How To Railroad

Last week in a conversation among stitchers on the 123Stitch message board, the subject of stitching with white thread came up, and I was surprised at the number of stitchers who said they didn't like stitching with white because the stitches didn't look nice or cover well. I suggested railroading, and yesterday I posted a couple of photographs to show how it's done and how well it works. I was surprised again to learn that a number of stitchers hadn't heard of this technique. I had a request to do a blog post about it, so here it is.

Railroading is simply placing your needle between your threads before you pull it through the fabric to ensure the threads lie next to each other smoothly instead of on top of each other or twisted. If you've never done it, it may slow you down quite a bit, but once you get the hang of it it will go much faster. You'll also probably develop a "feel" for how to manipulate your needle as you're stitching so that the threads lie next to each other on their own and you don't actually have to constantly railroad. 

I railroad both bottom and top legs of stitches, which results in nice chubby stitches and full coverage. I don't like to see a lot of fabric under my stitches; I prefer more of a "mosaic tile" look instead of an "xxx" look.

I railroad all my stitches, no matter the color, but I particularly like the results when stitching with black. To me, if something is supposed to be black, it should be black... not flecked with little peeks of the fabric underneath. Here's an example of railroaded black stitches.

I hope this post is helpful to someone. It's been helpful to me to be reminded to share tips and how-to's, and to not assume that everyone already knows. 

Happy Stitching!

Another Color Conversion

Epic fail on my January stitching goals, but I do have a finish to share. If you've been visiting for a while, you know I love changing colors. This color conversion is one I've had in my head for a while, and I finally accomplished it. 

This is an old Passione Ricamo freebie from 2008. I don't think it's available on her website anymore (at least I haven't been able to find it), but if you want to stitch it you might try contacting the designer. Here's my green conversion, and the original blue version:

linen: 28 ct. Neutral Snowflakes with Silver (Fabric Flair)
blue to green color changes (all DMC):
333 to 890
340 to 320
341 to 368
791 to 319
792 to 367
3747 to 369
eye: 938

Saturday Sampler: Snowzilla Edition

The Washington Post named our storm "Snowzilla" and this pretty much says it all:

We woke up to about a foot of snow. Tiger Lily's window was blocked by a snow drift. 

I was throwing birdseed out every few hours. We may have been having a blizzard, but the birds at our house were feasting! See all the little footprints?

Whiteout conditions... can't see the houses behind us.

Tiger Lily spent the entire day at her window on her heating pad, watching the birds and the snow. She was so busy she missed her nap. She finally hit the wall about 5 this evening and went to one of her upstairs baskets and went to sleep. Blizzards are so exciting.

Here's our street Friday night.

And Saturday night. I think we've got a couple of feet, and it's still snowing. It has been snowing continuously since 1.30 pm on Friday.

Finally, a sneak peek of my "blizzard project." Hmmm... who could this be?

Saturday Sampler

I haven't stitched at all this week... which irritates me and puts me behind in my stitching goals for the year already. {sigh} What have I been doing? A major, major, clean-out and re-organization of all our Christmas decorations. I wish it hadn't taken me the entire week, but I know when next Christmas rolls around I will be giving myself a big ol' pat on the back for getting it done. It will make getting things out and decorating so much faster and easier. 

Anyway... here's a look at other stuff that's been happening this week. We had our first snow! Well, our first flurry anyway. We've lived in this area for 6 1/2 years and this is the latest first snow we've had. Here's a picture of the snow on its way... I love the color of the sky!

We also had rain. Here's my pretty girl. 

And we had a good mail week. First, Vickie in Kentucky sent me an adorable little fox granny square that she crocheted just for me! Isn't it adorable?! This will be an ornament for my fox tree. Thank you, Vickie!

And some stash arrived. One of my year-long projects for 2016 is to stitch Little House Needleworks' Hometown Holiday. I think there are 10 designs in the series so far, and this tree lot is the latest. I'm trying to make up my mind about the fabric. I'm leaning toward gray, and found this Fabric Flair (!) gray evenweave. I like the look of a wintry sky, but I haven't settled on it yet. What do we think, stitchers?

Sunday Mystery Sampler Update: Eleventh Day

In my last update, I mentioned I would be taking a break from this sampler to see what the remaining blocks would look like and to do some other Christmas stitching. I want to make some changes to blocks 8, 9, 10, and 12, but I liked block 11 as it was and went ahead and stitched it out of order. For all those who have been asking about this sampler, I really appreciate your interest and yes, I will finish it, but it will take me a few more months. I have a lot of other stitching I want to do, and I will have to fit this sampler in with my other projects.

My color choices (apart from the border, all threads are Caron Wildflowers):
border: DMC 938
words: Blackwatch
crown: Spice
snowflakes: Dawn
musical notes: Dark Shadows
house: Cinnabar
roof: Graphite
wreath: Moss
bow: Spice*
plaque: Blackwatch

Piper:
hat, pants, sleeves: Copper
coat: Storm Clouds
stockings: Chili
buttons and shoes: Dark Shadows
pipe: Dense Fog

*The yellow ribbon on the wreath is my little tribute to all the troops serving abroad and those standing watch at home who cannot spend Christmas with their families.

