Tale of a Shooting Star…

I have to admit that my clicky finger has been going a little crazy lately. I blame this latest binge on Missy. She recently finished her Snow Queen’s Slipper by Carolina House Designs and showed it off on Facebook. I just couldn’t resist; it’s so sweet! So, I went out and looked to see who had the design and found that Bobbie at Stitching Bits and Bobs was running another sale (seriously, when is she not running some sort of sale?), so I just had to grab the kit. While I was at it, I figured I would click around the clearance section and see what I could find. So, I picked up a Victoria Sampler Hearts of America kit for Maine that I will probably try to stitch up quickly for my FIL and his wife before we travel up there (hopefully in a couple of weeks). If I’m lucky, I can get it finished and made up as a pillow or a wall hanging or something before we leave. I also snagged a punch needle design by Always Time to Stitch at the bargain price of $1 and Keslyn’s Frozen Star for 50% off. To round out the order, I decided to try a skein of Carrie’s Threads silk in Lumiere de Cheryl. I have tried her cotton floss, but never her silk. I also wanted to see what the new Florimell line from Gloriana was all about. I was surprised to find out from the tag when it arrived that it is an overdyed Soie d’Alger silk.

Sorry for the mediocre picture, but I think forgot to open the blinds in the craft room and didn’t want to use the flash. Let’s face it, this was a slap-dash kind of photo. Hopefully, you get the idea.

I also have some stitching progress to report, but since I’m almost done with the piece, I’ll just wait until it’s done to show a photo. I’ve been working on Hinzeit’s Brush ‘Em so that I can get it in to the framer (mental note: call to check on the status of the pieces I dropped off in May during their sale) and I have all of the main stitching done and less than 50% of the backstitching left to finish. I should be reporting a happy dance soon, I hope!

For all of my friends in the States, I hope that you had a lovely 4th of July weekend. For all of my friends in Canada, I hope that you had a lovely Canada Day weekend. And for everyone else, I hope you just had a lovely weekend, period. 😉

I started Hinzeit’s Brush Em a couple of weeks ago, realizing that it needs to be done and framed sooner than the Heirloom Memories Sampler. Besides, with the odd ways I’ve been feeling lately physically, I thought it might be better to work on something that doesn’t take much concentration. At this point, I’m more than 50% done:

Photo removed. See the finished piece here.

I can’t manage to get a decent photo, for some reason. I’ve used my floor lamp and a flash, but neither illuminates the piece well, especially when you consider that it’s stitched on white fabric. Maybe next time I will try laying the piece against a white background, instead of the dark blue of the sofa.

In other news, I went to Fireside Stitchery in Frazier with a friend on the 9th. Bonnie was nice enough to drive up from the DC area to spend time with me and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Bonnie has the patience of a saint, considering it took me hours to do a color conversion on a single counted canvas design. I may be good at changing colors in cross stitch designs, but with all of the manufacturers and types of fibers available for counted canvas work, it’s much, much more challenging! Add that to the fact that some of the colors were out of stock, especially right in the ranges I was looking at, and I’m not 100% sure what we pulled together will work. Only time will tell. Fortunately, Fireside is less than an hour away, so I can go back if things don’t look right once I get started stitching.

Since I’ve never done counted canvas work, I needed everything. I chose to start with a design from Deb Bee’s Designs since Debbie was the one who starting me down this road with her wonderfully designed panel for the Lady’s Reticule project for the Savannah retreat. I went with Aquamarine from her Glitz & Glamour line. The aquamarine colorway is really quite lovely, but I decided to work with purples, instead. I was rolling along, picking fibers in a light lavender that all worked well together, until I got down to the last few fibers and ran out of luck. I tried and tried for a while, then gave up and decided to try for a deep purple conversion instead. That was even harder, so I switched back to the lavender after a somewhat brief and feeble attempt.

