April Basket

 

Sliding in on the last day of the month with my April Basket finish (Cosford Rise Stitchery, Etsy)! Isn't this so bright and cheerful? Only a couple of small changes to this one. I stitched the little bun in brown instead of white (GAST Maple Syrup) and used DMC Blanc for the bowl. 

And here's a bonus pic of my new stitching buddy. Both of our girls are very sweet tempered but have very different personalities. Butterfly is a snuggle bug, and while Marigold will come to us for snuggles, they are quick and on her own terms. Where Butterfly will settle down for a snooze on me, Marigold will just pop in for a welfare check and then go about her business. Until this past week. She has suddenly decided that when I settle down to stitch, it's time to nap on me. If I had been asked to predict which one would end up being the stitching companion, it wouldn't have been her, but here we are. We are still working on not interfering with the stitching, but she's doing pretty well for the most part. She will sleepily watch the thread moving but I know she's on a hair trigger, so every now and then I remind her to be good, and she usually is. They're growing up!

The Great Fabric Reorganization, Part 1

Prepare for a lengthy ramble about fabric. Or skip it and just look at the pictures, whichever you prefer.

I learned to stitch from my mother when I was about five (yep, you can teach a five-year-old to stitch), but didn't really take it up as a hobby until I was about 15. Back in those days, pretty much everyone stitched on Aida and your neutral choices were limited to white, ecru (or off white, or antique white), an oatmeal color with little flecks in it called Fiddler's Light, and a few colors like light and navy blue, red, green, and black. It was the dark ages, in terms of fabric. At some point I learned about this new thing called hand-dyed fabric, but I was more focused on building my chart stash and fabric wasn't a priority. I don't remember exactly when that changed, but I do remember--and still have--my very first piece of hand-dyed fabric, a piece of crystal Da Vinci linen by PTP. I even kept it in the bag I brought it home in. It's more of a keepsake than anything, a reminder of a happy time, and an LNS I loved with an owner who was wonderful.

Anyway, somewhere along the way, I began to really focus on fabric over charts. I think it was because the American designers seemed to be really locked in on primitives, samplers, and quakers, and have been for many, many years. I don't have anything against these styles per se, and have stitched a few myself, but the overwhelming number of them just makes my eyes glaze over. My discovery of Etsy years ago definitely rekindled my chart buying, as I was able to find designers from all over the world with a wide variety of styles. But I still buy more fabric than charts.

So. I have a lot of fabric. Mind you, it's a collection about 20 years in the making (she says, in an attempt to justify how much fabric she has). And I also lived through the heady days of the annual PTP Christmas in July sale, and the days when you could find gorgeous hand-dyed fabric on clearance if you knew where to look. Sadly, those days are gone. But the stash remains.

When I decided to stitch a bunch of birds for summer, I decided instead of stitching them on neutrals (always a safe bet) or blues (like the sky!), I would really lean heavily into my hand-dyed stash and make my summer display as colorful as possible. I started thinking about choosing fabric colors, and digging through my stash trying to find the perfect one, and something dawned on me. To my great bewilderment, I had never bothered to sort my fabric by color, only dividing it by colors and neutrals. 

What?

I don't know why I've never done this. I think it's because that's how I had it organized in the beginning when my stash wasn't very big, and I just stuck with it. But probably more so because I usually just dive in looking for a fabric for one project at a time, and I always have a good idea of what I'm looking for. The idea of digging around trying to choose fabric for a lot of projects at a time made me realize I needed to update my organization. And off I went.

It took me quite a lot of browsing on Amazon and measuring and thinking to decide on my containers. I had fairly strict size requirements so they would fit on my cubby shelves, and I wanted the most storage in the smallest space possible. I went with some Rubbermaid 7.2 qt. containers (14"L x 10.5"W x 4"H). They come in a 6-pack. I always keep a supply of acid free tissue paper and silica gel packets on hand as I use them in all my stitching storage, so I lined the containers with paper and threw some packets in them.

I divided my fabric into six groupings:

Pink, Rose, Red

Orange, Yellow

Green

Blue

Lavender, Purple 

Grey, Brown, Black

I made the labels using a large round craft punch and card stock from my craft stash.

Remember all those times I told y'all I wasn't really a fan of blue? Yeah.

Somehow, Miss I'm Not Really a Fan of Blue managed to acquire *a lot* of blue fabric. As much as green, which is my favorite, and no, I don't know how that happened. I also have more orange than I would have guessed, which is also weird. Anyway, here's my fabric all organized by color, lighter shades on top, darker down the stack.

These containers hold quite a lot of fabric.

And that's all my colors organized! I can't believe it's taken me so long to do this, but I guess my stash has just slowly arrived at the size it needed doing. Neutrals are next, at some point. 

Next on the Stitchy Week to-do list is some finishing, and maybe a couple of framing projects. Back soon!

