Pretty stuff for a Slow Sunday...

Hello- well it was another busy running around week... Fall definitely showed up and that was nice... much cooler weather... even an overnight "freeze warning" which I was kinda hoping will kill off a lot of the flowers in the garden ... but it didn't ... they are still blooming... and I find it very difficult to dig up stuff that is blooming... so the garden clean up remains on hold... but I'm just going to have to do it. Right now I'm thinking about the 1st or 2nd week of November... but I have to figure out when I'm going to have time to do it.

A new "normal" schedule has developed which has me in and out of the house almost every day... some of it is of my choosing, other things aren't. After running around M/T/W/Th I was all ready to stay home on Friday and get something done... but then Friday came and I was exhausted and just didn't feel well and spent most of the day sitting in my chair vegging... not sure how to manage things yet...but I'm working on it. 

Okay... enough whining... onto some pretty things!  I want to start off with this beautiful quilt top!!

all hand appliqued with my favorite American Jane fabrics... a gift from my sweet friend Darlene... isn't it AWESOME??  So many pretty prints and a million different background prints... Darlene you have a great stash!  Don't the colors just dance before your eyes? You just look and look and look and keep finding something new... here are some close ups...

But wait there's more!  

Three little mini quilts that will be perfect for my displays! Thank you so much Darlene!  I will treasure all of these forever!!

As for me showing something crafty this week, well, I didn't do any cross stitch or sewing this week... I did do some knitting but as you will see I couldn't focus and instead of getting maybe one sock fully knitted... I have two partially knitted socks... sigh... 

First is this tan pair... I used one Opal yarn here for the leg and a different mini skein for the heel which you  can barely see in this pic... 

Next is this green pair... both Opal yarns... I'm alternating the two yarns every other round and I thought it would be stripier... but they are  very similar... it is pretty subtle IRL... which is okay but not what I was really going for. 

I do like the orange bits... it breaks things up... but I really want to do something stripier... sooooo I'm contemplating starting a 3rd pair with two of these...

I think I should definitely use that gold-y one the left and then pick one of the green-y ones... Need to find another pair of circular needles... I know I have them. 

Not sure what I'll get into this week. I stalled on the BBD The Bells on Christmas Day sampler as the last row of letters isn't a full alphabet ... it just peters out after LMNO... and that bugs me...

and I've been thinking what I could substitute ... it already says Peace on Earth in the bottom half so that's not gonna work, and then it hit me... I could put in the initials of my family members... I like this a lot... and perhaps that will motivate me to pick this up in the next week. 

It will be the last week for my Halloween decorations... Trick or Treat is Friday night and I'm hoping we have some decent weather... the last several years Halloween has been cold or rainy or both... currently the forecast is for a dry night... I'm counting on it as I picked up two ginormous bags of candy at Costco... if the weather holds we will have a ton of kids and with the new porch/steps it will be so much easier to give out candy. 

Back to the decor... this is  the big display shelf ... 

at the top I have Bent Creek's Spooky Row...

And right below is Prairie Schooler's Trick or Treat... this is my FAVORITE Halloween piece! 

I think the colors on this work so well and I LOVE the little trick or treaters at the bottom... I love them so much that I stitched all of them a second time as little pillows ... you CAN NOT go wrong with stitching anything from Prairie Schooler IMHO... 

Moving down ...

This is Tricks or Treats  by With Thy Needle & Thread...  this one is an older chart of her's ... and you know I love pumpkin headed gals and she's so happy!! 

On the bottom shelf MORE pumpkin headed gals... the one on the left with the cute little checked skirt outfit is Boo to You by WTN&T ... the Spooky pumpkin is from Lizzie Kate ... 

and the one on the right is Halloween Queen from Notforgotten Farms... 

and did you spot the little pumpkin headed gal tucked in the back...she's one of the trick or treaters from PS Trick or Treat.  

Of course I hung my Gourdy Guys wreath...

and next to the door is Lizzie Kate's Boo Club. 

I do have a nice collection of Halloween stitching... and I really like painting fabric for Halloween pieces because you can use so many colors... orange, yellow, green, purple!  Next year I hope to have enough pieces to decorate out on the sunroom porch... there are so many cute Halloween charts ... the hard part is choosing what to stitch!

