The Treehouse

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!

 

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 :)

 

Variety is the Spice of Life

I've been having a sewing morning and decided that a little update was in order. The 1st of February meant that it was time to start on a new cottage with Carole and I was eager to start. Here's the progress so far - the colours are so pretty...

As you can see, I'm stitching mine all together on one piece of fabric. I think they're going to look lovely like that.

Once I'd finished my SKOW blocks I started back on The Library just for a few days until it was Cottage time. I managed to complete all of the bottom border and have done the outline of the next set of bricks. Just a few leaves up at the top to frog now and resttich and I'll have the green all correct.

I think it could have done with a visit to the ironing board before having it's picture taken really, never mind!

This morning I decided to prepare the next SKOW block - I really can't leave these alone at all so I'm a bit ahead of myself on the stitch a long schedule.

I'm looking forward to stitching that down and doing the embroidery over the weekend - I love this block.

Finally - I resisted and resisted but...I had scraps on my desk and ready printed hexagons and so I 'accidentally'' started on a Rose Star block - oops! I'm not planning on making loads. This one is destined to go on a cushion cover to add to the ever increasing pile of cushions on our bed! 

I've plenty to work on over the weekend now. It's our crop day on Saturday - 11 hours of chatting and stitching. Well, stitching for me and some of the other girls - paper crafting is a bit rare these days! I'll need to keep myself busy this week while Catherine's off on a school jaunt to Belgium and France. I think they're going to have a wonderful time, the schedule sounds very exciting. Although it's primarily a history trip in order to visit WW1 battlefields they are 'coming home via Paris' and fitting in a visit to Disney on the last day. My girl is so excited that she's fit to burst! The bag is all packed ready for our super early 4.30am start tomorrow. I've got my tissues ready for when the bus sets off...still can't manage to watch them leave on a bus without a few tears!

Ruby Rag Squares and a Library Update

I'm still happily working away on WIPs - there are plenty for me to go at! Last week I was a bit off colour and so some cross stitch on the settee was in order. Although I was enjoying stitching the January cottage I was overwhelmed with a need to resume stitching on LHN's The Library. Now I have had this on the go for a shamefully long time. This time last year there was only a little part of one of the firs scroll of the top border done and I took it in hand and pressed on with some stitching. I didn't work on it continuously but got it out occasionally and enjoyed putting some stitches in. This was all going well until the day that I realised I'd used the wrong green thread in the top and bottom borders. Away it went into the darkest recesses of my cupboard - banished through no fault of its own because of my mistake! 

I'm glad to say that building is once again underway and some of the necessary frogging has been done and replaced. I did a little more unstitching last night and there's a bit left to do but things are definitely progressing again.

Now that the door and the steps are finished I'm returning to construction of my January cottage until it's complete. The chart for February's cottage arrived on Tuesday so I'm all set to stitch on that next month. I saw the picture of the March cottage last week and it is gorgeous - and green, my favourite colour!

In other stitchings...I had the squares all cut out for a rag quilt using Ruby flannels so I deemed that to be a WIP and have this week cut out all the squares of batting and glued them together. I'm currently free motion quilting my way through this rather blurry pile and hope to have that part complete this week. I cut the squares out for this quilt using my Accuquilt Go.

Tomorrow is the first Friday Night Sew In of 2012. I haven't managed to join in one of these for a while now so I'm hoping to stitch tomorrow night but haven't yet decided what to work on. Maybe a little work on the Ruby squares or perhaps I might make the Wildflower cross stitch into a cushion.

Coffee Menu by LHN

Last night I put the final stitches into Little House Needleworks' Coffee Menu. I've been stitching along on this one with Carole - it's the first in a series of charts that we decided to stitch together. I think I enjoyed every stitch on this - well, maybe not the ones that I had to unstitch but it has been a lovely design to stitch and the colours are lovely. I corrected the mistake that I mentioned last time - I had stitched Dark Roast one stitch to the right. I suppose I could have left it as was but it would have been screaming out to me from behind the glass once it was framed so I took it out and restitched it! 

Our next stitch is going to be Wildflower by SamSarah Designs. I've not stitched anything by this designer yet and I'm looking forward to starting this with Carole in November...it has some very sweet buttons on it and the colours are lovely.

