The Treehouse

Framed Cottages and Finished Flowers

I collected my framed cottages a couple of Saturdays ago and we hung them on the wall in my sewing room at the weekend. In hindsight I should have taken a photograph before I hung them up as in spite of the fact they're not in direct sunlight it was very hard to get a photo without light on the glass.

Quite a dreadful photo but you get the idea. They've got a couple of friends hanging next to them...

In other news, I finished the last flower for my Hexy MF quilt last night. I started stitching these last year and have enjoyed stitching on them as the mood took me. They just need to be stitched together now - rather hoping that I'll achieve that in less than 12 months time! Due to various changes of mind during the stitching process I ended up with 8 extra flowers so I have an extra row and the remaining flowers I'll applique to the back of the quilt.

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I've chosen a lovely purple-ish Oakshott to stitch them onto. This photo doesn't really do the colours any justice at all, I think the pale ones will show up much better once they're on the background fabric.

I've a few other things to show as well but I'll save those for another post I think.

A Year of Cottages

I finally put the last stitches in the last cottage last week and I couldn't be more pleased with the finished piece. 

Here's a pic of the December cottage...

Definitely one of my favourites.

Below is the whole thing. I used all of the recommended threads and I used the recommended fabric but in 32 count instead of 28 count which is probably a good thing as this has turned out to be quite large.

I am so glad to have it finished. I did make some changes along the way. I swapped around the June and July cottages and altered the July cottage to commemorate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee last year (which is when I stitched it). Plus, I made a small change to the November cottage by stitching a little squirrel instead of the turkey. I took it to the framing shop this morning and hopefully this time next week it will be hanging upon the wall in my sewing room :) 

A custom order of pouches.

When Catherine spotted the huge pouch that I made for the Nancy Drew blog hop she immediately requested a couple for herself! She picked out the fabrics and I took it from there. I made the small size and the medium size so I've made all of the sizes now and they're all of them very useful sizes indeed. The pattern is by Noodlehead and can be found on her blog

 

Small size...

 

Medium size...

I have plans to make more of these soon, they're useful for all kinds of different things.

 

Cara's Birthday

This year it was my turn to buy for Cara's birthday which was last month. I decided to get her some threads for some of the charts on her to be stitched list. While new thread is lovely, I thought a little something handmade would be nice too. I settled on making a needle book with a few different types of needles inside. The construction is based on this one by Amy of the Nana Company blog.

The cover has a machine embroidered monogram -

I've used this monogram a few times now and it stitches up really nicely - I stitched it at 20% less than full size.

A  few pics from inside - I dusted off some alphabet stamps and some fabric ink and did a little stamping...it's been a while!

     

Then, I dusted off my card blanks and made a birthday card. I happened upon a cd of Joan Elliott oriental designs one day in my Amazon perusings so as both Cara and I are fans I thought it would be great to make a card using one of the designs. 

It took quite a while for it to stitch out but it turned out absolutely beautifully - I'll definitely be playing with the designs on that cd some more!

 

 

Christmas Ornament No. 3

I've remembered to take photos but not remembered to blog so here is a small finish from last month. This is the third of Joan Elliott's Christmas designs that I've stitched from the Cross Stitch Designs book-a-zine. I love this one - reminds me of Catherine :) I intend to put her in one of the little Framecraft brass frames for hanging on the Christmas tree. I'm just waiting on the ordering until I know how many I will need.

 

I used threads as charted and the fabric is antique white. I'm not overly keen on the colour of the Kreink so have bought a different gold to try for the next one.

CCN Cottage update

I've been doing plenty of stitching and knitting and no blogging so I thought I should put in an appearance with something! A week and a half ago I decided that it was time to press on with the stitching of Country Cottage Needleworks cottages. I got rather behind with these last year and although I had the September cottage underway in November I didn't stitch on it again until recently. Then, in a fervour of stitching I finished that one off and stitched two more over the course of about 10 days! I just have the December cottage to stitch now and I'm rather looking forward to that one. I'm just having a small break from the cottages for today and doing a little knitting but I am hoping to get the December cottage finished before the beginning of next month.

September cottage - this is definitely one of my favourites...

 

October cottage - another favourite, it has those lovely pumpkins...

November cottage - I had to make a small change to this one. The pattern has a turkey on the right side of the house, I substituted a little squirrel instead...

 

The whole thing...

I'm really looking forward to having this finished and hanging on the wall :)

 

Nancy Drew is a Clue

Day 3 of the Nancy Drew blog and it's my turn to show my creations. As Always, thank you to Mdm Samm and Cheerleader Carol for their tireless efforts in organising such a fun event. I've never really bought a lot of novelty fabric but the Nancy Drew fabric was irresistable and it's even more lovely in real life and a great deal of fun to play with. 

Sleuth your way to the end of my post and see if you can work out what my favourite thing to do, other than sewing, is!

Clue 1

I use this small electronic device, or a real life version of the type of thing that it stores, daily. I decided that it really needed a little home of its own to next in during the times that I'm sewing on my sewing machine.

and the inside...

I used 3 of my favourite Nancy Drew fabrics to make this case - the black magnifying glass, the red silhouette and the bookshelf.