As I said at the beginning of this post my weeks are getting busy and this upcoming one is no exception... going to work out with Anna on Monday and  doing dinner that evening with friends. Elliott on Tuesday. Work out again with Anna on Wednesday.  Appointment to get my hair done on Thursday and Friday morning Elliott's school is doing a  Halloween parade... can't miss that!!! And none of these is an all day affair but somehow getting dressed and getting out of the house and then coming home disrupts my mojo to get something crafty done. I know I am blessed to be able to run around like this... so many wonderful people in my life and so far I can get myself where I need to be when I need to be there... but sometimes I feel the need for a little whine... and cheese...with crackers...LOL

Oh as a follow up to last week... I got a cortisone shot in my left hand on Monday.. it does seem to be helping the trigger finger... doc said to give it a week or so, if I don't get relief come back we'll do it again, and if that doesn't work then we'd talk about surgery... and on Tuesday last week I went and got a cortisone shot in my right knee... my "good" knee... it also seems to be helping. My left knee that I got the PRP shot in is giving me some trouble ... at the moment I'm probably going to try it again as  the only other option is knee replacement... arghh... getting old sucks! And going to get the cortisone shots involves two different doctors at two different locations but from the same provider... the doc who will give you a shot in your hand doesn't do knees and vice versa... so much specialization..

Thanks for listening to the whining today... I'm in a mood ... can you tell? LOL Plans for today are a birthday dinner for a family member and maybe some stitching on the sunroom porch... maybe...

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts and check out what's happening over there... hope you have the kind of week that you want!!

and I'll leave you with this pic... 

Elliott made a fort out of the many quilts I've left at his house... and he Facetimed me to show me his creation... and then he said "thank you for making the quilts Grandma Carol"...needless to say I was a puddle of goo!

happy stitching-

carol fun 

Some Halloween and some Christmas on a Slow Sunday...

Hello - well another week where there was a lot of coming and going and coming and going and I tried hard to squeeze in a little craftiness. The weather has been divine... had the windows open every day! As I type this (Saturday afternoon) it may hit 80, but the rest of the week is highs in the 60s... Fall weather!!

My garden flowers are still going strong and while they are lovely to look at I keep thinking of all the clean up work I will need to do... realistically it will be November before I even start the job... and realistically I'm dreading the job and want to get it over with. 

I did get my Halloween decor out last weekend. Here's a look at what I've put out...

The wall...

went with the GIANT spider quilt... I think the googly eyes are a chef's kiss on this one...LOL... 

The tier tray has some new pieces of cross stitch on it... Boo Berries and Sprout from Notforgotten Farms... 

here's a close up... front...

back...

I have some small displays around the living room... a spooky little tier tray (a $spot Target purchase years ago)... the cat on the top is a snippet from Prairie Schooler Trick or Treat and the Halloween pillow is from The Drawn Thread's Little Bits of Halloween. 

And the monthly piece from Hands on Designs....

The small shelf unit got decked out nicely...

On the left a spooky house plate with a small framed Lizzie Kate piece and a little wonky bat from Bent Creek.

On the right side Lizzie Kate's Halloween ABC on linen I painted with Rit Dye... Halloween stuff is fun to paint because you can use so many colors!

On the middle and the bottom shelves a little witch, another snippet from Prairie Schooler's Trick or Treat and one of many pumpkin headed ladies I've stitched, Matilda Hornbuckle from Notforgotten Farms... below is a Debbie Mumm tin I just picked up this year on eBay... so cute... the Trick or Treat is another snippet from Prairie Schooler's Trick or Treat... there were so many motifs in that chart that made cute little pillows!

In the middle and bottom toward the right I have a couple of Lizzie Kate little pillows tucked into the homage to Edgar Allen Poe and  Creepy Crawly Alphabet from Emily Call that I put in a clock frame after I took the guts out...

I bounced around crafty wise and settled on finishing up 2 pairs of socks that were close to completion... sock weather is coming... I can feel it....

This turquoise pair I did by alternating 2 different yet similar skeins  of Opal ...

This scrappy pair is a mish mash of lot of different skeins, all from Opal...

I  hardly cross stitch at all and when I did I worked on a winter piece... I need to get back to the BBD Christmas sampler... definitely on the agenda for this coming week. 

However I did decide what pattern to go with for my Tiny Christmas by Lizzie House quilt  and I sewed several days this week and this is it....