I am also going to be joining in with the Some Kind of Wonderful Stitch a Long on the Stitch a long blog I'm so glad to have been given a place on this. I bought the book back in July and there are so many lovely things in it that I didn't want it to sit on the shelf waiting forever! I'm going to use some of my Fig Tree stash for the quilt and have begun cutting out the cream backgrounds into strips. Next job is to cut the cream backgrounds for the applique blocks.

I'm hoping to prepare the first blocks and start sewing on them soon and perhaps take some away with me in November when my friends and I have our second crafting weekend of the year.

I noticed this morning that the sign ups are ready now for this month's Friday Night Sew In. I wasn't able to join in for the last few months but hopefully I'll manage to do so this month - it's the day before my birthday! You can click on the link in my sidebar to join in with the fun.

Coffee Menu update and a new start...

Carole pointed out earlier on today that I hadn't updated my progress on Coffee Menu for a while and shouldn't I do so before I'd gone and finished it altogether! After a few days rest for the arm, I set off on the words last night and this lunchtime I started on the green borders and finished off Dark Roast. Just as I was crowing to Carole that I'd got this far I had the misfortune of noticing a mistake :sigh: I'm not pointing it out yet as I'm in two minds whether to remove it or not. It all depends upon how much it bugs me and whether or not I can live it. Eventually though - I will probably remove it, lol!

 

I wasn't really in the market for making any new starts just now until Carole came along with a temptation the other day. Over the past year I've made a tentative start at learning different counted stitches and when Carole showed me the Tree of Life design by Abi Gurden I was a lost cause! Abi runs a Yahoo group called the Stitch Specialists and the design is available for members only. Without further ado I joined the group and found a lovely warm welcome and knowledge a plenty. Most of my cross stitching is done on some shade of cream/brown fabric so I decided to go out on a limb and use a green background for the tree project and a shade of Threadworx called limestone - that way I don't have to worry about choosing colours and I can concentrate on learning the stitches. My fabric arrived this morning and I've made a small start this afternoon.

The design begins at the roots of the tree with cross stitch. The next part is comrpised of either French or Colonial knots. As I can do French knots I'm going to try the Colonial on this design. I did say it was a small start, the picture is really so that Carole can see the colour of my fabric!

There is a second stitch a long available to the group called The Great Escape. It features an owl - how could I resist! I've bought some fabric for that in a shade of blue but at the moment I'm not convinced that it's the right shade of blue - it's lovely but maybe not quite the right thing, we'll see.

I've not achieved much on the sewing machine at all this week so nothing to show there I'm sorry to say - hopefully next week :)

 

Coffee and Grandmother's Flower Garden

I started stitching on the LHN Coffee at the weekend - this is a SAL that I'm doing along with Carole following the shopathon that I reported on a little while ago (I think we'll have to do it again, it was good fun!). I had wanted to get all of the word stitched but my eyes were demanding some that I close them last night - we had a busy day out at a bowling competition and a football match. Otherwise, I'm pleased with the progress I managed to make and it's a very enjoyable stitch - I'm looking forward to stitching the friends taking coffee together this week :)

I'm using the recommended threads and some lovely fabric that I had sitting in my stash from a previous (still underway!) project - Vintage Country Mocha.

Last week I did quite a bit of stitching on my GFG flowers  -  I made 11 and started to put the outer rings on. I've dragged this project out for quite a while now and I would like to get some serious progress made on it - wrist/elbow permitting - I need to move onto machine stitching this week to give them a rest.

I had been going to surround all of the flowers with the blue fabric but last week I happened across some of the plain green and plain rust coloured fabric and decided that it would look better with more than just the blue colour so I'm awaiting the arrival of these fabrics so that I can print up some hexagons and try them out. It was a lucky find I think as it's quite some time since Harvest Home was first released. Whatever is leftover I intend to use to piece the back of the quilt.

At last - pictures again!

