June Round Up!

Summer rolls on and I’m not one to complained, but I’m pleased that the weather has cooled down just a little.  

We hit 37.7C in some places in the South East, exceeding our June record and we are not used to those kind of temperatures.  I’m just happy that I don’t have to go out to work and am fortunate enough to have a patio and I nice big awning to sit under and stitch.

 

Which brings me to my stats for June:-

I had another productive month and I worked on 2 wip :- 'Ride the Waves'  and 'Santa Claus is Coming to Town'.

I had 5 new starts. :- 'A Stitch for all Seasons', 'Six Geese A-Laying', 'Build Sandcastles', 'Collect Sea Shells' and  'Make Memories'.

There were 5 finishes :- 'A Stitch for all Seasons', 'Ride the Waves', '6 Geese A-Laying',  'Build Sandcastles' and  'Collect Seashells'.

And a total of 8 FFo’s,- 5 of which were finishes from last month.:- 'A Stitch for all Seasons',  'Ride the Waves', 'Beach Rules', 'Soak up the Sun', 'Floral Etchings 2', 'Angel with Lantern', 'Patterned Pretties 4'  and  'Collect Sea Shells'.

As you can tell from the details above, I’m still working my way through ‘ Beach Rules’ from  Primrose Cottage,  and speaking of FFO’ing, I’m always keeping an eye out for interesting finishing pieces to use with the remaining panels.

I knew as soon as I saw this little frame in ‘The Range’,

that with a little bit of jiggling around with the chart, it would be perfect for my next panel, ‘Collect Sea Shells’.

I did a 90 degree flip, making sure that all the elements of the original are still in there and I added a seagull, stitched on perforated paper to hide ‘Home’.

So with ‘Build Sandcastles’ waiting to be FFO’d, I now have

 just two more panels to go and have already made a small start on ‘Make Memories’.

The wip I pulled out and continued to stitch on was ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ from Historische Stickmuster  and is the project I always stitch on the 25^th and 26^th of the month.

This is where I left it

And this is where I am now.

I actually carried on stitching on this until the end of the month, so managed quite a bit of the top left side and I'm now almost 3/4 done.

Looking forward,  July’s stitching will as always consist of my ‘Christmas’ stitching and the second month of  ‘Cross Stitch Camp 2026’,  which involves stitching something patriotic, or something with the colours of your country’s flag.

There’s lots of red white and blue patriotic charts out there but very few with Union Jacks or the flag of St George, so in the end I decided to forget stitching something with an actual flag on it and just go with Red, White and Blue.

I’ve downloaded ‘July Garden’ from The Sub Rosa Design   and am ready to go!

 Happy Stitching!

Sue 

x

Beach Rules

Designer – Primrose Cottage

Fabric – 36ct Hand Dyed Linen – Coffee Craft Fabrics

Threads – 

Classic Color Works

Black Coffee

Blue Corn - sub to How Do You Blue (Roxy Floss Co)

Caribbean Waters - sub to Take A Bough (Roxy Floss Co)

Cherry Cobbler

Deep Blue Sea - sub to Mountain Range (Roxy Floss Co)

Peanut Brittle - sub to Tahiti Orange (Classic Colorworks)

Sassy Brass - sub to Colonel Mustard (Roxy Floss Co)

Storm Lake Sunrise - sub to Oink(Roxy Floss Co)

Trail Dust

DMC

B5200

503  - sub to Whistler (Roxy Floss Co)

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Designed – Historische Stickmuster

Fabric – 32ct unbleached Linen

Threads – Soie d’Alge silks

 

FFO Frenzy

During my last post I said that my sewing machine was coming out and that I would be ffo’ing some of my finishes over that weekend. 

Well that didn’t happen for one reason or another and since then I’ve had some more new starts and finishes, so yesterday I eventually pulled out everything I needed and got stuck in at long last.

First off, I did the quick and easy finish of the Mill Hill Ornament ‘Angel with Lantern’,  by  making a beaded hanger with the left over beads and then covering the back with some sticky backed velvet.

The next ffo was also a simple one because it was going into a frame that I’m going to change out each season. 

That was ‘Floral Etchings 2’ from Heart in Hand. 

It involved lacing three flat pieces.

And they have been put into this frame for the Summer season.