Four GIANT Lemoyne stars!!! These measure 36" finished. I started with 10" squares to make HST units and trimmed them down to 9.5" finished.  The little star in the middle is 6" finished.  I still need to add the outer borders and then I can get this off to Delinda to be quilted. If this looks familiar it should ... I've done this exact layout before...  this is the first quilt I made with this design using some large scale  Momo fabrics. You use nice big chunks of the prints!

.

These are some of my favorite prints in the Christmas version - pixies...

and Christmas stamps...

and candy canes with faces ...

and now I'm thinking this might get a great pattern for a new patriotic quilt... I have the Lori Holt Americana collection in a layer cake and a FQ bundle... ooooh... I'm liking this idea!  Now to get this one  off to Delinda to be quilted so I can have it on my bed in December.

Next week looks calmer than the last 2 weeks... my workout sessions with Anna got tweaked as she has a couple of doctors appointments and I have one on Monday... need to go see the hand specialist as I've got a trigger finger problem with the ring finger on my left hand. It makes crocheting and knitting difficult and right now those are the things I really want to do... and isn't that always the case... what you want to do isn't always what you should do... sigh... Elliott is my Tuesday jam and I need to check in on a family member later in the week... probably take them out to eat.  Dan the handyman is suppose to come Sunday... got a bunch of things for him to do... I'm sure other things will occur that need to be attended to as that is life.

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts today... hope your week ahead is a good one!

happy stitching- 

carol fun 

Running around like a polka dotted chicken with its head cut off and lots of samplers on a Slow Sunday...

 Hello - that may be the longest title I've ever used on this blog... but it does describe the week I have had ... and the week I have ahead of me... so many errands, so many places to go, so many people to see... it is exhausting!!!   Rather than bore you right off the bat with my week of running around I'll save it to the end of this post, so you can skip it if you want... no problem.

As you would surmise running around is not conducive to getting a lot of crafty stuff done. I was able to spend some time with the Blackbird Designs The Bells on Christmas Day ... this is where I was...

this is where I am... 

making progress. Got both borders complete and several rows of alphabet. I like being able to look at where I was a week ago... I did more than I thought... good for me!!

I sewed a couple more of the Momo hexagons and I think I've made a decision on the Tiny House Christmas quilt...but I didn't get anything cut out yet.

I have a tiny bit of Halloween out... my dining room table... little witches and a giant pumpkin in a forest of candy corn bottle brush trees...

the witches and the pumpkin are from Teresa Kogut's Hello Halloween sampler.  I have lots more stuff to get out... that's the plan for today. 

Meanwhile, remember when the metal HOME sign fell off the wall in the living room?

I've been dragging my feet to re-arrange that wall but yesterday Nick and I attacked this project and I'm happy with how it turned out. This is not a final arrangement but it is good for now. Everything was put up with Command hooks so other than maybe taking some paint off the wall (again) things can and will be moved in the future. This is how the wall looks in the living room... 

Nothing lines up... I did that on purpose as I know we would never be able to get things to line up... and having every picture a different size with a different frame makes that an impossible task. Now I know that in the picture some things don't look straight, but Nick and I have checked and re-checked them with a little bubble level and according to that little gadget they are straight.

After tackling this wall we moved onto the spare room which we call the Green room... cause is it painted green... very clever of us... and yes it looks beige in this pic but trust me it is green...anyway, I added another bird sampler to this wall. 

Again an irregular arrangement as there are other bird samplers in my stash I want to add to this wall.  

Hanging "new" samplers... that is they haven't been hung before not that they have been recently finished, because they haven't, got me thinking about how many sampler walls and sampler displays I have in this tiny house... it turns out that there is a lot... according to my count I have 80 samplers hanging on the walls on the first floor... and there are more downstairs but I'm too lazy to go count them at the moment. 

The hall is tiny, only a bit over 3 ft wide and I have both sides covered in samplers... I want to have that doorbell chime removed ... I have to figure out if it is for the front door or the back door... because you'll see in the next picture there is another one on the other wall and I don't know which is which.  I want the one for the front door gone as that doorbell isn't accessible from outside anymore, so it is useless and taking up valuable sampler space!

this side... weird angle... hard to get back far enough to get them all in the picture...

other side of that same small hallway...

The green room has a nice amount of wall space ... lots of samplers and my plans is to re-arrange this wall eventually and squeeze in a couple more...

and I tucked in a couple of samplers under the shelving on this wall... 

