Cross stitching in progress

My year long Santa's Village is coming along. Half way through and I've stayed up-to-date.

 

I've finished a couple of other smaller patterns that I'm stitching up to be a bag to carry my iPad around work. It's obviously still in progress.

 

The first is a Black Bird Designs pattern from their Honeybee Hill booklet.

 

The other side will feature a parrot from the Fall 2008 issue of Sampler & Antique Needlework. Since parrots are native in this area, I've been collecting parrot patterns when I see them.

 

The embroidered flowers and leaves are inspired by the book Jardin Reve, jardin brode by Cecile Franconie. Her blog is absolutely beautiful, and I ordered the book from Amazon Francis. The book is well worth the hefty shipping price.

 

The lace is hand dyed by me, and the leaves and flower petals are from wool that I have been hoarding saving, as are the batiks I scored in a 5" square swap.

 

 

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Waste canvas: not just for sweatshirts and geese

I first learned to cross stitch in junior high school, but got really into it in the early 90s when I was in college. I guess it was a stress-buster during breaks from studying, juggling work, etc.

Remember back in the 80s-90s when many of the cross stitch designs were cute little geese and teddy bears and Christmas nutcrackers? I decided that it would be great to have some sweatshirts or t-shirts with these kinds of designs stitched into them and bought some waste canvas to make it happen.

Fortunately good sense or lack of time prevented it from happening. Meanwhile, I've had this waste canvas in my stash all this time, and I finally pulled it out for my crazy quilt project.

I think you're supposed to baste it onto your fabric, but it was such a little piece that I just used a couple of pins. The stitch count is very high - maybe 14 ct - so I had to search for a motif that was small enough to fit onto a little patch. I settled on some cutie birds from Blackbird Designs.

After stitching, I trimmed the waste canvas close to the stitching. Since the directions had gone missing long ago, I couldn't remember if you were suposed to wet the canvass to loosen the starch/glue that tacks the fibers together, but I didn't want to wet the border, which worked out to be fine. I pulled out the stitches with tweezers.

All done! Oops, except for a missing stitch on the first bird's tail. Well, good thing I was looking at the photos while I'm still in the middle of it all. :)

What I'm Working on Wednesday

For a long time, I've been wanting to make a crazy quilt wall hanging for my son. I have a photograph of him from when we went hiking and camping at Goose Island State Park that I love, so I thought I'd make it the centerpiece of the little quilt.

I printed the photo on fabric and pieced together the borders some time ago. Then I got distracted by holiday gift crafting.

Now I've been able to rejoin one of my stitching groups that meets once a month so the time is perfect to pull it back out.

Most of the work so far has taken place on the bottom border. Alexander liked the macrame lace. I stitched his monogram and added one of his Boy Scout patches. I have plans for some beading on many of the seams.

A while back I stumbled across a wonderful book at the Half Price Bookstore. I've since learned it's out of print and considered quite a treasure on the used book market. I don't think I paid more than $12 for it and it's going for $50-$1000 online. Wow!

The stitching in it is really wonderful. Alexander picked out a few motifs that he liked and I started with this fish. I like how it turned out for a first attempt.

Now I'm going to have to figure out the seams and border around the photo so it doesn't look like the fish is biting Alexander in the behind.

Block Talk help

I am soooo excited. Gerry of "Block Talk" fame evaulated the crazy quilt block I did for the HGTV Message Boards Crazy CQ Summer Challenge. See the great advice she gave me here:

http://blocktalkwithgerry.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-two-cents-worth-for-angela.html#comment-form

Ellen's Crazy Quilt

I've finally got some close ups of the crazy quilt wall hanging I made for my daughter.

It was based on this photo:

First I traced the photo onto some satin and embroidered it a la Jenny Hart.

Ellen had input into what should be included. Of course her dog, Lola, which I beaded:

And Finnegan the cat:

Some of the details were just artistic. She liked this button and I stitched a paisley to tie into the colors.

I also tried out a few new techniques like these sequined flowers:

And the finish:

Crazy Quilting

Yesterday I had a ta-da event when I finished a crazy quilt block I've been working on as part of an HGTV Quilting Board challenge. Unfortunately, I can't show photos of that because there will be secret voting beginning September 1.

So for now I'll show another recently finished crazy quilt wall hanging.

It was inspired by this photo of my daughter:

First I traced the photo onto fabric and embroidered it, Jenny Hart style. I used long and short stitches for the face, satin stitches for the lips and eyes, chain stitches for the wrap, and the bullion stitches are in progress for her hair:

Next I pieced the crazy quilt border:

 Then the embellishing began:

 Unfortunately I only got one shot tonight of the finished quilt before my camera battery died. Ugh:

My daughter had a lot of input into the embellishments. Her dog and cat are there, her summer camp logo, her interests in basketball and track and some other fun things.

I have the next one pieced that will incorporate my son's love of nature and the outdoors.