Here’s what Bonnie helped to decide on, after I got stuck trying to choose an overdyed silk and a couple of solid colored silks to go with it to finish off the design:

The colors are very pale, so it’s hard to see them, even though this picture was snapped in good daylight. I think I’m going to have to adjust the white balance on my camera. I don’t think I’ll use the lilac Au Ver a Soie pictured under the skein of Waterlilies. I may not end up using the Splendor in the lower right corner, either. The remaining fibers work together fairly well, even though the sheen of the Fyre Werks looks like it doesn’t match anything else at all. Trust me, it does. 🙂

Bonnie and I spent about the same amount of money, which was alarmingly easy to do. And, of course, the store doesn’t have any sort of automation to their pricing or inventory systems, so we had to wait while the owner wrote up both of our orders by hand. While we were waiting, there were two spinner displays on the counter containing lovely hand-painted charms and buttons which drew my attention. I found several that I liked and I could have easily dropped quite a bundle on them, but I limited myself in the end to just two. I will probably go back for one of the dragonfly charms because they look like the ones that Just Nan was putting out for a while. This little frog button was just too cute to pass up:

But my favorite find was this dragon, lurking underneath another dragon painted in a different set of colors:

You can see why that fellow just HAD to jump into my basket.

And finally, here’s a picture of the entire haul:

The three darker purple fibers in the top left area are a few from my attempt at the darker color conversion which were just too lovely to turn down. The tack kit that I found is awesome. The tack pusher is magnetized so that the tack heads won’t slip while I’m pushing them into the stretcher bars. Brilliant. And the canvas is what’s rolled up in the tissue paper. The last bit is the skein of Leah’s overdyed cotton floss at the very top left corner of the photo. I pulled it because I thought it would match some of the Leah’s pearl cotton that I had at home, but alas, it does not match. 🙁 For some reason, the color numbers of Leah’s floss don’t match the color numbers of their pearl cottons. Some matched, but some very obviously did not. Quite disappointing, really, but what can you do?

Now I just need a project bag for this whole design that will also fit the canvas once I mount it to the stretcher bars.

Thanks for coming up, Bonnie! I definitely needed your expertise and it was really nice to catch up with you again after Savannah. I’ll have to come down and return the favor sometime.

Is unpicking even the word I want to use? I guess technically it does meet the criteria of frogging. There was just no restitching involved afterwards, as would be implied by the term reverse stitching.

I know, I know, no one has any clue what I’m talking about. I’m referring to the decision that I made around the delicate question of what to do with Phoebe’s Christmas stocking. I truly appreciate all of the input that I received at that time. I’m almost afraid to say that I went against the majority and picked her backstitched name out of the stocking today. It’s been sitting on a chair in my little reading room for months now and I happened to walk by it today and thought “today’s the day.”

I know that I’m at peace with my decision because I didn’t feel any strong twinges or pangs of regret while doing it. While it’s not the decision that many of you would have made for yourself, it’s one that I feel comfortable with and that’s what really matters in the end. The only thing that I regret is not having a picture of it with her name still on it. I guess that was from the period before I became so obsessed with cataloging my finishes photographically. I am contemplating my options for the future use of the stocking. I had a brief thought of tacking a piece of fabric to the top where Phoebe’s name used to be, with the names of all of my girls, past and present, stitched on it. If I’m able to tack it loosely enough, then the personalized portion can be remove and replaced, as needed.

On a side note, I have to say that I am really impressed with my craftsmanship. The backstitching was nice and tight, with no gaps in the longer stretches, and was actually a little challenging to remove at some points. Go me. I’m also really glad that I thought to initial and date the thing in a very pale color at the very bottom of the toe. I almost didn’t even realize that it was there. It’s hard to believe that I completed that stocking in January of 2002 and haven’t managed to do a single one since. In my defense, though, I think that there is a HUGE difference between stitching a needlepoint stocking and a cross stitch stocking, especially considering that the cross stitched stocking kits I have for me and Terry are done on 18 count aida. That’s a whole lot more stitching.

At any rate, my final thoughts as I look at the stocking now are that there are 5 dogs in the scene. I hope to be so lucky as to be blessed with the companionship of 5 little furbabies through my lifetime, if not more.

I spent several hours between Saturday and earlier today, working on the hardanger section of Heirloom Memories Sampler. I finished up today, so I thought it was a good time to take an update photo before I rolled up the hardanger section and moved back up to the top. It turns out that I’m not as close to finishing as I had thought. I originally figured that all that was left was the hardanger, personalization, silk ribbon work and bullion roses. Yeah, not so much. When I scrolled back to the top, I realized that I didn’t do any of the stitching at the top that goes between the ribbon work and bullion roses. Oops.