I started cross stitching and quilting 40 years ago when I had my first child... in the throes of maternal hormones I decided  I wanted a house filled with samplers and quilts and needlepoint Christmas stockings and I think I've succeeded in my vision. Before I cross stitched or quilted I did needlepoint and I do love the stockings I've made for every person in my family... but needlepoint has gotten outrageously expensive so I'm glad I found cross stitch where the materials are more reasonably priced... and I like the look of cross stitch more for samplers and decor pieces... it works for me. 

I moved into my little house 11 years ago this month and the amount of cross stitch I've done since then surprises me... when I began I decided I would only do samplers and they had to have a house on them. The second piece I ever did was this one... a sampler from Polly Carbonari... on Aida... where I learned to pay attention to dye lots even though this was DMC.

Now I have strayed quite a way from just samplers with a house and there is certainly an embarrassment of riches in all the different styles and designers of cross stitch.  My stash is large and I'll never get all of the pieces I want stitched but that's okay... just owning some charts is enough. 

So this is the part where I whine about my busy week, I will spare you all the details and just do a summary...Monday I had 3 places I had to go. Tuesday had 5 different things to attend to. Wednesday was the busiest, 7 different places I had to be at different times. Thursday was easier than the day before, 4 events to deal with. Friday I slowed down to only 2 places I had to be at and Saturday (as I write this) I've been out once today and I may be able to stay home the rest of the day and most of tomorrow...yeah!!

Then I can gear up for next week - which so far has at least 3 -4 things I have to do every day out of the house. Tentatively the week after this one looks quiet... oh how I want some quiet... the weather has turned cooler and it is glorious... I've turned off the AC and opened all the windows and a couple of nights it has been so cool I've had to get up and close them... my idea of PERFECT weather. I want to sit out on the porch and stitch and enjoy the weather. 

My plan today is to finish up the Halloween decorating so I have something to show you next week. Right now I have stuff scattered all over the living room... what a mess! 

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts today... Nick put a pot roast in the crockpot so dinner tonight will be yummy  and I want to rest up a bit before I hit the ground running tomorrow. 

Hope your upcoming week is not as busy as mine...LOL

happy stitching-

carol fun 

A mistake and lots of hexagons on a Slow Sunday...

Hello - how was your week?  Mine was nice... I wasn't as productive as the previous week but that is to be expected. I find that any really productive week is followed by one that is just meh, so they work out to be average over all. The weather has been hotter than I'd like for the end of September. I'm longing for Fall... cool mornings, caramel apples, turtleneck sweaters, hand knit socks ... and I may get my wish this upcoming week...  high temps in the upper 60's to mid 70's... I appreciate Mother Nature paying attention to me...LOL

I thought about getting out my Halloween decor but it hasn't gone past that stage... maybe tomorrow I'll get Nick to bring the bins up from the basement... I don't remember if there are 2 or 3... in the last year I have been trying to cut back on the decor bins and have reduced several seasons by an entire bin. So far I think Fall will meet that goal of one less bin... which is good as Fall is the largest decor group I have outside of Christmas...  hey, it's not my fault though... pumpkins just take up a lot of space!

So here is the last of my Fall decor... I'll change out the cross stitch and add some Halloween knickknacks for October when the spirit moves me... anyway at the very top is Bent Creek's All in a Row... 

Moving down...

Blackbird's Harvest of Friendship, Primrose Cottage Autumn Quaker and Barbara Ana's Autumn and the little pillow is a Lizzie Kate. 

Bottom section ...

Prairie Schooler No. 50,  Lizzie Kate's Autumn Alphabet, 3 little pillows from Prairie Schooler No. 164  and Calico Confectionary's Fall Most of All. 

Believe it or not this is a bit scaled back from my display last year... I try to make things a bit different year to year. I look back on the displays from years past and it has grown enormously since I moved into this house 11 years ago... time flys... and I have stitched a lot during that time.

As for crafty stuff, after finishing the WTNT Every Opening Flower sampler I decided to pick up the Christmas piece I'd like to have completed for this year... and I made some nice progress.  I'm doing the chart from the Blackbird Designs book, The Bells on Christmas Day... here's how it looks on the back cover of the book...

And here is my version...

I know ... I know... you're scratching your head... this isn't a BBD color palette... hold on,  I'll explain...

