What to do? What to doooo?? on a Slow Sunday...

 Hello-  I hope you all had a lovely Easter... we had a yummy meal with family a great dessert... my DIL's mother made a Pavlova, which was divine! ... and lots of enjoyable conversation... and it was so much fun we are going to do another version of it this coming Friday to celebrate Elliott's 5th birthday.... oh my goodness, where does the time go???  Last I heard the theme for the party was Number Blocks... it is an animated series Elliott is super into... along with reciting numbers and adding numbers and counting to 100 by 2's and 5's and 10's and multiplying numbers by 10 and informing you that 1 million is a 1 with 6 zeros and that is a VERY VERY big number... LOL   I found some cool looking Star Wars fabric at Hobby Lobby the other day... need to make a pillow case to "wrap" his present... and the way I'm moving I'll be making it right before the party...

Oh my there are just so so so  many many many things I want to do right now... and I really really really want to do them NOW!!  But I only have 2 hands and  there are only 24 hours in the day... where to start?  I'm just gonna jump in...

I'm writing this on Saturday afternoon as I sit on the sunroom porch... Mother Nature is marginally cooperating and while the temperature isn't that warm at least there is sun today and I want to enjoy it. I also want to put away the bunnies and break out my birds... but there are other things I think I need to get to before that... like this quilt...

There is one looooooong diagonal seam left to join the upper and bottom halves... 

and when I added those pretty connector corner "leaves" that make a star,  it did not occur to me that  I was adding extra points that would need to be matched...

and I will say that my standards of what is good enough have dropped significantly as I've put this together... if it doesn't look good on the first pass, I am picking it out and trying again... and I've had pretty good luck with that, but sometimes it requires a third  try... arghh... I want to have this sewn up and the borders on by Monday night as I already have an meet up at Delinda the long-armer scheduled for Tuesday lunchtime...  

Oh a tangent... are you in the path of the solar eclipse?  I'm on the edge of 100% totality... to be certain that one would see 100% totality one would have to drive a bit northwest of Cincinnati... and I could do that ... but I'm not sure I will... I'll still be able to see pretty much from my front yard... I have my eclipse glasses and right now the weather forecast says it won't be cloudy... it will be a last minute decision about what to do... was checking with my older son and he had been thinking of driving a bit north, but he's still on the fence now too. 

Okay back to  the quilting... along with taking the yellow quilt I'm taking up 2 panels  that I want quilted so I can hang them in my back hallway... first is this one I found online not to long ago by the designer Marcia Derse...

I love this collage ephemera look... and I'm thinking a graphic panto... maybe a chevron pattern...

And then I opened a drawer to shove something in it the other day and found this panel by Carrie Bloomston... I have no clue when I bought this and  had totally forgot about it... again it has that collage ephemera vibe...

I'm thinking this needs some kinda butterfly panto ...

I'm still debating what quilt project to pick up next...got lots of plastic bins with UFO's that are interesting... but before that I want to make a table runner with these little 9 patches done in Tilda fabrics...

remember there was a SAL for these?  It started back at the beginning of the year... and my commitment to the project was extremely short... like nanoseconds short...  anyway,  I think what I have here is enough to do a table runner for the small display shelf in the living room... and this will sort of fulfill my goal of doing something with some of the giant stash of Tilda fabrics I have...sheesh... letting myself off easy here...

As for cross stitch... oh what an embarrassment of riches I have... first I did finish  The Red Bird Sampler by WTN&T... this makes the 3rd month in a row I've finished  sampler... now in January I did the Prairie Schooler Christmas ABC's from start to finish... in February I went back and picked up the Prairie Schooler Garden Sampler I started back in September as part of the ill-fated "7 for my 70th"... and  The Red Bird was about 2/3rd done when I picked it up in March... according to my notes it was started back in January of 2022... some things take longer than others... 

I put my initials in the center... and on the bottom row I put the maiden initials of my Mom... PD - Phyllis Damon and the maiden  initials of my Grandma ... CW -  Catherine Wasser.  I chose their maiden initials as I still use my maiden name... I'm very happy with this one and when I was at Hobby Lobby the other day I saw some pretty moldings in the framing department...need to watch for a sale or coupon and get this one framed.

I'm also pleased with myself that I stitched up this darling house from Melisa at Pinker n Punkin Quilting & Stitching  in less than 2 weeks.... this is her Tulip House... I stitched this on 16 ct Aida painted with a pale Apple Green Rit Dye...

now the house was charted in yellow... my favorite color for a house...but I changed the flosses and went lighter... I was envisioning lemon meringue pie (my favorite) and I've made the tulips more peachy pinky and the greens more olive-y and the blues more turquoise-y... now to get this FFO'd so I can add it to the Spring displays... this makes the second house for the hashtag  #pnpsixhouses2024sal... 4 more to go an plenty to chose from... think I'l make one or two of the patriotic houses. 

