Tale of a Shooting Star…

We were just in Walt Disney World for a week and since we drive down, I have a lot of time to think read stitch and sleep. Heavy on the sleeping part. I must have been one of those babies that you could take for a car ride to get to sleep because time on the road does it to me every time. It’s approximately a 16 hour drive for us. A lot of people might think that we are crazy, but honestly, with the Civic hybrid, we spend less in gas than it would typically cost one of us to fly down. Add that to the fact that I hate dealing with PHL and the TSA, plus Terry doesn’t mind driving and we have a (nearly) win-win situation. I say nearly because I have problems with my left hip that cause me to be in significant pain after about 3 hours of sitting in a car. Large amounts of ibuprofen on a regular basis are necessary to help lessen the pain, but it’s still not bad. Besides, we can take all of the luggage that we want without dealing with baggage fees. For us, that would be quite significant, because we pack a lot for one week in a studio that has a kitchenette – food, pillows, etc. – that would just not be possible if we flew.

Anyway… the end result of all of that driving (at least on the way down) was a finish for me on Blossom. I took pictures of it a few days later in full sunlight on our hotel balcony, but again I have found that the colors are not quite accurate and the picture was kind of crummy. Thursday night, I did a dry run of putting it into the frame that I bought for it. Unfortunately, the mat that I thought was going to work for it did not. 🙁 I was very disappointed and actually went out and ordered a mat cutter to be able to cut a new one. I checked to see if I could mount it without a mat, but the fabric was just this much too short. Boo. Hiss. I took it upon myself to try and stretch the piece to see if I could get the additional 1/8 inch or so that I could frame it without a mat. Unfortunately, that didn’t work. Drat! Foiled again! Or so I thought. However, when I removed it this morning from where I had blocked it out, it turns out I was just able to make it after all. And I mean just able to make it. I had no room to spare at all; not even one single thread at the top or bottom. Fortunately, I can use the mat cutter anyway and I bought the lowest end cutter that made sense for my use, so I am one step closer to doing more of my own framing without being significantly out of pocket. So, I went ahead and mounted and framed it today. Yes, I used the dreaded adhesive board, but I pretty much had to and it’s at least acid-free and produced by the same manufacturer that makes the mat board that I use, so it’s not as bad as it could be.

I snapped some pictures of the mounted piece in the frame before I pulled it back out and put in the glass and spacers. I had to take it outside and grab the pictures in direct sunlight in order to try to get the best representation of the colors in the piece. I think that this is the closest that I’m going to get, as it has turned out to be ridiculously difficult to take accurate pictures of this! I assume it’s the fabric that I hand-dyed which is causing some of the difficulties.

So, here are a couple of pictures of the finished and framed piece. First, a couple of snippets, a la Anne:


I’m not sure that I captured it adequately, but this piece has quite a 3D feel to the cross stitched portions because it called for 3 strands. Not to mention that I can’t take pictures that anywhere near as nice as Anne’s. 😉

Finally, here is the fully framed piece, in all of its sunlit glory. It’s slightly washed out, but I seriously don’t care:

I’m not sure that I’ll actually manage to get anything finished after this for a little while, as I have started kitting up Christmas presents. Neither of the major recipients read this blog, so I’ll be able to post when I get them stitched up, fortunately. Otherwise, I’d really not have much to write about. 😆

I managed to get in some good stitching time while we were in Maine last week. I didn’t actually manage to finish anything, but I made some progress on some small WIPs and started a new small project.

First up is Blossom by Maria Diaz:
Photo removed. See the finished piece here.

Next is Celtic Swirls from Ink Circles:

I’m going to finish this into a biscornu, so I have these teal blues on one side and will do dusty purples on the other side.

I also have a tiny finish, mostly because all I had left was the beading, so it seemed a shame not to just pop the beads on before I took the picture. This is the top piece of Lody Steward’s Pagoda Pincushion, as published in The Gift of Stitching digital magazine:

Once again, the color accuracy stinks, sorry.