This was Spring (Floral Etchings)

The third thing I had waiting to be ffo’ed was ‘Patterned Pretties’ by Jeanette Douglas, which was a Christmas gift from Stasi, over at Bee-mused and Bee-stitching.

It was a kit which came with the wool backing fabric, and I added some cream cotton lace around the edges.

Then, I as I was looking through my bits and bobs from my scrapbooking days, I came across a little oval frame that I thought might look ok on the back, with my stitched initial in it.

Then it was onto the three finished panels of ‘ Beach Rules’ from Primrose Cottage,.

Beach Rules

Soak Up The Sun

And 'Ride the Waves' which I had just started and mentioned in my last post.

With four more panels to stitch, last night I finished another new start, ‘Build Sandcastles’, so that's already in the pile to ffo with the next batch!

Here’s my little display so far

My final new start and ffo was my Cross Stitch Camp piece for JUne, ‘A Stitch for all Seasons’ from the summer 2026 edition of Just Cross Stitch.

Originally I was thinking I would make all four panels into pillows and I may still do that with the other three but when it came to the Summer panel, I decided to make a thread bed.

I still have to stitch this year’s camp badge and will be doing that with the same threads that I used for my June project, so until next time…

Happy Stitching!

Sue x

Let’s talk About Winter

 
It’s the end February at last,  which means the end of meteorological  Winter, and hopefully some bright, sunny days to come…….......now wouldn’t that be nice!

My goal to continue working on ‘Winter’ stitching until the end of the month went well and I finished three more pieces, getting them all FFO,d as well.  

I have to say, it’s very satisfying having them done and dusted and not just sitting in a drawer, collecting dust until I decide to have a finishing day.

I had already finished stitching ‘Frosty Tiny Town’ from   

Heart in Hand and couldn’t decide how I wanted to finish it, but in the end I decided to go with a drum.

Going through my fabric box I was lucky enough to find a small piece of wool which was perfect for the top and I finished around the top edge with sequins and white ball top pins. 

Now I just need to fine a couple of nice pins for the top!

Next, I continued to stitch and finish ‘Let’s Talk About Winter’ from Hands On Design.

I mentioned that I was concerned it wouldn’t look that great on the Pearl Grey linen, because it was originally designed to be a chalkboard effect, but I’m so happy with the way came out.

The frame is from Picture Frames Express.

Then I went on to stitch the ornament from the same chart, making mine into a little (not so round, lol) pin pillow.

The final piece, using the same thread pallet, was a free chart from The Drawn Thread. 

I’ve had ‘First Snow’ sitting in my download folder for years and just never got around to stitching it, but this little chart was perfect for the threads I already had out.

Oh how I love all the little birds sitting in the branches of the tree!

Next up was my two day (25^th & 26^th) Christmas stitching on ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ from Historische Stickmuster, which actually ended up being four days.

This is where it was the last time you saw it

And this is where I am now.

That's the full width now, so the only way up, but still not loving stitching on the raw linen though.

And last but not least, I did manage to sneak in one last new start.

You know I said at the end of January, I had plans for the left over thread and fabric from the Modern Folk Embroidery / Evertote /Roxy Floss Co collaboration for the Quintessential Frisian Smalls Sal, well that's what I made a start on.

In the book there were several bonus charts, so in keeping with the different shaped finishes we have already stitched and some inspiration from the Jeanette Douglass Sewing Box that I finished last year, I came up with my plan

I’ve picked  six of the charts and I’m making a pin cube, which I think will fit in with the collection perfectly.

So that’s the last of my stitching for the month.

My plans for March are very open as usual.

I’ll stitch the next panel from the 12 Days of Christmas and finish my cube and then I’ll have a look and see what spring charts I have and see what takes my fancy, because I’m still trying to stitch what I already have and it’s time to start on them.

Please understand that that’s not me saying I won’t be buying any new charts though, Lol!

Wishing you all bright, sunny and warm days,

Happy Stitching!

Sue

X

 Oh no wait, I forgot, I have one last FFO to share and that is the 2025 Holiday Countdown from Modern Folk Embroidery / Evertote /Roxy Floss Co. that I finally framed.

Here’s my shelf with all of the four years of Advents and two other Modern Folk Embroidery pieces.

I decided to frame all the Holiday Countdowns the same and all the made to measure frames were from my usual place, Picture Frames Express.

That really is it this time!

Happy Stitching!