Oh well, no matter. I still made good progress this weekend, after not having touched this piece in over 5 years. I’ll take it. It’s all I can do to resist the serious temptation to start or work on something small for a quick, gratifying finish, but I really do want to get this one done by the end of summer. I have realized, though, that I actually have to start and finish Brush ’em and get it framed by November, so I may actually have to kit that one up and get started on it soon. I want HMS to be done and framed by Christmas, so it can’t be too far behind. It will be interesting to balance the two against each other, but hopefully it will help to keep me motivated.

Blah, blah, blah. I ramble too much. Here is the picture:

Heirloom Memories Sampler by Thea Dueck of The Victoria Sampler!

I quite seriously have not touched this since early 2005. I can’t believe it’s been over 5 years! Shameful. But, as I mentioned, I have now repurposed it to be in memory of my late mother-in-law, who passed away in October of 2005. I just charted out her name and birth and death dates. I swear I have terrible luck lately because it took me more than half an hour to chart the darned thing. I had to do the dates over a dozen times. Apparently, I just can’t count correctly, nor could I maintain consistent spacing. And then I couldn’t center it correctly. Sheesh. But, it’s done and I’m ready to go. Almost.

What’s been keeping me away from this piece so long are that nearly everything is done except for the bullion roses. I have a strong aversion to them. Partially because they are difficult (do NOT try to do them with cotton, you will only get frustrated with your failure; you need to use silk so that it slides nicely off of the needle; and make sure you use a milliner needle, which doesn’t have a bump where the eye is, but is a straight shot of metal) and partially because they are freeform. I’m anal, people. I like symmetry, regularity and predictability. Freeform is not in my vocabulary. So, I avoid it. Like the plague. Unfortunately, there are bullion roses all over this piece. Seriously. Three large ones, five medium-sized ones and eight buds. That’s a lot of bullion roses, especially when you dislike stitching them.

I’m a big girl, though. I need to suck it up, go grab a little scrap of fabric, some miscellaneous ends of silk floss and do some practicing. I did some back in November on the bellpull I stitched for my father-in-law and his wife, but I wasn’t totally happy with them. In reality, they didn’t look THAT bad, so I just need to do them and forget about them. It’s not like I didn’t just have Thea teaching me one-on-one in February. It’s time to put on my big girl panties and deal with it!

Although… I think I’ll do the hardanger section first, so that I’m not trying to roll the sections with the bullion roses up in the scroll frame later. You know, for something to do while I practice. 😉

Oh, and the My Dad pillow is going to go in the mail sometime in the next couple of days. I’m really bad about forgetting to mail important things on time, like bills and such, so I’d definitely rather be late-early than late-late.

Here’s attempt number 2 at the My Dad pillow by Pine Mountain Designs. For Christine, the pillow came with the kit, so I can’t even begin to take credit for the fabulous fabrics they used. There’s a lovely solid dark brown on the back, which actually closely matches the dark brown floss I used. Obviously, I decided to use the dark brown floss as a substitute for the green that made no sense, as I had discussed. My dad’s birthday was today, so I won’t be getting to him in time for that. So, the question remains, do I just go ahead and send it now as a belated birthday gift, or try to remember to send it for Father’s Day?

Either way, I’m pretty pleased with the way it turned out. It was well worth the effort and I’m actually slightly more happy with the antique white fabric than I was with the ivory. It’s all good.

