1/17/13

New Things Happening

Welcome to my new blog created for all things embroidery.  I will post here about counted cross stitching, hand embroidery, machine embroidery and of course crazy quilt embellishment.  Which crosses over a bit because it is done on quilt blocks.  Then again, most of my embroidery work is done for quilt blocks.  Counted Cross stitch is in a category all on it's own, but I will be sharing how those projects go on here as well. 

At the moment, I have three counted cross stitch projects that I am working on.
This is the Nativity.  I actually started on this one about 16 years ago.  It had been just barely started then packed up, then we moved, it sat in storage for a long time.  When I was able to put my sewing room back together and operational, I found this in a box.  I worked on it quite a bit in December.  This was my progress as of the end of 2012.

Then, I had the brilliant idea to join in a Crazy January Challenge on one of my Yahoo groups.  The challenge was to start a new project each day of January.  Challenge 1 was to go through the 15th.  Challenge 2 would take in the whole month.  I did the first two days of January and realized that it would just drive me crazy to have 31 counted cross stitch projects sitting around.  I have this weird need to finish a project and I seem to be able to only focus on one thing at a time.  Okay, I get obsessed with one project at a time.  My quilting wins out every time.  The good side to that is that I don't usually have very many UFO's at a time.

For January Challenge I started two projects.

This one is called Blooming Poppies and is a small kit from Dimensions.  This is as far as I got the first day.  Most of my time was spent putting in some guide marks, hooping it up and then actually figuring out where to start and putting in a few stitches.  I think this one took me two hours to make about 50 stitches.  It will go faster, the actual start is always a bit slow.  We had just come in from a week long trip to see family in Texas, so was still unpacking that day along with cooking for New Year's meal.
This is a larger kit, an older kit as well, called Lovely Victorian House.  I actually bought this kit in 2000 when we first moved here to California.  I needed something to do in the hotel while we waited for the house we had bought to be ready to move in.  I did a decent start on it, then put it away to move in and then just never picked it back up.  Then, like the Nativity, I found it when going through some boxes to go in to my sewing room.  After deciding that I would finish it, I kept finding that I was way off on my rows.  I was easier to start over than to rip out all that I had done.  I could think of ways to work around the mistakes, but it would have looked like a photo that was cut in pieces and put back together.  Not quite lining up right.  I figure if I am going to bother to put in that much time on a project I should do it correctly.  This photo was the second day of the challenge and that was as far as I got that day.  Like I said earlier, the start of a project takes the most time.  I was very careful to make sure that all my stitches where in exactly the right spot.  I have done more and what I have done feels good.  It is too soon to actually start seeing the design take shape, but am liking what I have done.

One thing that I did change with both of these projects is that instead of trying to do all the spots of the same color, all over the place, I am working in sections.  Much more organized, makes more sense to me, easier to keep my stitches in their correct place.  I only cross stitch when it is late at night and the house needs to be quite for every one sleeping.  During the day, on week days, I take care of my youngest grand son, Mr. M.   He is 18 months old, walking every where, so not much time for any stitching while he is around.  But I sure wouldn't trade it for anything.

Oh, and let me also mention that I have other little helper that thinks it is great sport to play with my thread while I stitch.  I have to thread more needles over again when she starts swiping that paw and tail around.

That's it for now.  I think I just about got this blog where I want it, design and structure wise.  Just a few more little tweaks now that I am finally figuring out how to do what I want it to do.  Thanks for stopping in and visit any time.

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