I've been without a card reader for a little while and goodness me it has been a heck of a nuisance! I've scanned a few things but not everything will fit onto the scanner! Today I loaded the children into the car and we  set off on a mission to buy a new card reader and new swimming togs for Matthew  - we were successful on both counts and now I can show you pictures and Matthew can once again go swimming in a 'decent' fashion!

I accumulated quite a few things to photograph over the last little while - we'll go with cross stitch first - I've been happily stitching away on LHN The Library which I started a long time ago and abandoned. I'm enjoying stitching on it now - here's the progress so far...

Another project that I gave new life to last week is Blackbird Designs Snow Garden - again, I started this ages ago and struggled to stitch it under electric light as many of the threads are similar in colour. This is how far along I am...

It's difficult to see the stitching on this - I have only a tiny bit of border left to stitch now.

I replenished my cross stitch stash on a Saturday morning super spend with Carole the other week - we've got quite a few stitch a longs planned now. We have both kitted up for CCN April Showers, LHN Coffee Menu and LHN Sunflower House. I also kitted up for CCN Bee Joyful - alas, Carole is not a fan of the little creatures so I'll be stitching that one solo! We have plans for another super shop in the future once there are some stitches done, I think the new CCN Sunflower chart is in both of our futures!

Carole also directed me to some very pretty threads called Six Strand Sweets which are currently on sale at Sew and Sew and I had a small indulge and in fact I am already stitching away with one of them. They are lovely to stitch with, nice and smooth.

Recently, Jenny of Elefantz has begun publishing a monthly magazine. I, of course, signed up to receive it as I've enjoyed Jenny's lovely designs for some time. I was just putting together my fabrics for the new BOM that is in the magazine when along came one of Jenny's email newsletters. In the newsletter was a pattern for a sunflower wallhanging. It was a 'stop everything and make this' moment. Why? Well, I have a bit of a thing for all things sunflower (see above cross stitch chart) and on top of that there are little bumble bees (love those) and then - the sunflower is a Dresden plate! Now, several moons ago I purchased a fat eighth bundle of Charlevoix by Minick and Simpson with the intention of making Dresden plates with it. Clearly that hasn't yet happened or there would have been some pictures of them on the blog :blush: I decided that I could pinch a little bit of Charlevoix for this wallhanging and here is the progress so far...

It's not the best photo in the world I'm afraid, I had to stand on a chair to get all of the sunflower in the picture and there may have been some wobbling going on! If you squint a bit you might be able to see the bumble bees (stitched in Dreamy Caramel Cream Six Strand Sweet thread) It's an overdyed so there is a lovely subtle variation along the length of the thread and although it calls itself Cream it is in fact a delicate lemon that's just perfect for this project. There is a verse at the top to stitch yet and I'm quite tempted to put another bumble bee on there somewhere :)

I think I mentioned that I had signed up for the Fat Quarter Shop Designer BOM and I made the first block last month. Due to the problem with the card reader I wasn't able to show a picture but here it is now...

I had been debating on whether or not to purchase the finishing kit and when I saw it on Christine's blog I was sold on the idea (plus I was fretting that in 12 months time there wouldn't be a jot of Strawberry Fields fabric left on the planet!).

This month's block arrived this morning too - I'm having a sewing day on Sunday while everybody else kayaks so I'm looking forward to working on these. While I was ordering the finishing kit I also indulged in a kit for a quilt that I had seen in McCall's Quilting - bit naughty really but I cannot resist baskets and the fabric is beautiful!

Phew - thank you if you read to the end of that rather long posting. Hopefully the pretty eye candy made it worth the while :) I knew I would forget some photos - my Vignette progress and also astonishing progress on Catherine's giant pinwheel quilt (another long abandoned project) which has now made it to quilt top status although I'm stuck as to how to quilt it now - they can wait for another post :)

 

 

 

The Library and Friday Night Sew In

On Monday the guilt finally got to me!

Last year I bought the pattern and supplies to stitch The Library by Little House Needleworks...I thought this to be the perfect stitch for me and was so excited to get stitching, I even signed up for a SAL on the LHN group. Everybody else has long since finished stitching their Library and probably had it framed by now. Where was mine? Sitting in the corner glaring at me. What went wrong? Well, it's a wide design so I thought it best to put it on a frame - huge mistake for me. Once seated behind the frame in my regular stitching spot I was trapped...couldn't exit without assistance :o I found it cumbersome to have to take my arm so far round the back of the frame to stitch. It took me ages to get everything in position and the stitching was going so slowly and the result was - abandonment! The poor Library was banished to the corner where it would every once in a while attract my attention and cause me feelings of great guilt. 

