May Update: Snowfire Christmas

Welp, another month gone by, another band done. *sigh* At this rate, it'll take me until December to finish this sampler. I'm just not getting/taking the time to sit and stitch like I need to in order to make the progress I want to make. I'm sure a lot of y'all can relate to that. So, here's a band of right angled leaf stitches. 

  
Now I'm going to go stitch something that doesn't require me to stare at the chart. 

Helpful

Woodland Sampler: May Block

Super cute chubby little gnome for May! 

Colin Cardinal

I'm sooo far behind with my projects, but I finally have a little finish. With as little stitching as I've been getting done, I'm surprised I'm not further behind with this series, but I'm hanging in there. Fifteen have been released, #16 should be out next week.

Changes on this guy... I omitted the Christmas lights along the top of the birdhouse (I think those are lights) and added a few more snowflakes to fill in the space left empty by doing that. I gave him a brown eye instead of blue, backstitched his head in 321 instead of the two colors suggested, and backstitched his beak in one strand of 310 instead of two. 

If you'd like to see all my other finishes in this series, along with the changes I made, just click on the Advent Animals label.

Happy Stitching!

Tiger Lily Takes The Air

The best thing about re-arranging my sewing room is that now my stitching chair sits under the window (instead of next to it) and Tiger Lily can climb onto the back of it and get right up to the windows. She has a window with a little basket in front of it downstairs, but until now she didn't have a very good view from an upstairs window.

Today was a gorgeous day, and I had all the windows open. There was a stiff breeze and she was able to get a snootful of fresh air and a little sun. Here she is... fur blowing in the wind... taking the air.

This is a happy kitty.

New Ort Thingy

I've never had an ort jar or ort bag or anything used just for orts (wow... autocorrect really does not like the word "ort"). I usually just pile them on the table next to me, or on the base of my Ott light, and then toss them when I'm finished stitching for the day. When I spruced up my sewing room a couple of weeks ago, I decided it was time to find the perfect ort jar.

Mr. Wonderful is something of a pottery connoisseur and buys local pottery every chance he gets. I have a few pieces as well, but he has quite a beautiful collection of pottery from all the places we've been. This past weekend we were at a local festival and I found this sweet little pot and thought, "There's my ort thingy!" It's actually hard to find pale pink pottery. I've only ever seen two pieces, and I bought them both. 

It's somewhat irregular... sort of lumpy, with the rim higher on one side than on the other, but that gives it a character I love. I also love the wide mouth, which makes emptying it easy.   I readily admit that I'm easily pleased by really simple things, and this little pot is one of them. I'm so happy with it, and wanted to show it off. 

Happy Stitching!

Honeybee

This is a very small section of Antique Bee Sampler by Elizabeth's Designs. It's stitched with Caron Wildflowers Tiffany Rose, Weeks Squash and Whitewash, and DMC 310 on 32 ct. mint green Belfast.

I need to have a very productive May, stitching-wise. I'm a little behind on the Advent Animals. I'm about halfway through #13 and #15 just came out. As I confessed yesterday, I didn't get all the bands done on Snowfire Christmas that I wanted to. And there's other stuff I want to be stitching on. I need more hands. 

April Update: Snowfire Christmas

Well, here I am, sneaking in under the wire with a sad little sampler update. I managed to get one whole band stitched this month. I guess that's better than no whole bands, but really. I'm now a couple of bands behind my schedule, as I want to have this finished in June. I still need to find an alphabet I really like and chart our names and wedding date, which I'll be using to replace a couple of bands. Here we are...

The madness continues...

If you're a regular visitor, you know I have a thing for Fabric Flair fabrics. Some of y'all have even commented on my--ahem--interest (I'm looking at you, Vickie!). Can't help myself. Their fabrics are just too yummy to resist. I didn't even try to resist the latest addition to my fabric stash... this gorgeous snowflake fabric.

I am having a fit to start something on this, but I've got some things that I need to finish first. My pictures don't do it justice, but hopefully you can see that it has a very subtle silver thread in it that just gives it a soft sheen. It's not as sparkly as opalescent fabrics. Love.

Fox Finds

Found these goodies at Jo-Ann Fabrics!

This is a Riolis kit. When I saw it last month, I gasped. Out loud. "GASP!" Like that. I ordered it faster than immediately. It arrived a few days ago. Gorgeous, huh?

I must, must make time to stitch this. It's too beautiful to linger in the to-do pile and I want to enjoy it.

Woodland Sampler: April Block

Catching up on the stitching I've neglected. Here's a wee bunny enjoying an April shower. He's supposed to be a jack-a-lope (with antlers), but I left off the antlers. I also changed his colors to DMC 840 and 842 to lighten him up a bit and make his eyes more visible. 

I've got to pack a lot of stitching into the next 6 days if I'm to stay on schedule with some of my on-going projects. So far, so good on this one. But it's only April...

Where have I been?

I sort of lost my mind last week and decided to completely re-arrange my sewing room. Never mind the fact that it was already a disaster, with three organizing projects already on-going and strewn all over the floor. Nope. Nothing would do but for me to move all the furniture. Because it's always so much easier to move furniture when the floor is covered with stuff. I plunged in. I didn't have to redecorate, as I was satisfied with that; I just didn't like the arrangement anymore. I'm proud to say I'm still alive, and I can see light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully, it's not a train. 

