A New Beginning and a New Beginning

Happy New Year!

I am starting my new year with two new appliqué projects. The first is Auntie Green's Garden, pattern by Irene Blanck.

This is my first block of the month that I have purchased the fabric from a store (homestead hearth.com). It is quite fun getting the fabric packet in the mail. Each fabric is labeled and cut into small blocks just perfect for an appliquér who back bastes. Other than the challenge of wrangling this huge pattern (the center section is about 50 X50 inches) and my fabric around to get it traced onto the back of my background fabric

I was stitching in a very short time.

My second new project is the Benjamen Biggs wedding quilt.

The patterns for this 1848 red and green album quilt are a free block of the month over the next two years by Gay from sentimentalstitches.net and Brenda from dearjane.com. This is their third year doing free block of the months under their Just Takes Two (see the button on the sidebar) BOM. The patterns are available for one month and after that available for purchase. There is lots of interesting reading about the history of the Benjamin Biggs family and each block, so even if you do not applique pop over and read about this wonderful quilt.

I love red and green quilts but I am playing around with doing this one in greens and yellows. It is a large quilt, 100 X 100 inches and this would fit nicely on my king size bed eventually, and green and yellow would match my existing decor in my bedroom. So far, I have just been pulling fabrics, there is a little touch of blue in the center block of this quilt, doesn't this blue paisley fit in nicely with these?

Over the last month I have been keeping up with my two cross stitch samplers. The peacocks are finished on And They Sinned and I am onto the next band.

 

And little Freelove Hazard is getting closer and closer to completion.

I have bonded with this little girl, I love the way she added her numbers, sort of - there is no number 5 - at the end of different alphabet rows. And in true Freelove fashion I omitted the letter D in the first row by accident, but I am just going to leave it. (The letter J was not included in the old sampler alphabets, so that omission is supposed to be there.)

I am going to have to make myself put down the hand appliqué and spend some time on the samplers in the coming months, but variety is the spice of life, and definitely of quilters and stitchers.

 

Happy Stitctching All,

Cheri

 

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Ho, Ho, Ho

My father had eleven brothers and sisters, some of my best Christmas memories was renting the local grade school gym and having a huge Christmas dinner. I had over fifty first cousins and my Grandpa would give each of us a paper lunch sack of Brach's pick-a-mix candy and an apple or orange. I love making gift bags out of paper lunch sacks and appliqué fabric motiffs. This year our Christmas stockings are going to be these bags. I use appliqué paper (Heat and Bond) and just iron the fabric motiff right onto the paper bags, quick and easy.

I have also finished another two Roseville Album blocks, six completed so far.

I had a little mishap with my And They Sinned sampler, I lost the thread key on a recent trip. Marty, at Stitch and Frog ( online cross stitch store) where I ordered the pattern and threads, went above and beyond getting permission from the pattern designer to make a copy of the thread key and save me from purchasing another pattern. I am working on the peacocks, I love this blue thread by GAST threads which just happened to be named "peacock".

I wish you all a very Merry and Blessed Christmas,

Cheri

 

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Multitasking Stitching

Multitasking stitching, that is probably improper English but that is what I feel like I am doing, trying to keep all of my hand stitching projects progressing. It seems like all of the projects I am drawn to are all hand work. I spent a lot of time on my next Baltimore album block, a bias basket. It was the first one I have ever attempted. It really did not go very well. I glued all the bias strips down, it was very hard to keep them aligned with the pattern, but after stitching it down for a week I had it finished and decide to gently wash it before I proceeded with filling the basket with appliqué flowers. The red dye bled all around the block, I had prewashed the fabric until it rinsed clean, and still it bled-frustrating! And so the washing of the block began. At first I really wanted to try and salvedge the block, but eventually I decided the basket was just not quite right and I would never be happy with it. There was no more of the background fabric however, and I REALLY wanted to save it, so I carefully removed the basket and washed the fabric some more. I eventually got all if the pink out of the background and you will never believe what finally got it out...Dawn dishwashing soap. I had tried everything and the commercial about the ducks that had been in an oil spill being cleaned with Dawn dishwashing soap came on TV. I had some and thought why not try it, and it worked!
Anyway, a week wasted on that block, I decided to go to a different block, a berry wreath block. I have had a ten inch square of this rather strange dark green and orange reproduction fabric for quite a while. I could never find a place for it in the Civil War Bride quilt, but I really like it for these leaves.

I am back basting this block and I will finish the leaves and wreath and then start the 76 berries. SEVENTY SIX berries, on one 14 inch block!