Meanwhile, I was busily accumulating more exciting charts to stitch. Was I stitching them? No! The Library was there glaring at me and I was telling myself no more new starts until you've done something on that Library (with the exception of that Thistle that I began which doesn't count as it's not 'just' cross stitches so therefore not a cross stitch project iyswim!). 

Finally on Monday I could stand it no longer and decided to pay some attention to it. I pulled the frame and stand out of the corner and tried for over an hour. Progress was slow, very slow. In the end I decided the situation was ridiculous and removed the fabric from the frame and got out my trusty hoop. I was happy as anything all of a sudden and many stitches were made. Here's the progress so far - it's a big project, I expect I'll be a while stitching it but at least things are on the move now...

Just the grass to finish and some little blue flowers (and a leaf that I noticed I've missed off the right hand tree) and this little section is complete.

Tonight is Friday Night Sew In night, to join in the fun you can sign up here and craft away to your heart's content. I'm going to finish off the last few crosses on this Library section and then set to work on this month's My Garden block - can't wait to see this finished, I'm aiming for it to be my March finish.

Finishes and New Arrivals

  The postman has been pretty busy delivering to the Treehouse over the last week. As well as the kit for Lynette Anderson's Scandinavian Christmas (I forgot to photograph this), he also brought the next My Garden pattern/button and Electric Quilt 7. I am stitching along on Scandinavian Christmas with Simone  and we are just waiting for her first delivery to arrive so that we can set a date for completing the first block - they are quite large blocks but I'm looking forward to stitching them. 

As for the Electric Quilt - I am itching to start playing with that - I've not owned a copy other than the Dear Jane software before so I'm sure that there will be a learning curve involved...I'm just waiting for the 'technical department' to fix me up with an appropriate version of Windows so that I can get going - I only have an old version on my Mac which I use for Inklingo cds and cross stitch software and it won't do for EQ!

I've been in a finishing off mood this last week or so and have finally finished stitching Geranium House by CCN. It's such a pretty design and I'm pleased with how it turned out...just wish that the fabric had been a little lighter. Its destiny is to become a cushion. I also finished off the little scissor fob from the LHN Needle and Thread pattern - that is super cute, I really like it - I'm not sure that I will bother to make many more scissor fobs although it does look very sweet dangling from the halloween scissors

   

I've made a start on my list for the Everything Austen II challenge in fact, I keep on finding things that I want to add to the list. I've ordered up a 'few' more books from the library and I had a little party over at Amazon and The Book Depository last night. I can see that this is going to be an Austentatious summer! It is certainly the weather for staying indoors and reading and sewing - we have had steady downpours of rain, thunder and lightening and some flooding for just over a week now. Most bizarre weather indeed. 

I'm hoping and hoping that it's going to brighten up and at least remain dry for a while as this has been a very soggy beginning to the school summer holidays. We had planned to get in some bowling practice today which I certainly need as my defeat last night was almost total - I blame it on the wet conditions! I did manage to score 2 points before the end of the match so I wasn't completely embarrassed. Also, we've now booked a week's holiday. We were going to go to France with the tent again but given the precarious situation of my back we thought that would be unwise. We're now going to the Isle of Wight and have booked a lovely little thatched cottage to stay in...I'm really excited about that, I think we're taking the bicycles along as well so plenty of exercise to balance out the time sat reading and sewing :)

I know I've not posted about my Flower Garden for a few weeks - I have fallen behind with it somewhat but I do intend to make some flowers before the end of the month and post about them at the same time I post about my clamshell progress. A new Inklingo collection of 1/2 clamshells and edges has just been released and I will certainly be adding this to my Inklingo library very soon along with the 1" diamond collection which I need for my Flower Garden.

Hoping to have the stitching completed on a couple more Christmas story blocks this week...just a few more roses and leaves to go :)