Finally, the matching WIP that goes with this top is the bottom piece:

Anna will recognize both of these pieces, since I pull them out every stitching night and make very little progress. One of these days, I will actually finish stitching the bottom portion so that I can finally make it up!

That’s all of my stitching progress for now.

I’m not sure why I haven’t posted lately. If I could just beam things across with my brain, I would surely post more than I do now. But, alas, I cannot and the evil Facebook still has its seductive hooks in me. So, I’ll try to play catch-up, but split it into two posts, so you don’t have to wade through everything at once. Isn’t that nice of me? 😉

I have another finish-finish to show off. Try not to choke. This one was on a deadline, just like the other, so I pretty much had to do it. I wanted to enter the latest Victoria Sampler Yahoo! group contest, for which the deadline was September 1st. I’ve entered every stitching contest they’ve had so far and it’s been a great excuse to stitch and finish something small, so I just couldn’t pass it up. Since we’ve finished up the seasonal biscornus, the majority vote was to go with humbug designs and Thea obliged with Christmas Humbug. I chose to do mine on red linen, since I have quite a large hunk that I’ve never used:

I had fits getting good pictures, since I could not manage to get home when there was enough sunlight, but these aren’t too bad, except for a couple not quite being in focus:

So, there you have it: my latest finish. More updates to come later.

Try not to faint, but I have a finish-finish to show off. The recipients (my in-laws) don’t read this blog, so I decided that doing the reveal one day early wouldn’t hurt.

That said, I present to you Maine from the Hearts of America series by The Victoria Sampler.

First, in its raw form:

Second, in its pillow-top form:

And finally, in its finished pillow form:

I had fits with the finish. That photo of it as a pillow-top was actually its first incarnation. I had very little of the red fabric leftover after cutting the piece for the back (the whole pillow ended up much larger than I had anticipated) to actually piece onto the front. So I used a very, very narrow seam allowance when piecing it. As a result, when I started stuffing the pillow, the seams started to pull apart. After frantically trying to reinforce the seams (and failing), I decided to give up for the night and go to bed, seeing as it was 2 AM. When I awoke 7 hours later, it was with the realization that the answer was to remove the stuffing, rip off the back, rip out half of the piecing of the red fabric and redo it all with a larger seam allowance. While it was a lot of extra work, it was worth the effort as I will not have to worry about it falling apart in the hands of my in-laws.

Sorry, Barbara, this one’s not coming your way (in fact, I’ve managed to stitch nothing for you this year, sorry), but I’ll let you touch it, if you ask nicely. 😉

Big sister flower frog, that is. Yep, she just arrived at my doorstep this morning and she was impeccably packaged. I have never received something that was this well packaged. Getting everything unwrapped was like breaking into Fort Knox!

I’m not sure what I was thinking, but it was bigger than I had expected. She dwarfs her little sister. So, without further ado, I present big sister:

And, for a comparison, here are the two sisters together:

Big sis is fully loaded with nearly every pair of scissors that I own. I say nearly because I can think of at least 3 pairs off the top of my head that are in project bags or on my stitching table. They’re plastic-handled ones, so not fancy enough to warrant being showcased or even photographed, really.

Also, here’s my latest stash order, which arrived earlier this week, from Where Victoria’s Angels Stitch. Whoops, nevermind. I was cleaning off my camera and apparently nuked them before I uploaded them anywhere. Duh. Anyway, it wasn’t a terribly exciting order. Mostly fabric (white Jobelan, which was on backorder forever; taupe evenweave (I don’t remember if I got Lugana, Jobelan or what); and a small cut of a hand-dyed fabric for one of the Just Nan Over the Top kits), a few Mill Hill beads and a couple of DMCs. Yes, I know I can get DMC from Michael’s, JoAnn or ACMoore for less, but they always seem to be out of at least one color I need.

Anyway, Tawny (the owner of WVAS) is a blast to work with and the pictures of her shop look like it’s an amazing place. I would love to visit there some time. Oh, and I think I read somewhere that her framer actually does the framing for DMC. How cool is that?