The Treehouse

Now Panic and Freak Out

I completed a couple of quick projects on Friday evening and yesterday. The first was a simple pillow case for an old friend. I've had this pillow forever and it was time to make a new, snuggly pillowcase for it - it's always been clothed in flannel. I used a piece of gorgeous floral flannel from Bonny and Camille's Ruby collection. I think this is my favourite fabric out of the entire collection. No complicated sewing involved once I'd worked out the measurements - I did use French seams which have turned out beautifully.

After I'd made the pillow case I started on a quick cross stitch for Catherine whose current favourite post exam saying is "Now Panci and Freak Out"! While we were away on our little Winnie break she bought a mug with the words on and we spotted this cross stitch pattern while perusing Etsy one evening. Luckily I had this blue linen in my stash and some variegated Anchor floss (1302 I think but not 100% sure) looked just right against it.

Next up is to start the huge pillow out the Fat Quarterly book - my ginormous insert arrived yesterday morning, it really is ginormous!

5 little owls...

I've been working on catching up with some cross stitching this week. I'm now up to date with my monthly owl stitch a long that I've been doing with my friends. Just one owl left to stitch and this will be ready for framing :excited:

The chart is Outrageous Owls by Glendon Place, this has been a really fun stitch to do each month. The colour of the background fabric doesn't show too well in the photo - it's a delicate blue colour, really pretty.

It seems that I am incapable of NOT starting new projects. I had the Fat Quarterly Shape Workshop book on pre-order at Amazon and when it arrived I drooled extensively at the blocks and projects. I was restraining myself from starting something new until 2 things happened. Allegory @ SewAllegorical suggested a quilt a long for the Orange Soda Pop quilt - I resisted for a little while and then gave in to the inevitable! There is a link in my sidebar to the details of the quilt a long. I will be using the fabrics below...

Terrain by Kate Spain :love: The bright pink is the colour that I'm using for the applique melon shapes.

Then yesterday, just as I'd finished telling myself NO MORE, Katy posted her version of the twinkling star cushion from the book. Before I knew it I was asking her where to get the HUGE cushion from which was all that had been holding me back from the making it. Of course, Katy was super helpful and next thing you know I have ebayed myself a gigantic enormous cushion. Oh for more hours in the day (because I want to do the Hexy MF quilt a long too!).

I am just having a little break from the owl stitching and doing a super quick stitch for my poor exam beaten up daughter. She chose it herself while we were perusing Etsy a few evenings ago. In case you don't want to click the link, it's along the lines of Keep Calm and Carry On but instead it says - Now Panic and Freak Out! She loves this quote and has a mug with it on. I'm stitching it with a variegated cream Anchor thread on a royal blue background. I've only got a few rows of the crown done so far but enough to see that the colours look good :) 

Tomorrow is the montly meet up with the girls, I'm really looking forward to a good chat and stitch - haven't decided what to stitch yet, maybe a cottage - they could surely use some stitching doing on them!

 

March Owl

Finished this last night just in time! Each little owl is a gorgeous, quick, satisfying stitch. They look lovely when they're stitched but then when the backstitch is done they really spring to life. I think the April owl is green, I'm really looking forward to that! This is half way done now, there are only 6 owls in total.

Hard to tell on this picture - the fabric is a gorgeous soft blue colour with white cloudy bits -  really pretty.

My task for today was to start the next cottage however - I've ordered up a larger R&R frame for the cottages as my hoop is making a disaster of the fabric and it's getting harder and harder to iron the creases out each month. My plan therefore is to start on this...

Completely off plan and rather naughty of me but...I couldn't resist. It's full of birds and look at the colour of the fabric - luscious! It's a 12 part series called The Flock by Sam Sarah Design Studios. I think I can just about manage to squeeze in another bit of birdie stitching each month :grin: I bought the goodies (including the lush fabric) for my flock of birds from Karla at the Patchwork Rabbit I spotted it on one of my frequent 'let's see if the next cottage has arrived' browsing sessions!

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!