The Treehouse

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 :)

Long Time No Blog - a catch up!

The last couple of months have passed by in a blur of holiday excitement, illness, exams, cricket, more exams, crown green bowling and yet more exams!

There are quite a few photos to follow. In April we took delivery of our new toy - Winnie. 

Here she is on her first night away from home - we took her on a little trip to Castle Howard and York. We had a lovely time and the weather mostly behaved. She is very comfy to sleep in and riding along in her is huge fun!

During April, I didn't achieve a great deal of stitching because of the holidays and because of the aforementioned poorliness which is still ongoing so my stitching progress has slowed considerably. I did however manage to start and finish the first part of SamSarah Designs new monthly stitch which is called The Flock.

I LOVE the colour of the linen - it's called Red Pear. I got all my bits and pieces from Karla at The Patchwork Rabbit and am looking forward to stitching part two when it arrives.

I have also stitched month 2 of Lynette Anderson's new BOM In Full Bloom and have almost finished part 3. Here are the two stitcheries for part 2 - I love the little bumble bees!

 

There was a school bag emergency in April - the handle of Catherine's bag snapped for the second time and I decided it was time to make a new one. I used the All About Anna pattern from Stephanie at Loft Creations to whip up this little cupcake special...

I also made a matching pencil case which turned out to be more of a pencil pouch as it was rather large...not managed to take a photo of that yet. I wasn't allowed to photograph the bag model's head! I did however snap this quick pick of said model up on the roof of Winnie after a kayaking session :grin:

I've been working on stitching together some 2" hexagons on and off over the last couple of months - easy stitching when feeling grotty and it's looking quite pretty. I'm using Kate Spain's Verna with a few extra pinks thrown in - so wish that I had bought more of Verna when she was available, she's so lovely.

Finally for now, I allowed myself to be drawn into stitching the Around the World SAL by Papillion Creations. I knew that Carole was going to stitch this and had decided that I couldn't fit it into my schedule...until I saw it stitched up! I started last weekend and have so far stitched the first heart of part one. It was a pleasure to stitch and I enjoyed it all except for Berwick Stitch which totally defeated me and so I resorted to using my good friend blanket stitch instead :)

You can see in the pic that I am just now stitching the tulips for part two - I thought I might as well while I had the dark green out to stitch the second heart. I spent ages choosing which fabric and threads to use and managed to pick the exact same fabric as Carole is using! It's a 28ct Jobelan and the colour is Bone - it's lovely to work with. Thread colours so far are...

Dark Green  -  Weeks Dye Works Moss in perle no.8 and stranded cotton

Medium Green - DMC 370

Light Green - Gentle Arts Cornhusk

Floral 1 - Crescent Colours Wild Berries (an all time favourite of mine)

Floral 2 - Crescent Colours Clay Pot

Floral 3 -

Floral 4 -

Floral 5 - Gentel Arts Grape Arbor

Floral 6 - DMC 3835

Floral 7 -

Floral 8 -

Metallic - Pink Petite Treasure Braid

Bead 1

Bead 2

I did have a full selection of colours before I started to stitch by I'm tweaking it slightly as I go along which is why I've left some of colour choices blank for now until I make a final decision.

That's about all for now. We're off on another jaunt in Winnie next - I'm really looking forward to it. We're hoping to visit Cragside and maybe one or two other National Trust properties and just generally relax for a few days.