what we're gonna call it, okay? Winter preparations. Because you have to be prepared for winter. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, read yesterday's post.) Right. So another happy mail day--my order from the Picture This Plus "Christmas in July" sale arrived today! They have one sale a year, on 25 July, and everything is 25% off. If you missed it, mark your calendar for next year because it's a great deal on gorgeous fabric.

Here are my fabrics, from top to bottom (all 28 ct. Cashel linen): Valor, Crystal Charm (see the sparkles?), Pampas, and Eek!

Of course, I had to play with my new fabric, pulling out the designs I had in mind when I selected the colors, and seeing how well I did pairing the design with the fabric. Two things: one, in my opinion, using hand-dyed fabric can be tricky because sometimes the fabric overwhelms the design. To my eye, one or the other should be the focal point; they shouldn't compete, or look "busy" together, with no place for the eye to "rest". And two: it's tough to select colors online. I prefer buying hand-dyed fabric in person, but I just can't pass up the PTP sale, and I'm never disappointed with the colors. Sometimes they may be slightly different than what was pictured, but I've never been disappointed. Anyway, on with play time!

Here's the design I intend for Pampas. As you can see from the picture above, it's a yellowy-green. (For some reason, in this picture, it looks more like Valor.) I considered using Eek! for this design, but decided that would be way too much orange and black--orange and black cat on orange and black fabric. I considered a slightly bluish green to pull the color from the bubbles in the cauldron, but there really isn't any blue at all in this design. I finally settled on the yellowish green in the pumpkin leaves. After seeing it in person, I think it'll work.

Next is the letter "S" by Nora Corbett, which I want to stitch on Crystal Charm. I couldn't be more pleased with this match. It's a beautiful muted, rosy pink. Not too bright; feminine, but not girly. It looks gorgeous in person.

Floss toss! (Notice how different the fabric looks in this shot from the one above. The light changes ever so slightly and your fabric looks different.)

And finally, here's Just Nan's Snowfire Christmas, to be stitched on Valor, a dusty, grayish green. This will be a wedding sampler, which I hope to have finished by our 15th anniversary in December 2015. We married a week before Christmas and had a Christmas-y wedding. I'm not a fan of traditional wedding samplers so I couldn't find any I liked and never bothered to stitch one. But when I saw this sampler, I knew it would be perfect. I'll just add a couple of lines with our names and our wedding date and--voila!--wedding sampler! I'm stitching it on green partly because I seem to be obsessed with green fabric, but also because I've always thought the "snowy" parts of this sampler disappeared on the fabric used for the model. 

I haven't chosen anything to stitch on Eek! yet. I got it because I knew it would be great for something Halloween-y I have in my stash. Maybe something monochromatic. And because it was on sale. And because winter is coming.

Happy Stitching!