April Round-Up!

 April just flew by, but I still managed to have a productive month of stitching. 

My stats show I stitched on 6 projects in all, working on 3 wips and 3 new starts and I ended up with 4 finishes and 2 FFO's.

The 3 wips were :-

Bluebird of Happiness - Cottage Garden Samplings

'Santa Claus is Coming to Town' Historische Stickmuster

and 'Patterned Pretties' - Jeannette Douglass Design.

This one ended up being one of my 4 finishes and will be fully finished into a pin pillow. 

The  3 new starts, brought the total of finishes to 4 for the month.

Four Calling Birds from Bothy Threads   '12 Days of Christmas'.

I love how this piece is coming together!

Quick Quaker Sal from Modern Folk Embroidery.

Jacob designed this chart to celebrate his 15 year anniversary of working with Caroline from Evertote and Kerri from Roxy Floss Co.

The final new start was 'Floral Etchings' from Heart in Hand, which you will see I have stitched as individual panels instead of all as one piece.

The reason for this was that around  7 years ago I purchased a large mirror for my hallway and they had this picture frame matched it. 

Ever since I've been on the lookout for the perfect design and I struck lucky when I came across Floral Etchings.  I purchased all four designs, with the intension of swapping them out each season.

At first I was going the stitch the chart as is and  discard the photo mount,  but in the end I decided to stitch them individually as you see above, which also saved wasting a lot of the linen and then  mounted them behind each of the apertures. 

 My final FFO was the month long 'Quick Quaker Sal' from Modern Folk Embroidery which I popped into a custom made from Picture Frames Express.

Plans for May might well change because I tend to be spontaneous with my stitching, but I'm going to try the May phenomenon that is known as 'Mania'.  

Stitchers perceive this in many different ways, from new starts every day, only work on wips, or focus on finishing,  but I'm going to try and have a new start on every weekend during the month, meaning a total of 5, although at the moment I have no idea which charts I 'll pick up.

As well as that, I still plan to do my 25th & 26th Christmas stitching as usual, and finish the next '12 days of Christmas' panel which will be '5 Gold Rings'.

So that's it for now...........I hear my needle calling, Lol.

Happy Stitching!

Sue

x 

 

Bluebird of Happiness

Designer – Cottage Garden Samplings

Fabric – 36ct Powder Puff – Roxy Floss Co / Evertote

Threads –  Weeks Dye Works

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Designed – Historische Stickmuster

Fabric – 32ct unbleached Linen

Threads – Soie d’Alge silks

Patterned Pretties #4 - Kit
Designer – Jeannette Douglas Design
Fabric – 36ct Mystery Linen
Threads –NPI & ColorWorks Silks 

12 Days of Christmas

Designed – Bothy Threads - Kit

Fabric – 14ct Zweigart Aida - White

Threads – Standard Cotton, Pearl Cotton and Gold Thread

Quick Quaker

Design by  – Modern Folk Embroidery

Fabric – 32ct ‘Dune’ Hand Dyed Linen from Chromatic Alchemy

Threads – Hand Dyed Cotton from Roxy Floss Co

Frame - Express Picture Frames

Floral Etchings

Design by  – Heart in Hand

Fabric – 28ct 'Inca' - Fox & Rabit

Threads – Own Conversion - Roxy Floss Co, Anchor & DMC.

Quick Quaker Stitch-a-Long

So here we are, into April and already a quarter of the way through the year! 

Not only that, we have a 4 day long weekend, so before I go any further I would like to wish everyone a very Happy Easter.

We had a fun sal start on the 1^st of the month, because Jacob from Modern Folk Embroidery is marking  15 years since he started designing with Evertote,  and he has designed the ‘Quick Quaker’ so we can stitch-a-long too and celebrate with him.

I decided to go with a blue/grey theme, so I pulled a piece of 32ct ‘Dune’ hand dyed linen from Chromatic Alchemy from my stash and some Roxy Floss Co threads  that were left over from various holiday countdowns.   Thin Air, Mountain Range, Yonder, & Blue Moon from 2023 and  How Do You Blue from 2024.

Jacob is also doing daily floss tubes, showing his daily stitching and other fun stuff.

My plan is to just keep stitching until it’s done as opposed to just doing the daily amount of stitches, and this is where I am at the moment.

Happy Stitching!

Sue x

Quick Quaker

Designed – Modern Folk Embroidery

Fabric – 32ct Dune Linen from Chromatic Alchemy

Threads – Roxy Floss Co

A Gathering of Quaker Samplers,(Ackworth Collection) – The Cross Stitch Guild - It A Finish!

 Yah, I have finally ffo’d my little book of Quaker Samplers!

Going back, I purchased the kit for this little book back in 1993

while visiting my first ever stitching show at Olympia, in London,  along with a few other kits which were long since stitched and finished.

Voice of the Shepheard (Home Sweet Home) - Told in a Garden

Hardanger Tile 

Time and Season - Moria Blackburn

But I was frightened to make a start on this project,
thinking that this type of finishing may have been above and beyond my skill set at the time and for that reason it sat in my sewing room until February this year collecting dust.

I think what spurred me on was stitching all the Blackbird designs from the ‘For the Birds’ Loose Feathers series, to make a heritage book that I called Family Footprints in the Sands of Time. 

I put that together as a concertina, working it out as I went and although it was constructed totally differently from this Quaker book, I felt confident enough to follow the finishing instructions and tackle it now.

I’m not sure if this will be helpful to anyone, but I thought I would show you the finishing in stages, so here goes.

These were my first Quaker squares and I found the stitching fun, with each square being small and stitched in one a solid shade of thread.

The first thing was to make the stitched pieces into individual pages and this was done by working a nun stitch all around the edge of each piece and  trimming the fabric.

The piece was then folded wrong sides together and joined around three sides with a small running stitch.

Next, it was time to tackle the front and back cover and this was the bit I was worried about because I had to pull threads and work a hem stitch around the piece.  

Baste the fold lines.

Pull the threads and weave in the ends.

Fold and work the Hem Stitch.

In actual fact it wasn’t as bad as I expected and although the corners are not as neat as they should be, I don’t think I did badly for a first try.

The next part of the instructions said to line the inside of the covers with the included red silk and then attach the individual pages to the silk.

I was concerned that the weight of the pages would pull the lining and distort it, so after a little thought I decided to do my own thing.  I added a strip of the linen to the back of the lining and stitched the same three central lines of four-sided stitch as appears  on the cover 

before attaching  the lining.

Finally, I slip stitched the pages to the inside spine on the book.

So there we have it......another little book to add to my collection.

Happy Stitching!

Sue

x

 

My Quaker Sampler Book Kit

Designer – The Cross Stitch Guild / Ackworth Collection

Fabric – 32ct Belfast Linen – Raw

Threads – 6 stranded cotton

Silk Lining fabric

A Gathering of Quaker Samplers,(Ackworth Collection) – Pages 11 to 14

 So, the final two sets of pages are finished for ‘My Quaker Sampler Book’, a kit from The Cross Stitch Guild.

I got a little carried away with these two pieces and started the Nun Stitch and finishing around the edges, before remembering that I hadn’t taken my photos, Lol, so you’re actually getting a sneek peak at how the pages go together!

There will be a full post later showing how the finishing was undertaken for anyone who’s interested in the construction.

 

Happy Stitching!

Sue

x

 

My Quaker Sampler Book Kit

Designer – The Cross Stitch Guild / Ackworth Collection

Fabric – 32ct Belfast Linen – Raw

Threads – 6 stranded cotton

Silk Lining fabric