Clue 2

I love to hand sew - applique, cross stitch, embroidery, English paper piecing etc. I thought for a long time about how I could accomplish my other favourite thing to do while I am sewing. The solution to the puzzle involves the use of a set of headphones. I like big headphones that stay on my head not those little ear buds which refuse to stay in my ears. I thought that the headphones also needed a nesting place for when they're not in use and came up with this...

and look inside...there's plenty of room - 

I can even fit my other device inside and probably a sewing project or two as well!

Clue 3

I thought that a little celebratory quilt was in order next. So, I whipped out the fusible web and went to town drawing and cutting, snipping and ironing. Coffee and a Cozy was the result...

Did you solve the mystery? It wasn't really very hard was it? I have always loved books and reading. There aren't many books that I won't read or try but I do love to snuggle up with a quilt, a cup of good coffee and a cozy mystery book now and again - it feels like a real treat. I can often go from start to finish without moving from my spot!

When I was young, there was no book shop in our little town so it was a good long trek to nearest one but what a treat that was when we made the journey - usually to spend birthday or Christmas money. I can remember choosing Nancy Drew and the Hardy boys books along with a wide range of other books. Other than that, our library got a lot of visits from me! These days of course, I can buy a book in the space of a few seconds by clicking a few buttons on my Kindle and I can listen to books on my iPod, downloaded from the internet in the space of a few minutes and I can drive into town and buy real life books. 

Here are all my 3 clues together...

Now for a few credits...

the tutorial/pattern for the Kindle case came from Melissa at http://www.100billionstars.blogspot.com

the tutorial for the open wide zipper pouch for my headphones came from Anna at http://www.noodle-head.com/

the pattern for the book and the mug on my quilt came from Anni Downs' book Some Kind of Wonderful.

Now, in order to further hone your sleuthing skills you'll need to follow the clues below so that you can visit the rest of today's bloggers and enjoy their creations. 

That’s Sew Julie 

Scrapbook-ChickADoodle 

Lily Patch Quilts 

Cherry’s Prairie Primitives 

The Thimble Room

The Treehouse <--- you are here

The German Mom 

Stitch, Stitch, Stitch.

Quiltin’ Jenny 

Blackberry Creek Home Arts

Christmas Ornament No. 2

I've just finished the last little bit of backstitching on this 'soon to be' Christmas ornament. It's another of Joan Elliott's designs from the 365 Cross Stitch Designs Bookazine. In the book it was stitched all in gold but I wanted to use a bit more of the glittery fabric so I used green - Chives by The Gentle Art Samper Threads, it's one of my favourite greens...actually, there are a lot of those, green is my favourite colour! 

I should probably start thinking of some finishing ideas for these pretty soon - don't want to arrive at December having a stitched several and finished none! Quite excited about stitching my next choice, it reminds me of Catherine. I'm just stitching on these now and again in between other, longer projects - it's satisfying to have a finish now and again.

Song of the Weather - March

I was in two minds whether to carry straight on with the March chart or have a change. I decided that as I had all of the stuff out that it made sense to carry on. March was a lot of fun. I already like Queen stitches and the Basque knots were fabulous to stitch - they are two rows of knots around the outside of the design. 

I sweated over the cutting - again! I'm not too sure that's going to wear off in a hurry in fact, as I get more bits stitched it might get worse...more to ruin if I mess it up! I really like the shape that the Klosters and the cutting make this month and the Square Filet stitch inside the middle holes is great - I used a sharp needle to do that, made it a lot easier. 

So here it is...

I put a piece of fabric behind the holes this time - it was a useful exercise. I now know that I will not be using any shade of pink fabric at the back!

Here are the first 3 altogether...

 

 Back to my  Nancy Drew stitching now - the hop starts tomorrow. You can find the full schedule here at Carol's blog.

Song of the Weather - February

In my enthusiasm to catch up on the Papillon SAL I forgot all about my February piece of the Song of the Weather SAL. I was so excited to get part two and get stitching away at it but I just kept on stitching the Papillon! Then half term came around and Catherine wanted to make a waistcoat so we got stuck into that and Matthew wanted to make a birdbox as well and my poor hardanger got totally forgotten about. I didn't remember until the email for part 3 arrived in my inbox on the 1st March.

It's stitched now though and I love it. I had a good session of sweating before I actually managed to do the cutting on this - I've had no experience of cutting before so I was very apprehensive. I invested in the special scissors which look at first sight like a pair of pliers and I'm glad that I did. They were extremely easy to use and also nice and sharp. The little bead stitch in pale pink gave me a few problems - I'm left handed and my thread was twisting the wrong way so that when I looped through the first start of the stitch it actually undid the stitch! Spent a rather frustrating hour or so trying to work out what the problem was but once I had, I was able to stitch along quite happily. 

I'm using the same threads throughout. I love the perle threads and I think there will be more of those in my future at some point. Here's the finished piece...

I need some more practice with the Dove stitches I think! I'm stitching these pieces on one piece of fabric as a kind of Hardanger sampler. Here's the story so far...

I'm going to get some fabric to put behind the pieces that have holes in them - probably an Oakshott to match the dark pink. I can order that up once I'm ready to order the fabric to applique my Hexy MF down. Part 3 has a few different stitches in it - including Queen Stitch which is a favourite of mine. I'm looking forward to stitching that - hopefully I won't forget again. For the moment I'm busy finishing off my items for the Nancy Drew blog hop which begins this week on Wednesday - my day is Friday.