Now, I need to decide what to work on now. I could go back to working on Thea’s panel for the Savannah reticule. Or, I could bring out Thea’s Heirloom Memories Sampler that has been a UFO for years. I have decided to try and finish it in order to have it framed by Christmas. I could start Hinzeit’s Brush ‘Em for my friend, which I hope to finish and have framed in time for my next dentist visit in November. Or I could start Picasso’s Rooster. Oh, have I introduced that one yet? It’s from Ladybug Designs, who apparently has discontinued it and their entire Picasso line, because it’s no longer on their website. Or there is a glitch with their website, since the entire Picasso page disappeared. I purchased it as a kit from The Stitchery. They’ve been carrying it for years and I’m afraid that they are going to just not have it one day. It’s not necessarily in my normal style, but Terry and I both think that it reminds us of the mascot of our alma mater, University of Delaware, which is a blue hen. Other U of D friends of ours don’t see it, but hey, it’s my house and I see it, so too bad for everyone else. 😛

Of course, the kit used a big old chunk of 14 count aida. Ick. So, I went hunting in my stash for a suitably large piece of white 28 ct fabric. Turns out I don’t have much white fabric at all. I have lots of antique white, but not so much in the true white department. I had a cut of 28 ct white Jazlyn that wasn’t wide enough. I did finally find an 18 x 27″ cut of white (Jobelan, I think?). I cut it to the appropriate size, went out and bought another set of 24″ scroll bars to accommodate it because all of my others are taken up with UFOs that I don’t want to remove from their bars for fear that they will never make it back on. I brought it downstairs and got ready to mark the center before mounting it on the scrolls bars, only to find a good-sized stain of the fabric. What the heck? I rinsed it out, think it was just a scorch mark. Didn’t work. So, I washed it with some Ivory Snow liquid. Nope. I tried again, this time adding a stain treater. Nada. Bleach stick? Still nothing. Finally, I used a good bit of Clorox Ultimate Care bleach and let it sit for a couple of minutes, then (accidentally) washed it in another bath of bleach with some detergent, then another wash with just detergent and finally a couple of rinses. I then ironed the fabric dry. I easily spent far more than an hour working on this stupid fabric. More than 40 minutes alone to iron it afterwards. No clue how long I spent on all of the washing. Seriously, I wouldn’t have spent so long on it if I had another piece in my stash, but I didn’t, so I was desperate. I’m thrilled that I just figured out the overcast stitch on my sewing machine and had just used it on this cut of fabric before having to put it through this whole ordeal. Otherwise, I would have ended up with a fringed piece of fabric!

Now, it is on the scroll bars and ready to go. Yikesl! I’m in the process of ordering more 28 ct white evenweave fabric from Where Victoria’s Angels Stitch. Yes, I know, Anna will probably be irritated with me for not throwing the business in the direction of my LNS, The Strawberry Sampler. I do have my reasons, though. I just threw a good chunk of framing business in the direction of TSS and I feel some loyalty towards WVAS because Tawny has helped me multiple times in procuring old Just Nan designs and kits. She provides great service and is lovely to work with, so I felt that I wanted to throw some business her way, as well. I actually needed an additional small cut of fabric to go with the last LE Just Nan’s that I bought from her, so I tacked on two fat quarters of 28 ct white Jobelan to the order. Of course, the more I thought about it, I decided to also kit up the Lizzie Kate Dog Lessons for People while I was at it. This will actually test Tawny’s long-distance customer service skills because I don’t want to use the fabric that the models were supposedly stitched on, but instead the color of fabric that the model photograph shows. Two TOTALLY different animals, I assure you. Tawny dug into her pile of fabrics and provided me with some suggestions, while I did my own research. We’ll see what she gets back to me with tomorrow, but I think I’ve made a decision. It was nice to have her be willing to pull the threads and place them against the fabrics in order to give me an informed opinion. Sure, it would have been easier to just look at the fabrics in person, but I don’t know that TSS’ fabric selection is accessible to the public. I’m not even sure where they store their bolts of fabric; I’ve only ever seen them pre-cut and packaged out in the store. Maybe Anna can enlighten me.

Anyway, what gets your vote for the next project I work on? The UFO Heirloom Memories Sampler? Already started reticule panel? New start Brush ‘Em? Or new start Picasso’s Rooster? I’m leaning towards Heirloom Memories Sampler. I just need to practice my bullion roses. Again. And again. And again. Hopefully remembering the pointers that Thea gave me in class in Savannah in February. In the meantime, though, I think that there are still other parts of the sampler remaining to be worked on. I ripped out the cross at the top after changing my intentions for the design from being for my Roman Catholic paternal grandfather to being for my late mother-in-law. I’m going to stitch the alternative Rhodes heart instead. Anyway, let me know what you think I should work on!