So the linen is a 32 ct dyed with Rit Apple Green and in real life it looks more like the other samplers it coordinates with ... I want this BBD piece to hang with  these Christmas samplers..

the Noel Sampler by With Thy Needle and Thread...

and the 12 Days of Christmas by Prairie Schooler... 

now I'm using all the called for flosses but I added in  Weeks Teal Frost and Oscar... I'm loving how the colors pop on this linen. 

I decided to do the entire outermost border first as it was an easy to remember repeat and it doesn't meet exactly at the corners but it did come out exactly as charted... and I was so proud of myself. I switched over to the easy inner border... just a line of single stitches... soooo easy... and yet I messed it up... I started over one stitch too many ... arrghh... and I didn't figure that out until I was this far in...

so ALL of that interior had to be ripped out... and I started again... I figure I would have been twice as far if I hadn't messed up... big sigh...oh well... I'm back on track now. 

And I felt like sewing this week... but not on any of the many many many many projects I already have started. Nope... I wanted to play with something new... and yet it isn't really new ... but it is a new start... again... I know you're scratching your head ... that's quite an itch...LOL... but let me explain. So it started with a reel I saw on IG which I can't find now, but the gal made a quilt with one jelly roll... no extra fabric and it looked like this...

I love this because I LOVE  LOVE LOVE hexagon quilts...in fact I've started two other hexagon quilts in the last year or so... 

this one...a Phillip Jacobs Stack n Whack...

and these 8.5" hexagons with my collection of vintage Debbie Mumm fabrics..

these are both quilts I will enjoy getting back out of their plastic bins... one of these days.

And to further prove my love for hexagon quilts which is heavily into Stack n Whack,  there is this one...  

and this one...

and this one...

and this one...

and this one... 

and this one that isn't a SnW but is a hexagon...and it is important to my current project...

So I started with an almost vintage... circa 2009 jelly roll... from my absolute FAVORITE collection by Momo... it is called Wonderland and it has great motifs like these little pincushions...

and scissors and  my favorite print is this floral...

I had a skirt with almost this exact floral print back in 1966... I wore it in my 8th grade class picture... I had a olive green poor boy mock turtleneck sweater and cream colored fishnet stockings... it was the epitome of style back then!! yes it was!!

I decided to use this jelly roll as I saw a little video last week and it talked about using the good china and wearing your best jewelry, TODAY... don't wait... because you don't know what tomorrow will bring ... and while it brings you joy it probably won't mean anything to those who have to clean it out of your house... a sobering thought...  

Anyway to get back on track... I've got all of the strips paired up and sewn to each other and I got some blocks made... 

not sure I like them all smushed together... and then it hit me... I could add triangle pieces like the last quilt pic and make this larger... and that's what I want to do!!

So I went to my stash and I have  5 yd piece of a small blue polka dot ... and I like how some of the fabrics like that blue scissors print will blend into the "star" point... so I got to wondering if I could make this even bigger... maybe big enough to fit my full size bed...hmm?? Since this fabric collection is 16 years old and it wasn't one of Moda's top designers I didn't hold out a lot of hope that I could find anymore... and if I did find it I expect it to be pricey... but God must want me to make this quilt larger because I found another jelly roll on eBay and they were only asking $43... which is on par with what jelly rolls are selling for now... it should arrive in the mail tomorrow. Now another jelly roll  might not be enough to make this a full size bed quilt... but looking back at that last quilt pic I could add "solid" hexagons too... oooohhh...this has so many possibilities... and to think I was just gonna make a throw sized quilt.....LOL

Now I have no business working on this quilt... I should get going on the Lizzy House Tiny Christmas quilt I want for this Christmas, but I've changed my mind about what pattern to use about a dozen times... right now I'm still thinking about the FQS freebie pattern FQ Cubes... it would show off nice chunks of the fabric and it is easy to put together...I need to take the plunge and just start cutting it out... maybe this week... maybe.

So far in the upcoming week there's a yearly dermatology appointment on Monday, Elliott on Tuesday, a work out session, a lunch with a family member and a dinner with a friend on Wednesday- that is gonna be a very busy day... hopefully Thursday and Friday will give me time to decorate and stitch and sew. 

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts today...and  I'm hoping that Dan the handyman can come over... I have a couple of things for him to do ... hope your week ahead is a good one!

happy stitching-

carol fun