Work in progress ~ not mine but my Mum's!

Not much progress has been made on 'The Red Santa'. I hope to post a picture tomorrow. Anyway, this is a photo of one of the things my Mum is stitching at the momment. This is the Minature Winter Sampler by Teresa Wentzler. This is her afternoon project as in the morning she is working on the Holland Mandala from Chatelaine Designs.

The skaters are done in one over one (on Sunday they only had feet). In fact, at the weekend the whole piece looked like it had just been started and Mum recons I am a faster stitcher than her, not so sure about that one.

The Red Santa ~ Progress so far

This is the progress made so far this week on 'The Red Santa' of the tree skirt. The hoop is 12" in diameter. As you can see most of his coat is done but there is a lot of backstitching and gold decoration to go on before it is complete.

In car sewing

Here is a picture of 'Tropical Kitty' part of the Mill Hill Spring Bouquet Collection. It was completed today whilst travelling, by car, to Scarborough to attend a funeral. Many people say they cannot stitch in the car, fortunately I am not one of them. I even manage to bead in the car thanks to a little bead box which has a flip off lid - I lost count today of how many times it ended up down the side of the seat, I blame the driver! On the way back I started another biscornu from The Sweetheart Tree but as a result of a large error and failing light I was forced to give up.

It's finished!

Here is a photo of the finished Spring Arbor. I am surprised how little time it took as it has18 fancy stitches, the majority of which were new to me. By the way, I only started it last Saturday afternoon. Again the photo does not show this at it's best. The middle three trees are decorated with beads, as is the border. The pink stitches are done with Caron 'Waterlilies' over dyed silk which gives a very subtle colour change as you stitch. There was however, a significant bit of 'reverse stitching' on this one. The leaves on the tree on the far right are, funnily enough, done in leaf stitch and the flowers with a Smyrna cross. I followed the stitch instructions and did all the leaves only to find that the mid-rib of the leaf projected into the flower space. This would then have involved stitching through the leaf thread to get to complete the corner of the flower, splitting the thread. Does this make sense? Basically if anyone else out there has a go at this follow the chart rather than the individual stitch instructions for this tree and the one next to it as that is not quite right either!

This morning I sorted the threads for the Summer Arbor but I'm going to wait to start that one as I need to spend some time on the St Nicholas tree skirt.

As of today this next photo shows my progress so far.

Reflections

So why am I enjoying doing smaller projects at the momment? The answer, Reflections by Dimple Designs. This cross stitch on 32 count evenweave measures 12.5" by 25.5" and took over three and a half years to complete, not so speedy you may say. However, in that time I also completed over fifteen other things including the larger of Michael Powell's Tuscan Gardens.

Variety is the spice of life

On rotation I have

• Spring Arbor ~ The Drawn Thread (this week)
  
• St Nicholas Tree Skirt ~ Dimensions (next week)

That brings me to the first week in February and time to start the March picture for the calendar, I have sorted the threads all ready. Then back to the rotation. With a week per project I think I have a spare week so I might start something else, mm I wonder what?

This is the progress made on the Spring Arbor.

January ~ Projects completed so far

As this blog is supposed to be about my stitching projects I thought I'd start with the ones I have completed so far, that is since 1 January 2009.

First to be completed was the 'Cat Lovers' biscornu from The Sweetheart Tree. My mum has always given me a little sewing project on Christmas day and this was the one for 2008. I had previously done the matching scissor fob. The chart was again a gift from my mum to cheer me up after the death, in early December, of one of my cats.



As originally charted the cats did not have whiskers so I added them using the scissor fob chart as a guide.










The February picture of the Mill Hill 2003 calendar series took a week to complete. This picture does not reflect how much the beads and the metallic ribbon make it sparkle.











This little treasure took just a few evenings. Barnabee's Bride from Just Nan. A cross stitch scissor fob fits inside the body of a jeweled bee which has a treasure inside it. In the stash I also have the matching biscornu 'When Barnabee met Bella' . The final photo for this post shows the needle roll inside the bee!