First Finish of the Year

A cute new year freebie available here (plus more versions with different animals).

I made changes, as usual. I filled in the red fur around the eyes and nose, added some DMC blanc and 838, swapped the blue and the green, and added my initials.

My color choices (all threads are DMC):

blanc
brown: 838
green: 4045
copper: 4130
blue: 4235
fabric: 28 ct. Rosemary

Saturday Sampler

First Saturday Sampler of the year!

My Amaryllis

 This little wooden Highland cow was in my Christmas stocking. I named her Flora.

First sunset of the new year

And a sneak peek of a little project I started on New Year's Day

Happy New Year!

Wishing you oodles and oodles of finishes in 2016!

Our 2015 Ornaments

Every year Mr. Wonderful and I choose our ornaments from the current Just Cross Stitch Christmas Ornament issue. We've been doing this since our first Christmas, so we have quite a collection (which can be seen under the Christmas Open House 2014 label).

Here are this year's ornaments! His (scroll down to the 23 December post for information on the color conversion):

 And mine:

Here's a close-up of the fabric. I wanted to show it because it's very unusual in that it is flecked with silver instead of having a silver thread woven into the linen, as with other silver/natural linens. Unfortunately, I don't know the manufacturer. I picked it up from the scrap basket at my LNS some time ago and it was just labeled as 32 count silver/natural. I love it because it looks like falling snow.

Merry Christmas!

The Fox Tree

There are way too many ornaments on this tree to show each one, so I've just chosen a few. I'm not thrilled with my photography, but I've had a lot of requests to show this tree, so hopefully you'll be able to get an idea of how it looks. The pictures aren't great, but the tree is beautiful! Click on the Fox Tree Project label to see more pictures of the ornaments I've made for this tree.

Here's the tree topper, in her warm wool dress, cozy sweater, and furry boots.

This Jim Shore Santa ornament was a gift for my tree from Mr. Wonderful this year. The china fox with the mug is from Williamsburg, Virginia.

This one is a souvenir from Maine.

Here's an adaptation of Country Cottage Needleworks Snowy Foxes.

This little red fox was a gift from a sweet friend. The Arctic fox and snowman ornament is from my mom.

This glass fox is from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The white fox in the background is from Wal-Mart and cost me a whole dollar!

This was a $1 kit that I spiffed up. 

I got this fancy girl from Hobby Lobby.

Here's another $1 kit.

Merry Christmas, y'all!

A Christmas Ornament Color Conversion

If you've been here for a while, you know that I love to play with color, sometimes just changing one or two, and sometimes doing a complete color conversion. For me, being comfortable with changing colors opens up so many more designs as potential projects because I don't look at a design and automatically rule it out because I don't like the color. I suppose I would have less stash if I did rule out designs based on color... but where's the fun in that?

For his ornament this year, Mr. Wonderful chose "Plenty" by Hands on Design from the 2015 Just Cross Stitch Christmas Ornament issue. And being a very traditional guy, he wanted it stitched in more traditional colors. Here's what I came up with:

My color choices:

fabric: 32 count Chestnut
deer: DMC 3862
swirls, antlers, letters: DMC 3031
leaves, border: DMC 4045
poinsettias: Weeks Dye Works Turkish Red
red and gold beads

Off to get some more stitching and finishing done.

Happy Last Minute Christmas Stitching!

Mr. Wonderful's Tree

Here's Mr. Wonderful's pond hockey tree, a collection of hockey players and other wildlife.

Top to bottom: Mario Lemieux (white jersey, no head... sorry Mario!), Alex Ovechkin (red jersey, right), Patrick Kane (red jersey, left), and Wayne Gretzky (white jersey, bottom).

Mario Lemieux, Bobby Orr (black jersey, on the right), Alex Ovechkin.

Bobby Orr, and Ryan Miller (goalie).

And who else would be atop the pond hockey tree but The Great One (Wayne Gretzky, for all the no-hockey humans)? That silver thing is the Stanley Cup, and you can also see Gordie Howe peeking through the branches down there on the right.

We are both huge hockey fans. I actually converted Mr. Wonderful to the most awesome sport in the world, not the other way around. I kept telling him he needed to see an NHL game in person to really appreciate it. In 2010, we went to his first game and he was instantly hooked. It gets pretty wild around here when Washington is playing... Tiger Lily stays upstairs!

Christmas At Our House

I've been getting a lot of requests to see our Christmas trees. I'm not wild about Christmas tree photography, mainly because I just feel that photographs never do justice to the beauty of Christmas trees, but I've decided to give it a whirl and over the next few days I'll be sharing some pictures of some of our trees. 

Here are a few shots of our living room, where we have three trees. On the left is the tree with all of our annual stitched ornaments and on the right is Mr. Wonderful's pond hockey tree. If you'd like to see all the individual stitched ornaments, click on the Christmas Open House 2014 label on the right sidebar. The peppermint afghan on the couch was made for me by my mom.

In the background, the stitched ornament tree; in the foreground, the fox tree.

By day:

The stitched ornament tree:

The fox tree:

Later this week I'll post close-ups of some of the fox ornaments, and of Mr. Wonderful's tree.