March Basket

 

Just finished the March Basket from Cosford Rise Stitchery (Etsy). Stitched on 28 ct. Raw linen with the recommended threads, except I stitched the little white flowers with DMC Blanc to make them a bit brighter. I'm really enjoying this series; they're quick to stitch and so delicately pretty.

The babies and I are sneaking up on this unsupervised week of stitchy productivity. Today was a bit of a slow day. I finished the March Basket and began the April Basket (spoiler: bunny!), and another small project I'll show at some point. I also planned out what I hope to get done for each day this week. We'll see how far I get. The big fabric reorganization begins tomorrow and I'm really looking forward to getting it done. I'll be back with an update on that, so stay tuned!

Bonus Baby Pic:

Unsupervised: Part 2

 

Once again, Mr. Wonderful has jetted off on TDY and left me alone with the werewolves, completely unsupervised. I've got the house cleaned and the laundry and cooking done so I can spend the week playing in the sewing room. I hope to get some finishing done and also a major reorganization of my fabric stash--the colors, at least. The neutrals will wait for another day.

As usual, I'll be popping in during the week, sharing what I've been up to. Fingers crossed we have a quiet week and I can get a lot done. Spare a kindly thought for mama werewolf... these two can be a handful!

Making Counting Pins

 

It's been quite a while since I made any stitching tools. The other day when I was running errands I happened upon a 50% off sale on beads and decided to make some counting pins. I use size 26 needles and super glue. My favorite is Loctite Gel Control. (Yes, I have a favorite super glue.) It's not runny and it doesn't dry out like the tubes. I use a toothpick to sort of fill the eye of the needle with glue and insert it in the bead. That way there's a nice little blob of glue in there, but not so much that it squishes out when you put it in the bead.

A set for spring

And one for winter

Off to sort fabric. I'm about to do a big fabric reorganization. More on that soon.

Happy Stitching!

A Bird Story

 

Story time. Brew your tea.

If you're a long time reader, you may be familiar with my seasonal basket/dollhouse displays of my small finishes. (If not, just click on those labels in the right sidebar for a peek.) Within the last couple of years, I decided to come up with a different theme for my summer display, but ran into two problems: couldn't think of a theme, and didn't have time to do anything about it anyway. As y'all know, the last couple of years have been a challenge around here. 

Summer is my least favorite season, so nothing was really jumping out at me, demanding to be stitched. I guess the two most obvious and popular themes for summer decor are beach and patriotic. I'm not a beach person (unless it's rocky and freezing cold), and as I've mentioned in the past, I have done very little patriotic stitching because being in the military, it's pretty much our whole life! I needed something different!

A couple of weeks ago I was minding my own business when I was mugged by an idea. (Stop me if you've heard this one.) Birds. Of course. Of course, birds. Remember my bird tree from Christmas Open House 2022? If you do, you know I love birds! How did I not think of this immediately? I don't know. But at last my addled brain came up with the perfect theme.

I miss birds so much. When we were stationed on the East Coast, our quarters backed up to a pond and a wooded area. We had birds galore, and I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed feeding and watching them. We also had deer, squirrels, groundhogs, foxes, raccoons, and bunnies. The pond had ducks and geese and frogs and spring peepers. Oh how I miss all that wildlife.

Our next assignment was on the Great Plains, and there were very few trees around us, and not many birds. We did have bunnies and the cutest little ground squirrels. And where we are now, we have woods, but we can't have bird feeders on account of the bears. 

So the day I settled on my bird theme, I naturally started hunting through my stash and prowling Etsy, and remembering how lovely it was to have so many birds around back then. I thought a lot about how the little house finches used to nest in my front door wreaths every spring, and how the first thing I heard when I came downstairs every morning was their busy nesting and happy chattering. I remembered watching their babies hatch, and grow, and fledge. It's been years ago now. I was feeling wistful. 

The very next morning I came downstairs and heard that old familiar chattering and scrabbling on the door. I almost couldn't believe it. I peeked out, and sure enough, a pair of house finches had just begun their nest in my front door wreath. Because we have to use this door, I had to move the wreath and hope they would come back. I moved it to another place on the porch, and in doing so, noticed they had used some animal fur in the nest. I put a puff of werewolf fuzz on another part of the wreath for them to find, and waited.

They didn't come back that day.

I hoped they'd come back the next morning. 

They weren't there. 

I felt bad for disturbing them, but not having a side door as we had in the past, we had to use the front door. I hoped that maybe another pair might find the wreath.

Mid-morning I traipsed downstairs for a cup of tea and what do you think? There they were, industriously repairing the beginnings of their nest that the move had dislodged. I was so relieved.

We had our tea together that morning. It's been years since I've had tea with the birds, and I sat quietly, listening to them work, and feeling so very peaceful. It was enchanting. 

So for the last little while, I've been happily planning my Summer of Birds: choosing designs, pairing them with fabrics, making shopping lists... 

...and having tea with the birds.

(Bluebird design info in this post. Stitched on 32 ct. Zweigart Murano Fleur.)