The word that comes to mind is "Endurance", and I think of my sister who just ran a half marathon,

and how unfair it is that my hobby that involves endurance does not burn as many calories as hers- good job by the way Sis.
On to the next hand stitching project, I am starting a new reproduction sampler. This one is a Scarlet Letter project and I just love this little gal because if her name, Freelove Hazard.

She was 10 years old when she stitched her sampler in 1792. I am stitching it on a 25 count linen that I put in a tea dye to make the fabric look older. I really like the way it turned out, kind of blotchy...and I tested it with a final wash in the Dawn dish washing liquid to make sure this color would not wash out, cotton is an amazingly tough fabric.
Well this is an unusually long post for me, but the third hand stitching project I am juggling is, And They Sinned. This sampler is long, I was recently changing stitching frames and took this picture of it on my ironing board.

Here is a close up, I am to the one third completed point.

So my stitching plan is Baltimore album blocks on my weekdays that I am off work when I can get into the sewing room and do some prep work. And they Sinned on week nights, and Freelove is going to be my Sunday stitching project while I am watching Peyton Manning stomp all over the rest of the NFL football teams. (I have been a Denver Broncoes fan for years...in the good years and the bad).

Happy Stitching all,
Cheri

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And They Sinned update

I am working steadily on And They Sinned (Examplar Dames Design) . I am off work for a month after a little foot surgery, so I am getting a lot of stitching completed. As I stitch each motif I realize how much thought went into this design. The top of the design represents heaven in my mind, the little cherubs are fighting off the snakes with their swords. Next comes the sky above the garden of Eden with many birds and stars.

The tree has several different fruits on it, seven of each symbolizing the seven deadly sins. Eve is holding the 7th apple, it looked sort of like a dumbbell to me but it finally came to me that there is a bite taken out of the apple.

After I add the leaves in the tree and the wing to the angel I will have completed page one of this 3 and a half page design. Each section of the sampler has such different designs it is really holding my interest, so for now I stitch on.

 

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And They Sinned

I am at the one month point of ATS ( pattern by Examplar Dames), I started it on Memorial Day weekend, May 25, 2013. This sampler is my focus for this summer. I can not believe it happened but after 20 plus years of quilting I have had a little burn out. I am just not interested at all in quilting. I am slowly finishing Ladies of the Sea, however some weeks I am only at my sewing machine for an hour or so. I find myself reading more and wonder of wonders, cooking, now that I am not quilting as much. I still enjoy browsing all of my favorite quilting bloggers and I have a few pictures of the quilting details I am using on Ladies of the Sea that I will post as I get closer to having her finished.

I feel a real sense of contentedness as I stitch on this sampler. The variegated Gentle Arts Sampler Threads give it a very aged look. I thought the little cherubs were too close in color to my background fabric

 

so I went online and looked at color charts (the flesh tones in the sampler are actually a DMC floss 950). I decided to outline the skin tones in DMC 3064 which is the medium to floss 950s light in that color. I think it gives the cherubs just a little more definition.

I am currently working on the clouds under the angels on page one of the pattern. My cross stitch really needs help, it is difficult for me to keep my stitches all neat and even in a large filled in area. I am open to suggestions as I feel like I am still a beginner in sampler stitching.

 

Happy Stitching and Happy Birthday America!

Cheri

 

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A Finish And A New Start

I have finished my Scarlet Letter sampler. This sampler was originally done by Mary Ann Hutton in 1801. I made so many changes to it I really can not call it a reproduction. It is stitched on 25 count homespun linen with silk threads.

This was a relearning experience for me that I really enjoyed. It was fun to share my progress on Nicola's Scarlet Letter Year blog. I am looking forward to doing another Scarlet Letter reproduction sampler and learning some other stitches.

My next project, however, is a sampler I have admired for a couple years. And They Sinned, by Examplar Dames Pattern Designs.

This is a large sampler, 9 by 45 inches, that depicts the story of Adam and Eve. I am stitching it on 18 count Zweigart Vintage Mocha Aida.

I want to work on perfecting my basic cross stitch (Mary Ann Hutton is full of errors and tension issues). The threads I am using are the suggested Gentle Arts Sampler Threads. They are beautiful hand dyed variegated cotton threads.

I have been surrounded by inspiring beauty the last couple days while we have been traveling through the Rocky Mountain National Park. I have to share these pictures taken at the Estes Park, Colorado golf coarse. I am not a golfer but I think elk on the golf coarse is a rather unique golf hazard.

The golfers did not seem to concerned and just played on through.

Happy Stitching All,

Cheri

 

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