A sampler for Sunday and where did last week go???

Remember last Monday when I said it was a busy day, I lied. It was an easy day compared to the rest of the week. Tuesday was crazy running around trying to get my car back from repairs, Wednesday I was out of the house all day with a trip to Columbus for a clinic visit to OSU for my brother, Thursday I did a ton of errands that didn't get done earlier in the week, Friday, heck I don't remember what happened Friday, and Saturday, after I dragged my sleepy butt to sock club in the morning I came home and took a looooooong afternoon nap. Notice no where in that week was there any productive craftiness - sigh -- so sad. ( I know your heart goes out to me - LOL! As if your lives aren't even busier!) But I do have a sampler to show for Sunday.



I know this is another Ewe & Eye & Friend but I haven't a clue what it is called. Sometimes I can go to this site, Twisted Threads, and figure out what the name of the piece is by the verse but this one doesn't have one. I do remember that this chart and flosses was a Mother's Day present one year from my boys.
I also remember that while it looks symmetrical it isn't and I had to do a bunch of frogging to put things right. The alphabet on this one is so pretty.



See how the capital letters are all done in giant smyrna cross stitches? Great texture and I love the soft gold color. Any shade of yellow makes me happy! I have had a bunch of comments and emails about how I get a sampler done every week and the answer is "I don't". If you look at lots of my samplers you'll see dates that stretch back to the 1980's. I have been cross stitching since 1985 when my first son was born and from the beginning I was entranced with samplers. I think I have been lucky that I've chosen to stitch pieces that have held up style-wise and don't look too dated. I do know that they still make me happy when I look at them and I have them ALL over my home.

Also, back when I was stitching A LOT, during the years my boys were in school, I frequented a great cross stitch shop called Twisted Threads which was owned by Ruth Sparrow. I would visit almost every week and they always had the latest graphs, fabrics and flosses and they had framing samples right in the shop. You could bring in your finished piece, select a frame and whatever else you wanted and they would have it picked up and taken to the framers and it would return in about a week. Back then I don't remember framing being as pricey as it is today. Now I take my pieces to my local Joann's which had a framer who's done needlework for years and I always use a coupon. However I do think framing prices have gotten out of hand.

Well here's hoping that this coming week I will have less running around and more time at home to be crafty. Happy stitching!

carol fun

A design wall for a busy Monday

I'm trying to post this early (for me) since I have lots of running around to do today. Well as you can see my design wall doesn't look anything like it did last Monday. Fear not the Hugs & Kisses blocks are still being worked on but I needed a little change of pace.


These blocks are from a great pattern by Cluck,Cluck,Sew called Sugar Dish.

The fabrics are a totally different palette from last week and that is what I love about quilting - so many fabrics to choose from. These fabrics are by Urban Chiks and are a couple of years old. The collections were from Moda and one is called Swell and the other was called Sweet. I think they have been properly aged and are ready to be stitched up in these fun blocks. I even did one of the adorable Dresden Plate blocks that the pattern calls for.



Those little blades are only 2 1/2" tall! I stitched them down with the blanket stitch on my Janome - I love that stitch! I know that some of my fabrics don't have a lot of contrast with the Kona Snow but I'm fine with it. I'm hoping that the finished quilt will have a soft, well-loved, well worn look.

I'm off - happy stitching!
carol fun

A sampler for a lazy Sunday

Oh I have been a slug this weekend. I didn't have big plans to do anything in particular and I haven't done much of anything. I've spent time reading a couple of books by Fannie Flagg - Welcome to the World Baby Girl and Standing in the Rainbow - I love Fannie Flagg's writing. I stitched a little on the Mystery Sampler (I'm still on Part 1) and I did finish knitting my Cladonia shawl. I need to block it and then I'll show it off. But you can tell that all of these activities just had me with my butt in a chair expending as little energy as possible - perfectly sluglike!

I did get out of the chair long enough to take some pictures of my sampler offering for this Sunday. This is another Ewe & Eye entitled Let Virtue Reside. Notice another sampler with a big yellow house! Imagine that!



This is a fairly big sampler - about 14" square- and includes lots of decorative stitches. The leaves of this weeping willow are a single strand of floss.



And there are some spider web roses - I love them - and a heart done in eyelet stitch.



I like the brickwork on the house and the tree to the left has eyelet stitches here and there that kinda makes it look polka dotted.



And my sons initials are stitched within the grass. All in all a lovely arrangement enclosed in a pretty floral border.

Hopefully this week will find me more energetic. I do have a bunch of appointments but that isn't going to help my productivity on the creative front. Oh well maybe next weekend I'll have more to show for my time.

Have a great week - hope you have lots of energy and lots of time to be creative!

carol fun

Farmer's Wife QAL restart

Okay, I'm easy carried away by the lure of a shiny new quilt project and the Farmer's Wife QAL is no exception. However, you know how patterns always tell you to read ALL the instructions before you start? Well, I didn't,...and normally I don't get burned too bad by it but this time I've goofed up. These are the 12 blocks I've completed - revel in their cuteness!



I'm having a great time using my American Jane collections and the boxer shorts. So what is wrong with these blocks? They are ALL 1/2 inch too small!! Arggghhh!!!! I love this one called Honeycomb -



the bee fabric from the American Jane collection, Le Petit Poulet, was a perfect choice. And I got to use some of my boxer shorts fabrics in this block called Birds in the Air.



