Flower of the Month SAL

I did manage to get this finished in time, even if I'm a little late in posting this!

June - Wild Rose by Ellen Maurer-Stroh

As you can see I skipped ahead and stitched June 'Wild Rose' as a birthday card for a friend of my mum's.  It turned out to be a lovely easy stitch, so definitely one I will stitch again for someone else (which I will probably end up doing once my mum's other friends get a look at it!!!)

Well, this is a very short post as I always seem to have a hundred other things to do these days.  Hopefully soon, the list will get shorter and I can have more blogging time again.

Till then, happy stitching.

Elle x

May Cottage and Flower of the Month

I can't believe this is my first post for May.  Where has this month gone??  I have been frantically stitching May cottage and it is finally finished.

I know I should have ironed it before I took the photo, but I was just so pleased to have it finally finished (I knew I should have started with June...)  What I have to decide now is how to finish it.  All along I had thought to frame it in the frames from the Family Tree Co, like they have illustrated in the picture that CCN uses to advertise the chart, but I cannot find a supplier anywhere!!!  So until then I'm just going to mull over a few ideas until I decide and start on June...

But that is going to have to wait until I finish my Flower of the Month SAL.  I'm skipping a month this month and stitching June 'Wild Rose' this month for my mum, so I have a tight deadline and have to have it ready for June 1st.   This is my progress so far:-

Just one more flower to complete and all the leaves, so hopefully I'll make it.  Okay, I have to finish it even if I stay up all night on 31st!!!!

Anyway, I hope all of your stitching is progressing well.  Looking forward to seeing all your progress.

Take care
x

Flower of the Month

And it's finished.  Thank you for all your kind comments on my last post.  I took Jo and Brigitte's advice and added some back stitching to the bottom flower.  It does look better in real life, so thank you ladies!

The card is going to be for my aunt who has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer.  Her's is very early stages so the prognosis is good and I'll send the card as a 'Thinking of You' card when she starts treatment.

Next flower for me is going to be the June flower, as my Mum wants it for a friend who has a birthday early June so I want to make sure I stitch it sooner rather than later!  So it's roses for me next.

Off to start stitching.
x

p.s I also realised that I ordered the wrong count material the other day.  I ordered 32 count for Santa's Village instead of 28 count for May Cottage so I had to do a new order yesterday and guess what?  A few more items made it on to the order list as well.  Wonder how that happened????

Santa's Journey and Flower of the Month SAL

Well there hasn't been much stitching going on recently so I really must get my act together over the coming weeks as I'm really falling behind schedule.  My flower of the month (sweet pea) has only got as far as this:-

I'm a bit disappointed with how the bottom flowers are looking as there doesn't seem to be much definition between the two.  This is making me a bit reluctant to finish it!

On the other hand Santa's Journey has gone from this:

 to this:

If you'd like to see the completed picture then please pop over to Laura at xstitchatoz here who stitched it for the magazine. (Thank you Jo at Serendipitous Stitching for teaching me how to do those links)

This means I only have one more complete page to do and then I can fill in the bit in the middle.  The reason I stopped doing the middle pages is the design is by Maria Diaz and featured in Cross Stitch Collection Magazine Oct - Dec 14.  I didn't have these magazines and couldn't get back issues of them except as downloads.  The problem was the chart was so small when it was printed, I couldn't read it.  When I enlarged it, I lost the clarity of the design and the symbols and I still couldn't read it so I'm stitching it from my computer.  This is fine, except when you come to the next page and I miscounted by 1 stitch.  By the time I realised my mistake I thought I was too far gone to frog it and thought I'd stitch all around and then adjust.  I'm nearly at adjustment time.  Wish me luck!

Anyway, I haven't been feeling too well lately (rotten migraines again) so to cheer myself up, I'm off to look at Sew and So's site.  Let you know what I buy...

Have a good weekend everyone x

My first pillow ornaments!!!

I actually made my first set of pillow ornaments!!!  Here they are:-

The top two are from i) The Cricket Collection and ii) is my Flower of the month SAL;
The bottom two are from iii) a freebie from www.cosmichandmade.wordpress.com/free-charts-2008 (again must learn how to do those links) and finally iv) The World of Cross Stitching magazine.

Now all I need to do is master the 'cording', but I'll save that for the first of my Christmas ornaments!

Have a great Easter and hope you have plenty of time for stitching.
x

Flower of the Month SAL

Phew, finished it with a day to spare. Hooray!!!

Jonquil by Ellen Maurer-Stroh

I've decided to finish this one as a little pillow.  Unfortunately my LNS didn't have any interfacing in stock and (according to the blogs I've been reading as research) I need this as backing as this gives a better 'finish' to my ornaments.  So I've had to order it on-line.  Waiting patiently now (or not so) for the postman to deliver it!!  It's going to be backed with the material in the photo, so hopefully it will look lovely when it's complete.

Looking forward to Sweet Peas next.

Happy stitching

x

February Flower of the Month SAL and a finish!

Well I finished it and here it is:-

Violets by Ellen Maurer-Stroh

I had to substitute some of the blue DMC colours, but I don't think it looks too bad.  I haven't stitched the outside border yet as I'm going to make them into cards and I've had to order some larger aperture cards and until they arrive, I don't know whether the border will suit or not - so I'll wait and see...

This wonderful SAL is hosted by Alyssa at Brownie's Chair (I really must learn how to do those magic hyperlinks) and next month it is 'Jonquil' or Daffodil, which I'm hoping will be a quicker stitch for me as I really struggled with this one.  I blame it on the stress of Hope's operation, (luckily the lump was benign) but I am pleased that I managed to finish it.  I still have to start January's though....

I also have another finish to report from my project list - hooray!  It was one of the small projects, though, but I'm still counting it!!!  I managed to finish one of the Forever Friends teddies and it will become a birthday card for my mum when my larger aperture cards arrive.  Here it is so far:-

 I hope she likes it!

I have stitched up a couple of other smalls this month, which will be made into cards and I've added photos of these onto my 'finishes' page (if you're interested!).  For now it's back to Santa's Journey.

Can't wait to check in and see all your flower SAL updates!

Take care x x