And now I will move onto the decision dilemma I find myself in ... sooooo many things I  want to stitch RIGHT NOW!!!  

Any and all of the following charts would look great added to my Spring displays ...and yes I want  to stitch ALL of them but I don't think that is possible... maybe if I don't work on any other  large sampler but there are a couple of them calling my name ...  and I'll show you the newest shiny one I can't wait to start here in a minute... 

Anyway there is Blooming Tiny Town...this would look great on my dining table...

And these adorable robins by WTN&T... I LOVE birds and birds dressed up in cute clothes are simply irresistible!

And there is this chart called Pollinator's Garden by October House ... I'm envisioning a shorter version that I could display  on the phone book shelf of the telephone niche in my hallway... and it looks like a quick stitch that I can just pull floss from my stash...

And there are these pears... as you can see I have all 3 patterns from Annie Beez... each chart has an alphabet pear and those are what  I want to stitch ...

and I want to stitch them all on a green fabric, like real pears... this is a 36 ct linen I dyed with Apple Green Rit dye and I have some silk and some Sulky to try for the floss... now on one side it is quite wrinkly mottled looking...

and on the other side is it mottled but not as much... 

I think the real wrinkly looking side is quite interesting but I'm not sure it would play well with the stitching... and I MUST find a cute little compote dish to display these in!! Check out the bottom right corner of the Spring Green pear pattern... I MUST find a cute little dish like that... maybe 2 or 3!!

But wait... like that Ginsu knife commercial there is MORE... a couple of months ago  I'm signed up for Teresa Kogut's Patreon and I was considering dropping the membership, as all the charts she releases there will eventually be released to the public ... and then she posted the charts you have access to as a True Blue Whimsy for April and I was a goner... first one that caught my eye was this ornament..

and then there is this band sampler...

and this little piece titled Faith... I'll bet there will be a Hope and Love before long...

and who doesn't identify with this one....

but this is the one that knocked my socks off... 

now I'm going to do this as a long vertical piece and stack each of those quadrants...I'm going to stitch it on this piece of linen that I had dyed for some other chart in my stash ... it's a lovely olive green with some kinda bronze-y brown  patches ... and along with the colors that were charted, I pulled some extra colors I want to add ...here's my floss toss...

And while I know I really don't need another BIG project... I also know I'm gonna start this one as soon as possible.  I like to come up with a bit of a plan for myself each month and have one or two doable goals I can  accomplish... the last 3 months it has been to finish a sampler... I don't think this one is doable in one month ...and lets not forget the Summer Schoolhouse series by WTN&T that I started on Leap Year Day... at this point in time my goal for that one is the end of February 2025... seems reasonable, right?  I think I should focus on one or two of the smaller Spring-y charts and perhaps gets one quadrant of this  done...  now to pick which two... the pears would be quick to stitch but then there is the FFO-ing... Tiny Town and the Pollinator's would also be quick stitching and I plan to FFO them as long pillow like a Tootsie roll wrapper or a English Christmas cracker... I did that at Christmas with Lizzie Kate string... and the robins might fit into a frame, which is a super easy finish... decision dilemma...what to do? what to do??

I will ponder this as I put away the bunnies and get out the birds ... I'm not going to hold myself to the goal of getting another sampler done this month... unless a real small one sneaks in... all the WIP samplers still have a ways to go. I remember back to when I first started cross stitching and my focus was only samplers with houses... each chart had to have an alphabet and a house...somehow I thought this would limit my choices... insert ROFLMAO...over and over and over... at last count I've stitched over 100 samplers with houses and I'm not gonna stop!!  And then in the last 10 years I fell down the rabbit hole of seasonal stitching and changing up my decor... I blame Priscilla of Stitchin' with the Housewives for this ... and while I get torn between samplers and seasonal I sure do LOVE both genres... cross stitching today is so much more than it was 38 years ago when I stitched my first little piece... it was a bird in a nest that was a kit and the first thing I did was toss out the fabric and pick another Aida... that might have been an omen for what was to come as I rarely stitch anything on the called for fabric. Before I got into painting and dyeing my own linen I was always selecting linen that was more colorful than the pattern was stitched on. I've always felt this was a way to put a bit of my own personal touch on a piece... and in these later years I've gone further and further afield on my choices of linens and flosses... and that is so much FUN!!

So now that I've totally talked waaay too much  I'll direct you to check out the posts on Kathy's Quilts and hope you have a wonderful week ahead!  Between the eclipse and Elliott's birthday and a trip to see Delinda and lunch with my quilty friends mine is shaping up to be jam packed!

happy stitching-

carol fun