I finally got back to stitching on "Revenge" after completing my last block for the 2015 combined Crazy Quilt Journal and Bead Journal Projects! I finished color #10 (of 12) and started #11!
Happy first day of winter! I finally got back to stitching on "Revenge" after completing my last block for the 2015 combined Crazy Quilt Journal and Bead Journal Projects! I finished color #10 (of 12) and started #11! Christmas holidays will be getting in the way of completing this mandala, I'm afraid, (although it does look like it would be doable otherwise): Christmas dinner and gift exchange at one brother-in-law's on Friday (which means cooking Wednesday night and shopping for food before that --- once husband has determined what we are supposed to bring!) and another brother-in-law and family coming up for Sunday evening/Monday morning (at least two beds to make up! AAACK!). Still awaiting call from yet another in-law as to whether they will be able to come this weekend or not (three more beds?). And then there is the big bowl game for our alma mater on Wednesday night... I know I won't be able to resist watching it on the telly, and it's hard (nay, impossible) to stitch when football is on! So it may be the New Year before I get any significant stitching done.
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This was the weekend for staying in and stitching. Football on television, snow on Sunday --- what better excuses, right?
But for some reason, I had trouble motivating and didn't stitch every day, so my progress is miniscule. I worked at color #5 (of 12) on "Revenge", the seventh of the "Roll Your Own Mandalas". It is almost done --- I'd estimate a little less than 50% complete: I plugged away at "Revenge" in Roll Your Own. And when I say plugged, I really mean fogged. That lower left corner was ripped out three times due to silly one-off miscounts. But I finally got the third page done and the outline is now half complete!
I actually managed to squeeze a little stitching in around university awards events this weekend... and finish up the pieces of an ornament meant for a Christmas swap. Here are the pieces I stitched this weekend: and a closeup of the beading on the pieces I stitched during the week: I tried to get a photo of the beaded butterfly body but it is so out-of-focus (my camera isn't meant for utra-closeups) that my computer wouldn't load it!. Anyway, here are all the pieces of the ornament, prior to assembly (the wings are to be whip-stitched together, wrong-side to wrong side over the arms of a 1/4" butterfly clip and the body is hot-glued to the clip body, covering a pair of wire antennae (which I have yet to construct): Now back to "Roll Your Own", hoping to get at least some stitching on it done before houseguests arrive Wednesday...
It's IHSW pt. 2! As per my promise last weekend in IHSW, pt 1, I concentrated on placemats for my quilt guild. I pieced another placemat top, sandwiched and envelope-turned all three. All that remains to be done is to whip-stitch closed one side on each and quilt: and "Cindy" the third "Spawn" of the Roll Your Own mandalas. I finished "Cindy's" outline and completed 2 of the 12 colors of filling stitches: IHSW is good for my stitchery mojo. Now to keep up the momentum...
IHSW was posted early this month as part 1 (I assume there will be a part 2 coming on the assigned date of August 21-23, 2015. At any rates, I was stitching this weekend so here is what I accomplished... A completion! "Jan" the second of the "Spawn of Roll Your Own", a series of mandalas designed by Tracy Horner, is now finished: It was started back in the first week of April, 2015, and shouldn't have taken THIS long but other events intervened (nasty sinus infection, road trip to Florida and Georgia, etc) and I really didn't get back to it until the last weeks of July. It is in the "Tropical Ocean" colorway on "Iris Garden" dyed 32-ct Jobelin. Here is how it looks with it's "sister", Marcia, and the first three large mandalas, "Roll Your Own", "Reloaded" and "Bride of Roll Your Own": The outline for the third "Spawn" ("Cindy") is now started to the left of "Marcia" and there are three more large mandalas which will be lined up below the spawn (eventually!). I also spent some time with my sewing machine this weekend. The quilt guild I belong to is making place mats to take along at the holidays for the local version of "Meals on Wheels". I cut and stitched two place mats and they are ready to sandwich, quilt and bind: These place mats and "Cindy" of the Roll Your Own mandalas will be my projects to stitch on this coming weekend.
I had great hopes for this weekend, but they were derailed by two wonderful movies on Saturday and horrendous heat/humidity all weekend. However, I did finally complete my June Crazy Quilt/Bead Journal Project for July. It’s supposed to be a representation of our three week road trip to Florida, Atlanta, North Carolina and West Virginia, visiting friends and indulging in daylily gardens. Silver charms represent each stat along a navy blue-and-white whipped chainstitch highway. Crystals mark the daylily conference in Atlanta and the visit to the Sight Different Nursery in North Carolina. while two fly stitch palm trees decorate Florida, I couldn’t come up with a motif to “celebrate” three days of car trouble in West Virginia, however… Sorry the charms are so blurry --- they reflect light something fierce...
Well, I promised myself I would NOT miss another IHSW so I did keep out my traveling needlepoint and finished the leopard spots (well --- almost; when I was taking the photo I noticed one glaring spot that was only half done!) - and actually started another color, a sort of tile red in the upper left corner: I think I will continue to keep this out a while longer until I get my base blocks for the April and June Crazy Quilt/Bead Journal Project assembled and ready to stitch. Big projects like "Savs the Stitches" and "Roll Your Own Mandala" will just have to wait until I get fully back into a stitchery routine...
I did it! I stitched! Not a lot but I finally felt up to stitchery. The nasty cold is gone! Yay! And what I stitched was necessary... an embroidered quilt block for a memory quilt for a dear friend who passed away a few weeks ago from a particularly nasty cancer. Her favorite color was purple and she was very fond of daffodils so I tried my best to satisfy both. Although my flowers are the right color, they aren't daffs but I hope they suffice. Stitched on MCG Textiles 32 ct Pewter linen using DMC floss, based on a design from Mary Corbet's Stitched Sampler Alphabet ...
I was going to work on crazy quilt/bead journal blocks but I couldn't find my crazy quilt stencils! AAACK! Nothing like a fruitless search for a tool to put me off a project. I have two sets, but, having searched all the likely locations (and several unlikely ones), I have concluded that both have gone walkabout! So I ordered a third set, a sure guarantee that the other two will show their shiny little template selves as soon as the new ones arrive! But at least I can focus on needlework now, so the coming months should be a little more rewarding than the last six weeks! I had all sorts of plans for this weekend but they were disrupted when my routine was highjacked by a dinner engagement with husband's daylily friends from Columbus. That meant a 2 hour drive to, and another 2 hour drive from --- we haven't driven that far for dinner since we lived in car-centric Northern California! And it pretty much wiped out Sunday evening! So all I managed ot stitch this weekend was a part of Block 12 in "Save the Stitches" - five of seven fill patterns, but without color: Sadly, if I had just managed those last two patterns *and* the color, I would be half-way through this piece! Oh well, here's hoping I "recover" from this setback and get stitching in force this week!
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AuthorBorn in New Jersey, I grew up in Southeastern Ohio. Attended university at Bowling Green State University (B.Sci in biological science, 1964), University of Southern California (M. Sci in biological science, 1967) and University of Florida (Ph. D in zoology, 1971). Archives
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