The Treehouse

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 :) 

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 :)

 

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.

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!

The Secret London Cross Stitch...

Why secret? well, I have been working on this since July and totally forgot to tell Carole that I'd even bought the chart :o After finishing the owl stitchalong the crop girls decided on this as our next project. It has 6 of the little polaroid pictures in it - one for each month up to December with the other bits being fitted in as and when. The chart is from Jardin Prive and rather appropriate for all of the 2012 festivities.

Here's my progress so far...

It's really quite a fun and easy stitch. Of course I had to go and make a couple of mistakes - all of my water is in the wrong blue. I'm attempting to live with it but given the time I will probably frog it and restitch :)

Summer Stitching

I didn't get around to blogging during the summer so this is going to be a bit of a catch up post.

 

My intention was to get up to date with the cottage stitching but...that didn't happen. Instead, I was overwhelmed with a desire to finish off the stitching of The Library by Little House Needleworks. I had had this on the go for way too long and get dipping in and out of it. It's finally finished and framed and I am thrilled to bits with it. I'm also excited about the new charts with book themes that Diane is designing and am looking forward to stitching Around the World in 80 Days with Carole next year.

I think a wall of book related cross stitching will look marvellous :)

I spent quite a bit of time preparing hexagons for the Fat Quarterly Hexy MF quilt along and enjoyed piecing the flowers together. I am almost halfway done with those. This is the latest photo that I have of them - the colours look nothing like this in real life, the photo does them no justice at all.

I'm thinking of putting them onto a rich purple background - probably an Oakshott one.

I made a few Great Granny Squares for Lori Holts quilt a long but getting time on the machine during the holidays isn't easy so a few is as far as I got!

They are really quick, easy and fun to make - I will be making more very soon.

When the recent issue of Fat Quarterly came out I immediately wanted to make the Keep Calm quilt and dove into the stash in search of red fabrics. I had enough and got them all ironed and ready to cut into. Then I showed the quilt to Catherine who is a huge fan (particularly around exam time) of the 'Now Panic and Freak Out' saying. A request was made and I found myself diving back into the stash for blue fabrics! Here's the result...

It's been washed since this pic and has crinkled up beautifully and has already been on a trip to France and had plenty of snuggle time! The Keep Calm quilt will happen eventually :)

Back to School time means new bag time and while the cupcake bag that I made earlier in the year is still going strong it was a little small and definitely not waterproof. Another request was made and the result was this gigantic, waterproof bag...

I bought a yard of two different Kokka laminates a while ago when they were on sale. I've never sewn with laminate before and was a little nervous of it to be honest until I read a very useful blog post by Kathy of Pink Chalk Fabrics which encouraged me to at least have a go. Kathy has a few posts on laminates and this post led me to her Pinterest board for laminated projects which led me to this tutorial by Cheryl of Sew Can Do for a large bag. It turned out a bit bigger than I thought but Catherine is thrilled with it and it even fits an A4 lever arch file inside so she doesn't have to carry two bags anymore! The laminate was easy peasy to sew with - I will definitely sew with it again (if only to use up the other yard to make myself one of these bags).

Finally, my stitch a long with the crop girls was completed - a bit late but better late than never. I just picked it up from my framer this afternoon and I think he did a great job...

Outrageous Owls by Glendon Place.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far, that was quite a long post. I'm currently in the mood for 'finishing off' things and so, inspired by Sinta's BOM rehab I am working on finishing my neglected Henrietta Whiskers quilt - I'm hoping to finish before the weekend is done :)

 

Cottage Challenge

Last Wednesday I set myself a little cottage challenge. I was quite a bit behind with these and wanted to get at least a little bit caught up. I wondered whether I would manage to stitch two cottages in 10 days. Carole thought it was doable. So, I set out to see if it was! I started the April cottage on Wednsday evening and finished it on Sunday afternoon. I immediately started the May cottage which I've been very excited about since I first saw the chart...all those little buzzing creatures, the beehive, the birdhouse - so pretty. I put the final buzzing stitches onto May last night.

My 10 day challenge was more than doable, I took just a bit over 7 days - I could probably stitch another one before the end of the month but we're taking Winnie to the Lake District this weekend so it's not going to happen! 

These photos are not the best - the weather here is awful this morning. In fact, it rained so hard just as the children were about to leave for the bus that we piled into the car and drove to school instead! They would have been soaked through in spite of wearing coats and carrying an umbrella. I was hoping it would clear the air a bit but it's still very humid. 

 

Each time I stitch a new cottage it becomes my favourite! I'm not sure that will wear off with the May cottage but honestly when you see them all together it's hard to say which one is the prettiest...

I'm making a few little changes to June and July. The July cottage is all red white and blue in honour of the 4th July. As I'm English I'm going to switch that to the June position and try to incorporate a few bits to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee so the June cottage will go in the July slot. I'll be playing with something else for a week or so though, it's time for a little break from the cottages after this intense burst of stitching!