It's not finished yet, but it's back to being a usable space. I thought I would share a little peek at part of the new arrangement and at a few of my little treasures. 

I'm way behind on my stitching for this month, but hopefully now that I've got this project under control I'll be able to settle down and catch up. I've got 4 stitchy projects that desperately need my attention.

Thanks for visiting! Hope you enjoyed this little glimpse of where Tiger Lily and I work our stitching magic!

Soda Bottle Bud Vases

Soda tastes better out of an ice-cold glass bottle than out of a can or poured into a glass. Who's with me?

We drink very little soda, so I rarely buy glass bottles, but I gave Mr. Wonderful an Opening Day party (baseball season) on Monday and I bought some soda in glass bottles to go with the Cracker Jacks and the peanuts in the shell. The bottles were too nifty to throw away, so I had to think of a use for them. Bud vases, of course! They just needed a little fancy-ing up.

If you click on the "crafts" label here, you'll see that the only crafts I do are easy ones. And this one is no exception. All you need: bottles, ribbon, embellishments, your trusty hot glue gun, and a kitty.

To be fair, I was making these last night and she was at the end of a long, hard day of napping and eating. It wears her out, you know. These are 8 oz. bottles and a length of ribbon about 8" long will go around the bottle with a little overlap. Hot glue it, hot glue your embellishment to the front and BOOM! Cute bud vase!

TIP: See the "sell by" date printed on the bottle on the right? That wipes off easily with a little nail polish remover on a cotton ball.

You can use any type of ribbon and any type of embellishment you can think of to make these suit any season or holiday or occasion. I chose a linen-like 1 1/2" wide ribbon, which I think works really well. I'm not into the burlap craze (???) but it would work well, too, and would give you a very rustic, country look. These paper and fabric flowers are from the scrapbooking section of Hobby Lobby. I got the ribbon there, as well.

Now here's an important TIP: When you glue the ribbon around the bottle and when you glue the embellishment onto the front of the ribbon, move the ribbon slightly on the bottle so the glue doesn't bond to the bottle. This serves two purposes:
1) the ribbon can be removed and the bottle can be popped into the dishwasher
2) if you want to change these for seasons or holidays, you just remove the ribbon and make a new one... you don't have to have a vast collection of bottles!

I made a less girly one for Mr. Wonderful's desk, because who doesn't like a fresh flower? This is just a chipboard letter glued to the ribbon. 

I'm pretty happy with how these turned out. Tiger Lily is not quite as impressed.

Happy Birthday, Tiger Lily!

Tiger Lily is 9 today! 

Swirly Sheep

Here's a spring lamb I whipped up on Sunday. This is a freebie from Just Cross Stitch. I stitched my little lamb on 28 ct. mushroom evenweave with Caron's Wildflowers in Pistachio (FFE... Favorite Fiber Ever). I think I need a flock of these in different colors... as if I have time to stitch this over and over!

Okay, y'all... this is 14 posts in one month (my monthly goal is 8). There's pretty much no chance I can do that again in April, but we'll see. 

Is it really April already?

Wow.

Fox Tree Project: Ornament #2

This is one of those tiny $1 kits that you find in the dollar bins at craft stores (I think the brand is Plaid). I switched out the aida for opalescent linen, and added some beads and a star to the tree to make it a bit more festive. On the model, the whole design was backstitched in black, but I thought that looked harsh, so I just used some grey on Santa and the bunny, and some rust on the fox, to give it a softer look. Not bad, for $1.

The Fox Tree Project

For years and years, I've been collecting fox Christmas ornaments, but my collection grew very slowly because they were so hard to find. In the last couple of years, foxes have become "trendy" and my collection has grown more in that time than in all the years I've been collecting them. After last Christmas, I decided I finally had enough fox ornaments for them to have their own tree, so I hit the after-Christmas clearance at Hobby Lobby and got a 6' tree for $25. 

I've also been slowly collecting ornament-sized fox cross stitch kits and freebies, and also a few free felt patterns. My project for this year (yes, another one) is to get all of these little fox ornaments made to add to my bought ornaments for my fox tree. I think a mix of store-bought and handmade foxes is going to look charming!

Here's my first ornament finish, a pretty loose interpretation of Country Cottage Needleworks' Snowy Foxes.

Mine is stitched on 32 ct. Wichelt linen, and I obviously whacked off half of the design! I wanted the focus to be on the foxes so I just made a skinny version! The trees are Caron Wildflowers Evergreen, and the foxes are Crescent Colors Colonial Copper (my favorite fox color). I left off a couple of stitches on the sides of the faces, and also left off the whiskers. I changed the color of the legs and tree trunks from DMC 869 to DMC 898. 

These are the kits I'll be working through, in addition to some felt and cross stitch freebies. I'm always on the look-out for more, as they're not exactly easy to find.

I'm looking forward to "Christmas-ing" these... just doing whatever I want with them to make them fun and Christmas-y. 

Happy Stitching!