WIP: Heart of Christmas Update

April 6, 20159 Comments

Last week I posted a new project start: Heart of Christmas by Stoney Creek. Here are a few progress pics. The section I’ve done so far is lots of confetti stitches of various colors (I’ll be glad to get into some nice blocks of color). But it’s coming together nicely. You can see the poinsettias with their surrounding greenery, and the teensiest bit of the red bow starting to emerge.

First stitches. I stitched the poinsettias first to have an easy reference when I started the greenery.

A bit of greenery.

Flowers, greenery, trellis and a bit of a red bow in the upper right.

New project and a scissor tip tip

March 26, 20155 Comments

Last week I posted about my finish of Faith Hope Love by Joyful Expressions. This left an open spot in my rotation. Joy of joys!! Just think of the possibilities!! After seeing so many lovely WIPs on stitching blogs I follow, I decided I wanted to tackle a slightly bigger or more complex project. The others I have going right now are fairly simple and with just a few colors. For quite some time I’ve had my eye on “Heart of Christmas” by Stoney Creek. I know we’re coming into spring and I have no idea why I am so drawn to a Christmas pattern except it has so many beautiful bright colors! You know how I love to stitch bright colors.

Sadly, I don’t have a local needlwork shop within an hour of me, so I do a lot of ordering online. In this case, once I got on the Stoney Creek website, I had to order a few specialty threads and buttons to go with the pattern… and I just couldn’t resist the winter edition of their magazine… and a subscription. Sigh. So here’s the deliciously lovely pile of stuff that arrived a few days later. I adore the ‘clear sky’ dyed fabric as a backdrop for the pattern, don’t you?

My package from Stoney Creek!

On a totally unrelated note, I wanted to share a tip to keep your scissor tips sharp and undamaged, as well as to keep them from poking other items in your project bag. I’ve been using knitting needle covers, which can be purchased inexpensively from most any craft store, on my scissor tips! Here’s a photo of a few of the tool kits in my various project bags. (I buy the plastic containers, which are meant for scrapbooking, when they go on clearance at the big box craft store):

What’s your favorite project bag or cross-stitch-stash tip? As you can see, I love organizing almost as much as stitching 😉

Happy Stitching!

Confession of a bright color stitcher

January 24, 2015March 26, 20154 Comments

I have to confess, I hate stitching in white. Or, more specifically, I hate stitching colors with a low contrast from the background. Seriously – it drives me crazy. That’s one of the things that drew me to this particular project, called “Redwork Quilt” by Ursula Michael. I love the idea of stitching primarily in those bright reds! The entire pattern has only four colors: three shades of red… and white. Sigh. As you can see from the photos, I haven’t yet stitched all the white background within the quilt blocks. I’ll have to do some soon. I’m hoping the fact that I can just fill in the blank spaces with white without having to count or think too much will maybe make it a bit more satisfying. We’ll see…

2 blocks of ‘Redwork Quilt’

When complete, the design is a border of 16 quilt blocks surrounding a backstitched birdhouse scene. I am making it as a gift for someone whose kitchen is decorated in red. However, I’m not totally crazy about the scene in the middle and may decide to do something different when I get to that point. In the meantime, I’m enjoying stitching the blocks.