Those little HST finished at an inch! But the overall block is 1/2" too small. How did this happen? Well I think I have figured it out. I printed out the templates from the CD and I assumed (oh yeah, that's exactly where I went wrong) they printed out the correct size. I was in such a hurry to start sewing them up I assumed that the blocks were suppose to be 6" unfinished, not finished since that is the size my first block turned out to be. And since they gave templates and not measurements I assumed it was because the blocks couldn't be rotary cut. WRONG WRONG WRONG!!! A lot of these blocks can be rotary cut and why the author/editor/publisher didn't include this information I do not know.

So I did some searching online and found this discussion board, and if you scroll down a little ways you will find that a wonderful quilter by the name of lizquiltz figured out how to get multiple templates on one piece of paper (another shortcoming - why only one template per page in the book?) and she tells you that Template one is a 2 1/2" cut/2" finished square - marvelous! Now after I downloaded it and printed out the first sheet I realized that again my templates were a bit small so I had to go into the Page Setup menu, make my margins smaller and make sure that is was not "shrinking to fit" the page. As I remember it said something about "no scaling" - sorry I'm not very tech smart. Anyway I then printed out all the templates, which is 15 sheets, on cardstock which will make nice templates for the odd shaped pieces but there are plenty I can rotary cut.

So what to do with the dozen blocks I've already stitched? I think I'll make a little wall hanging out of them and I'm going to restart my FW blocks. Oh I should have known that it was too good to be true for me to be up to date on a QAL. I always get distracted by other shiny quilt patterns and veer off in another direction and then eventually circle back around. At least the FW QAL is flexible - they try to do 2 blocks a week but you can work at your own pace. Sooooo..... I'm going to redo these little cuties and move on. No use crying over fabric that has already been cut. This is a scrappy quilt and it will be fine.

Hope that someone else may benefit from my error - my enthusiasm gets me in trouble from time to time but it isn't going to change me.

Happy stitching-

carol fun

Design Wall for 4th of July Monday

Okay it isn't red white and blue, but it is as bright as fireworks, don't you think?



These are the blocks I'm adapting from the Jaybird pattern, Hugs and Kisses. I made a template for the diamond window and I really like the way it looks. The fabric is a sky one with the silhouette of birds but from a distance it looks a bit like water. Either way is fine with me.

Going through my strips I love rediscovering fabrics I've forgotten I had. This one cracks me up -



it is an old KP Kids fabric - pigs all dressed up! I have a rather abnormal love of fabrics that have animals in clothes. I blame it on my Catholic upbringing which gave me an exaggerated sense of modesty - LOL!

I hope to spend the rest of my afternoon knitting and stitching and watching a marathon of the BBC program Top Gear - so funny!

Happy stitching-
carol fun

A Patriotic Sampler for Sunday

Well the framer got this sampler back to me in the nick of time for the 4th of July -a patriotic piece of stitching.



This sampler is called My Hearth & Home and is designed by Brenda Gervais of With Thy Needle & Thread. I love the pretty golden yellow house and the little flags in the flower pot. And those huge tulips and that bird with the glandular problem, make my heart sing - such a happy sampler!



I personalized it by stitching the first initial of my boys, C & N, in a contrasting thread. Here is a picture of my patriotic display in my foyer -



I used my newly finished George Schnibble and made a little vignette with my flag Longaberger basket and my newest creation, a patriotic chicken - and doesn't a patriotic chicken tell you just how much I love the USA -- I really really do!



Hope you are having a wonderful weekend - God bless the USA!

carol fun

What did I do this week?

When I was young my grandmother told me that time moves faster the older you get, so I must be quickly aging because I swear it was just Wednesday. I've worked on several projects this week and most are still WIP but I have a couple of pics.

Here is the Cladonia shawl. I started knitting on this last Friday.



I have about 8 more rows of 225 stitches before I can start the lace portion. This yarn is yummy- Fiber Optics Kashmir.

And I've been stitching on the With Thy Needle & Thread Mystery Sampler.



This is so pretty. The colors are rich and those tulips are lovely.



As you can tell I haven't finished Part I yet and while I have the chart for Part II I haven't opened it. I might skip to Part II once I've established that my border meets. Part II has two big bluebirds sitting in a tree - very cute.

Yesterday I got totally sidetracked with these guys -


chicken pincushions! You can see that 2 are dotty and one is very patriotic.



And they have cute little prairie point tail feathers. Now this is an old idea. Originally the chickens were made from little log cabin blocks but when they popped into my head, I did a Google search and off I went. I used felt for the combs and the beaks. I had some little googly eyes left over from the owl and chicken felt pincushions I made earlier this year, and I still have plenty of crushed walnut shells. Honestly who knew that 10 quarts was soooooo much??? (Obviously I should have paid more attention in 4th grade math.) It is nice to have at least one finished project a week. It makes me feel productive in a way that laundry doesn't. At least when I finish a crafty project it stays done and doesn't need to be repeated incessantly - wash, dry, fold, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.......

Hope you all have great plans for the 4th of July holiday. Mine include taking things easy and doing some knitting, cross stitching and sewing -- the perfect life!

Happy stitching-
carol fun