Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope that you are having a wonderful day filled with good food, family, and fun.

If you were to visit my house for dinner today you would see these pieces in my dining room.

I've shown these other times but like to bring them out and display them every year.

Keep on Stitching!

The Final Finishes from the Weekend

Here are the rest of my finishes from last weekend:

Little Sheep Virtue #7 Patience by Little House Needleworks.  I stitched this over one.  This is my interpretation of their finish.

Love Is by Summer House Stitchworkes using the finishing fabric and key provided in the kit.

And finally Bountiful Blessings by Threadwork Primitives.  The finishing fabric, wool, jute, and acorn were provided in the kit I purchased.  I love the detail of the wool leaf on the back of the pillow.  

Keep on Stitching!

More Finishes and Holiday Preparations

Here are two more finishes from the weekend

Salute to Abigail by Blackbird Designs.  This was  a special piece designed for the Prim Stitcher's Society sponsored by Dyeing to Stitch.

I did a very primitive finish as suggested by the finishing instructions.  I will hang this in my kitchen with my other patriotic pieces.

I did finally finish the stitching on the fob for the Delaware House Stitch Book.

My attempt at the octagonal fob did not come out exactly as I had planned, but I think it's good enough.  You can see the inside piece glued in place.  The space under the tree was left blank so that needles and pins could be placed there.

And finally, the cover.  I am happy with this finish and feel confident that I can do this again with the other patterns I have chosen that have this finish.

Tonight I did some baking in preparation for Thanksgiving.

First, Peanut Butter Bars or Crack Brownies as my Baby Boy calls them.  They are highly addictive. The recipe calls for a yellow cake mix, peanut butter, eggs, butter, sweetened condensed milk, and chocolate chips.

And then a batch of mini pumpkin pies.  I found the inspiration for this thanks to  Mary from Home is Where the Boat Is.  Hers are truly mini works of art.  Mine, well, I think they look pretty good for my first attempt and for using a knife to free-hand cut out my leaves and pumpkins.  After looking at Mary's blog I realize I have a long way to go in the styling department.  Something for me to aspire to.

Snow is predicted for tomorrow which could impact travel plans.  I'm headed of to work in the morning regardless.

Keep on Stitching!

Finishes

Yesterday I had a productive day in the stitching room.   I managed to finish these projects.

A nice little bunch.  I had hoped to do more but greatly underestimated the amount of time some of the finishes would require.

Today, I'll show you close ups of just one of  the projects.

Chocolate Roses by Needlemade Designs shown in a Sudberry Vintage pincushion.  The ruching on this is one of the things I greatly undersestimated.  I remember doing ruching before and attaching it as I went along. That's not what the directions stated this time. And I followed the directions.  I stitched this in different colors than shown on chart below.  These were more my kind of colors than the raspberry fabric and white floss shown below.  The ruching looks a little wonky in the picture above.  I does push back into place.  I may need to use a few more stitches to secure it so that it doesn't move.

The pattern calls for ruching around the scissor fob, but I ran out of ribbon.  I think it looks ok without it.  

 No finishes for today.  I took a little break and hope to get more done after work this week and over the long weekend.

Keep on Stitching!

Preparation

Last night I prepared by my stitching room for some finishing time by setting up my stations.

A station for cutting,

one for ironing,

a place to sort through finishing supplies and trims,

and last but not least, my sewing machine.

The first project  finished today was Sweet Little Sewing Basket by Homespun Elegance. This has been lingering in the box of shame for quite some time.

Here's my finish.

A quick and easy finish to start.  I can use this little basket and pincushion alongside my stitching nest.

I'll be back tomorrow with more.

Keep on Stitching!

Weekend Plans

This weekend I hope to spend some quality time in my stitching room tackling this:

the 'box of shame.'   It is full of all my finished/unfinished projects.  Those projects that are stitched and need to be assembled or framed.  I have a few frames on the top for projects that are inside.

And, yes, before you ask, it is full.  Surely more than a weekend's work.  But I figure that a start is better than nothing.  Truth be told, I'm not even sure what all is in there.  And, I haven't decided how I'm going to tackle it all, yet.  Probably best to just dive in and do one thing at a time.  Although,  I am thinking about doing all of the sewing machine sewing first and then working on the stuffing and hand finishing.  I think.

Hopefully the next time I post I will have some finished items to show you.

Keep on Stitching!

Delaware House Stitch Book

Last Saturday I traveled to Delaware to attend a class taught by Linda Lautenschlager of Chessie & Me.  She designed this project for our guild.  This is the cover photo for the kit.  We received our kits in October.

I should have had plenty of time to accomplish the pre-stitching.  By Friday night I had completed this much:

and this much of the fob,

In class we painted our boxes and lined them with paper that Linda provided.  We also scuffed them up a bit to make them look aged.

We cut out our stitching and mounted it on wool.

In between the steps while waiting for the paint and glue to dry I was able to get a bit more stitching done on the fob.

In order to finish I need to give the box a quick spray with polyurethane, glue the pieces on the cover and inside.  And finish the fob.  Linda showed a square scissor fob.  I think I will finish mine as an octagon.  We also made cording in class for the scissor fob.  I hope to get to some of that this weekend.

A nice day spent with some very nice ladies.

Keep on Stitching!