The Treehouse

A little bit of festivity

As promised yesterday, here's the picture of the little Christmas ornament that was my easy stitch on Saturday night. It's a chart by Joan Elliott and can be found in the 365 Cross Stitch Designs 2013 book-a-zine. There are getting on for 30 little charts by Joan with a festive theme and I fell in love with rather a lot of them - which is what led me to buy the book! This was a super easy one to stitch and I'm planning to stitch another one colour ornament next before I return to stitching Around the World.

I stitched this one on some lovely gold fabric that has a bit of 'glitter' in it - Karen bought this ages ago and split it with me. It's really rather pretty.

Quick! take a photo...

I've gone slightly off plan with my stitching! In fact, I'm not too sure why I make a plan because as soon as I make one - I go right off plan! The 'plan' with the Papillon Around the World in 80 Stitches was to slowly catch up by stitching on it at the weekends. That hasn't happened. No. Not at all. What has happened is that since my last blog post (ages ago!) I have stitched exclusively on Around the World and completely ignored everything else. My excuse? I was enjoying myself! I was enjoying myself so much in fact that I kept on stitching and forgot to take a photo at the end of each section.

So here's where I'm at right now - if you remember from the last post about this piece, when I went back to stitching it I'd not even completed stitching the second heart due to my inability to make a decision on threads colours.

I have that petal shape to complete and two more parts and then I will be up to date although I think we are due the next section very soon. I'm thrilled to have done as much of it as I have though and I love the way it's looking.

Part 2 consisted of the two tulip shapes...

Not brilliant photos I'm sorry to say - the weather is dull here this morning and I ended up using the flash. See the white bits? Well, way back when we started on this project I was tempted to use a different colour of thread because I worried that the white would stick out like a sore thumb. Instead, I think they give the eye a place to rest and I love stitching the white parts now - but then, I love using perle threads.

Part 3 was this four petal design...

Lots of Lazy Daisies on this part - I'm not too friendly with those, they're easy to stitch but tricky to make them look neat. I have been going a little off plan with the colours occasionally too - those lazy daisies should have been stitched in more colours than they are but it looked too busy to me so I didn't do that.

Part 4 was these two funny shapes...

No white stitching in this part but those leaves and the windmill stitches made up for that - I loved stitching those.

Part 5 was another odd shape...

LOVED stitching this part, some really fun stitches here.

Part 6...hmm, the camera rebelled here and told me that the battery wanted charging so I'll have to do a photo of that another day. It was a very fun and very quick part to stitch and there was a good amount of lovely white stitching to do. 

I'm currently part way through part 7...enjoying the white stitching, yum! I took a break at the weekend to stitch an easy little Christmas ornament while we were watching a film. I would show a photo of that but the camera says no!

Half term this week so my couple of hours stitching in the afternoon has gone by the wayside for now. Plus, I'm under pressure from Catherine to finish off her Grinch quilt but...my sewing machine says no! I'll be calling up my Pfaff dealer this morning to see if she can give him a look over to see what the problem is. 

Hopefully I'll be back soon with a photo of the Christmas ornament and some more progress on Around the World :)

Song of the Weather January and Lucky Stars Practice

I've just put the final stitches on the January piece for Song of the Weather. I can't possibly say how much I've enjoyed stitching this little piece. I had sworn off doing monthly stitches for this year other than the ones already underway and was seriously reluctant to take on another one. I'm glad now that Carole persevered with her temptations and that I finally caved in and decided to do this SAL. It really hasn't taken very long at all to do the stitching and the instructions are excellent. I only stumbled on the knots (in the middle of the daisies) and had to get out my left handed embroidery book to do those as the picture in the instructions was for a right handed person and my brain refused to translate! 

Here's the finished piece - I am using 25 count Lugana in ivory with DMC threads 600, 605 and 712.

Isn't it pretty? I can't wait for the February design to arrive in inbox!

Yesterday I did the practice piece for the Lucky Stars BOM (oh look, another monthly project - I thought I had sworn off those and here I am posting about another one :o ) All of these designs are foundation pieced - I thought it was time that I got this skill licked - I usually put the fabrics in the wrong place and end up with them not covering up what they're supposed to! Not so this time. I made the 6" version of the block and it went as smooth as silk, no hitches at all which bodes well for me making the January block - some time soon, before January is done and dusted!

I'm really thrilled that this turned out so well. It's destined to become a little pouch for Catherine in the near future :)

Around the World in 80 Stitches

I started this project last year after some encouragement from Carole and a peek at the first part of her project. I struggled to keep up with stitching last year as I wasn't enjoying very good health, there were a couple of months when I think I didn't actually stitch at all and this was one project that got left by the wayside. Well actually, it got put into the naughty corner. It wasn't the project's fault really - it was me, I just couldn't properly decide on thread colours. Anyway, it was on my list of things to sort out during this month and I got everything out a few days ago and had a good old sort out. I had already stitched the first heart and was onto the second. Having forced myself to make some final colour choices and undo the colours that I didn't like I set off toe finish heart number 2.

