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 :) 

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 :)

 

CCN June/July Cottage

I've finally put the last stitches into my current cottage. I've switched this around from June to July as I used the red/white/blue July cottage for my June Jubilee spot. It was a bit tricky with the lettering but I think it's turned out ok. 

Not a brilliant picture as it's too dark to take a nice photo so I used the scanner - quite a job with this size of fabric. I can't say that I love this cottage but I do like the strawberries and the overdyed thread colours are gorgeous again - doesn't really show up properly but they are beautiful in real life.

Moving straight along to the August cottage now :) 

As a quick aside - my quilts have returned from their trip to be quilted and I can't tell you how wonderful the quilting is, absolutely stunning. I'll show some pics once I've got the binding stitched in place.

A few strawberries and a tiny blossom

So - I promised myself to start back working on the SKOW quilt once the June/July cottage was finished. Then I thought that I would just make a little start on the July/June cottage as I had all of the stuff to hand and I had tidied the applique away and I could get that out the next day. Well, the next day - yesterday, both Catherine and I were feeling grotty and not a lot got accomplished. I did however manage to finish off the top border and do the name on the July/June cottage - this is actually the June cottage but I'm using it in my July position. 

 

The red thread is lovely and I have fallen in love with the little strawberries! I've put it to one side now until I've completed some more SKOW blocks.

I was procrastinating a little bit on the SKOW blocks, mainly in part due to the tree. I love the tree and I have quite a bit of the block already appliqued with the exception of this part...

This is the top part of the tree. I had everything prepared for it last week - all of the little bits cut out, ready and waiting to be stitched down. I decided to employ an avoidance technique to see if those little blossoms would stitch themselves down while I was looking the other work. This technique was a failure - I can't recommend it at all. I've decided to employ another technique to get the job done - DIY. It seems to be working so far - let's see how I feel after I've done a few of these flowers, I think there are 11 in total :gulp:

CCN July Cottage redesigned!

When I saw that the July cottage had a red white and blue theme I decided that I would do a bit of changing around on it and use it in my June spot to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. So - this is actually the July cottage, renamed as June and with a few changes to it.

So - the changes that I made are...

Top Border - I left out all of the middle flowers and added in the backstitched years and the crown. The crown is from one of this year's issues of CrossStitcher - either June or July.

Month - - I have changed from July to June

House - I left out the star and backstitched EIIR instead

Flag - I changed it from the Stars and Stripes to a Union flag - the flag was also from an issue of CrossStitcher

Bottom Border - again, I left out the middle flowers and backstitched the words in instead.

I was quite a bit nervous about making so many changes but I'm thrilled with the way it's turned out. Obviously I'm a bit behind - I'm trying to catch up though :) 

Here's a pic of the all of them together - I love the colours of every cottage, the thread choices are fabulous and the colours of the overdyed threads really are gorgeous.

Going to make a little start on the next one this evening but then it's back to work on the SKOW quilt. I'm really pleased to be excited about stitching the cottages again - it had worn off a little bit - I think mostly in part due to my fretting over making changes to the June one!

CCN March Cottage

I put the last few stitches into the March cottage this afternoon. I could have had this finished last week really but a nasty bug, a sore arm and the beautiful sunshine conspired to prevent any stitching going on :) 

It is straight in real life - honestly!

and here are the first 3 all in a row...

The chart and threads for April's cottage arrived yesterday, I'm looking forward to stitching with some pretty lilac :)

There may not be much stitching going on at the moment but the postman has been a rather frequent visitor to our post box! The Grinch fabric arrived so I can start stealthily cutting that out when a certain person isn't around and a couple of new books - Lynette Anderson's and another very pretty applique book which I can't for the life of me remember the name of...it has many tempting projects in it though. 

I have my March owl to finish off - she only has a few stitches done so plenty of work there for the next few days. I did put a few stitches into the Library this month while I was away with the girls but not enough of a difference was made to take a photo really. I'm hoping to press on with that project a little more this month - I can see the end in sight, it's just finding the time to fit some stitching in on it as well as the cottage, the owls and the gazillion other projects on the go!