Finally, something to show on Design Wall Monday

Knock,knock...anybody home? I didn't plan on disappearing for over a week, sorry, it just happened. My crafty mojo has been lagging lately with a lot of projects started and then frogged because of one issue or another. That doesn't make for good blogging. But I did get in a mini-retreat over the weekend and that proved to be quite productive. I decided to take only one project so I would focus, a skill I'm not real adept at. And yes, maybe I did sneak a second project into the plastic bin... but I didn't touch it. I stayed on task and worked on these BOMs from Bertie's Year which I got as a Christmas present from my sons from Fat Quarter Shop - you can see all of them here.

Here are the first four months...

I decided to do as much of the stitching with my machine as possible. I used my blanket stitch with Sulky rayon thread to sew down the applique shapes and a triple stitch to do stems, and leaf veins, and bird feet and other details.

This is January. I still need to add a hand embroidered border in perle cotton and do some random snowflakes and buttons for berries.

Here 's close up and you can see that I used the triple stitch (#5 on my Janome 6500) to embroider the arm of the snowman. I added french knots for eyes and buttons and made a bow on Bertie's hood.

This is February - I LOVE that spray of bleeding hearts! Ignore that white blotch - it isn't on the block it just showed up in the picture.

This is March - I wanted to get the border of HST on it but I miscounted the fabric I brought with me and was short a couple of triangles.

Here's another close up where you can see that I combined machine stitching with hand embroidered details and I added the stripes on the bee with a pigma pen.

Isn't April cute? Love the hood with the bunny ears and the nest with the Easter eggs. Like all the others, it still needs the decorative stitched border and some buttons.

Now when I took these I thought I'd have them done in no time but boy was I wrong. Even doing things by machine it takes a while to get these done. I have a friend who is doing this project too and she is making hers into a quilt. My plan is to make each of these a removable pillow cover, so I can change it every month and have a seasonal decorative pillow to put on my couch... or maybe my bed. Either way I will enjoy them. I love the little bird in all his get-ups.

This project is all done in flannel. I haven't worked much with flannel before this project but it seems pretty easy.  Each month I get a kit in the mail and FQS is extremely generous with the amount of material they include. I have a ton of fabric leftover each month and I think by the time I'm finished I could do this whole project a second time... I could... but I'm not. I'm happy with the blanket stitch applique and I think I'll do more of this in the future. I'm not a hand applique gal. I love to cross stitch and knit and crochet but hand applique just isn't my thing. I've done it in the past and I do a pretty nice job but I don't enjoy it. Sooooo... I'm going to spend my crafty hours doing what makes me happy, happy, happy!

Hope you have a good week - they are calling for another cloudy rainy week like the last one - yuck! Well, maybe I'll stay inside and get some more crafty stuff done - I can hope!

happy stitching-
carol fun