Heart number 1 - I can't remember what I enjoyed stitching on this one as it's so long now since I stitched it but I do recall having problems with the Berwick Stitch which should have been the stitch beneath the dark pink flowers. I think I resorted to backstitching instead - it looks no different to me.

Sorry for the quality of these photos. I've been waiting for the weather to behave so that I could take some decent pictures. I usually take photos in the conservatory where the light is excellent however, the weather decided to drop another 5 inches of snow on us yesterday so it's rather dark in the conservatory today! The husband and the son are currently trying to dig us a path up to the main road - yes, we live right at the bottom of a steep hill. Anyway, onto more exciting things, here is heart no. 2 - this picture is even worse but at least it gives a general idea...

On this heart, I loved stitching the big flowers - I think these are called Lindisfarne stitches. They were a lot of fun and I love the cute, cushions of the Scotch stitches. Notice that nowhere am I making mention of the Lazy Daisies. No. Keeping quiet about those. I must have stitched a gazillion of them on other projects but I can't seem to make them look pretty on this type of fabric. Humph!

Here's the whole progress so far - I have already stitched the outlines of the tulips for part two so last night I enjoyed doing the Hardanger in each tulip and then I started to do the Mordvinian Star pieces. Unfortunately, it was 10 o'clock and my eyes were saying enough, enough, enough - it's time for a rest. So I had to pack up and leave it to play with today. Those Mordvinian things are a bit fiddly to be honest and I was thinking what a heck of mess I was making of them but when I looked at them in daylight this morning they seem to look okay so I'll plod on with those this afternoon.

Now, Carole is an excellent friend and I am certain this in the past I have tempted her to many a book or sewing purchase. Currently, she is having a good run at tempting me to do stuff. I said last year that I wasn't going to do the Song of the Weather Hardanger SAL. I should have realised at the time that I was fibbing to myself when I know that I've wanted to do some proper Hardanger for a long time. Anyway, Carole persevered with the tempting and it wasn't long before I found myself clicking over to see what the first month's piece looked like. Not long after that I was clicking over the Sew and So to order up the necessary. Oops! Hopefully, this will be a healthier year and I will get more stitching done. I hope so - I've got plenty to do! Below are my supplies - I decided to use the cream fabric with a raspberry pink and a pale pink for the colours. I'm rather excited to get started but will wait until I've finished part 2 of Papillon.

Dare to Dresden Blog Hop

Welcome to the first day of the Dare to Dresden blog hop. A big thank you to Christine of Quilt Monster in My Closet and Mdm Samm for all the time,  hard work and encouragement that goes into making these hops work and be such fun.  

My project is from a free pattern that Jenny of Elefantz gave away some time ago. I love sunflowers so this wallhanging was perfect for me. The fabric is Charlevoix by Minick and Simpson - love those cherries and the faded blues and reds of this line.

I didn't have a thread that went nicely with the background red fabric so I quilted using invisible thread and I'm really pleased with the way it's turned out. I stitched all around the sunflower's head to make it pop - you can't tell from the photo but it has popped really well. 

This is the little poem at the top of the quilt stitched in a very pretty multi-coloured lemon thread and below is the close up of one of the bumble bees (I love bees) and the Dresden flower.

Thanks for visiting. Hope you've got a nice warm drink in hand so that you can sit and sip while you enjoy hopping along to the rest of today's participants.

Debby Kratovil Quilts

Apple Avenue Quilts

The TreeHouse <--------- that's me, you are here

Sew Mollie Sue, Quilt Much

Quilts My Way

Buzzing and Bumbling

Marjorie's Busy Corner

Selina Quilts

Quiltscapes

Hill Valley Quilter

Sew Incredibly Crazy

The Raspberry Rabbits

I Like to Quilt Blog

Cherry's Prairie Primitives

Spoilt Dog Quilts

 

New Year - New Start

I realised that if I didn't post on my blog soon then February would have arrived! December went by in a blur of activity and ended in a haze of illness! That seems to have mostly passed now and I'm back to stitching thank goodness. 

I'm not heavily into making New Year's resolutions but I did make myself a little January To-Do list. So far it's going quite well. I've some quilting to finish and some quilts to bind and then I'll be well on the way to completing my list.

My New Year start was the Around the World in 80 Days chart by Little House Neeldeworks. I'm stitching along with Carole on this one. The idea was to start it on New Year's day but as I was busy shaking and shivering and aching and whatnot that didn't happen! Then I wanted to finish off the part of the The Flock that I was working on before I started it. I finally put a few stitches into it last week but by that time I was heavily into finishing off the hexagons for my Hexy MF quilt! I have worked on it since and I love it. The colours are very similar, and in some cases the same, as The Library that I finished last year. I hope that the other charts in the series will appeal to me as much as this one does, it would look lovely with a little family of books hanging on the wall next to The Library. I must stitch The Bookshelf at some point to add to the scene!

Here's progress so far...

I'm hoping to get a bit more done this weekend.

I've been busily working away on my Dresden projects this week for next week's Dare to Dresden blog hop...

A bit of a blurry photo just to give a hint of  what's going on :) The blog hop starts on Thursday which is also my day to post so I'd better get stitching and finishing!