Category Archives: Stitching

Help me pick my next sampler?

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Terri | 2 comments

I turned Hannah Beeby in for framing last night. I can’t wait to see how she turns out. I’m expecting her back home about mid-May which will give me time to get another finish – I’m getting closer on Petite Mexican Sampler 😉

While I have several WIPs, I’m starting something new with every 2nd finish and I’ve decided I want to start a new sampler. The following are completely kitted up, except for a needle 😀 Which one should I start?

Hannah Gilpin 1800
James Wilson’s 1828 Sampler
Marianne Wenn

I’ve put a poll up on my facebook page and would appreciate your using it if you are a “friend” or you can leave a comment below. Thank you for helping me decide.

I finally got in the swimming pool yesterday. The temp was 76° and it was brisk. I was out there for approximately 15-20 minutes since I had to get ready for my stitchy night and get an early dinner started. I got sunburned!!!! I’ll admit to not having on any sunscreen. That won’t happen again. It’s not a bad sunburn, just enough to make ambivalent about getting in again today. We’ll see. The A/C started kicking on at 10:00 this morning so that might help me make up my mind.

Off to the grocer’s then hopefully some heavy duty stitching. I’m making spaghetti sauce tonight so leftovers are in our future, which always means more stitching time 😉

2 Comments

Posted in Samplers - Repro, Stitching

Market report, anyone?

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Terri | 2 comments

Better late than never I suppose:

Prairie Moon – “no…..MINE! IS THE TRICK AND THE TREAT”
40 ct ColorScapes “Brash”

Needle Work Press – “Commemorating a Centennial”
40 ct Newcastle “Days Gone By”

La-D-Da – “Wicked Witch”
30 ct Weeks Dye Works “Tiger’s Eye”

With thy Needle & Thread – “House of Blues & Browns”
Cottage Island NeedleArts – “Where My Heart Is…”
JBW Designs – “Rose Motif Sampler”

La-D-Da – “Alone in the Garden”
Plum Street Samplers – “Brother’s Keeper”
Lizzie Kate – “Less=More” (first two installments)

NeedleWorkPress freebie – “Summer”
The Bees Knees Stitchery Alphabet Necklace
Kelmscott Designs Fleur de Lis needleminder (surprised, right?)

This next item was not a Market release. For the longest time, before I even moved here and could call Attic Needlework my LNS, I gazed fondly on this design when I was in the shop. It’s behind the counter. I finally asked about it at Market and was told that it was still available (woohoo!) and that the model was stitched by Jean on 28 ct. I was fortunate enough to get the last copy! I’ll be stitching it on either 36 or 40 ct.

Canterbury Designs – The Plantation Sampler

2 Comments

Posted in Stash

Hermity weekend

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Terri | 1 comment

Ever see something and skim over it without a second thought then have it come back and get in your face? How in the world have I never participated in this? I’m practically a full-time hermit as it is! 😉

I am stitching away on Petite Mexican Sampler. If stitching continues to go as it has already this week I might be happy dancing by Sunday. 😀

1 Comment

Posted in IHSW

Starting over. Sort of.

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Terri | 3 comments

Ack. I’m so far behind in catching up I’m not even going to bother. Suffice it to say, I have been consistenting doing needlework of some sort since my last check in. When it has not involved the sewing maching, I have faithfully been working on my WIPocalypse stitching.

Domesticity:

I packed everything in my stitching room, back up and moved the boxes to the guest room. We gutted the closet, spackled it, painted it, and moved the shelf units back in. I’m in the process of loading it back up, but am determined to organize while I do so, so I don’t put it off any longer. It looks like this:

The designs are in their proper box and they’ll be cataloged later. As you can see, none of my fabric has been unpacked because right now, as I type this post, my work table looks like this:

The fibers in the front in ziplocks are Anchor. I’m leaving them ’til last because I haven’t decided how I’m going to store them. The white box in the middle is not quite full of various fibers that I’ve been sorting (which is the mess you see, minus the
Weeks), and I’ve already sorted one of them. That table needs to get cleared quickly so I can drag my sewing machine back out.

Quilting:

1 sampler quilt needs a bit more quilting, then the binding (which is ready to be attached).
1 quilted tote needs (still) 6 or so stitches in one of the handles to be completed.
1 quilt has been started (intermediate class started last week and I’m piecing the blocks for it).

Stitching:

Since I’ve been going back and forth to quilting classes, and have quilting homework, I haven’t wanted to try to keep up with my rotation so I’ve been focusing on one easy piece. As of last night (4/15/12) Miss Hannah Beeby is now finished!

I’ve pulled Petite Mexican Sampler out and am going to focus on it for a bit. My quilting classes will be over in June (I think) and until then I guess I’m going to be a one-at-a-time stitcher. Fairy Moon is screaming my name from the guest room right now, but she’ll need lots of beading so I’m putting her off. I’m still determined not to start anything new until I finish 2 projects, no matter how tempted I’ve been lately 🙂

In addition to all of the above we have been doing other bits and pieces of decorating in the house. We I have a list of must-haves for the house that includes more painting, furniture, decorative items, and my stitching. I will be taking Hannah with me Thursday night to get her framed. I’ll take another piece in when we gets finished depending on how long she takes. I would like to do one piece a month.

We’ve also been doing some stuff in the yard. Right now M is digging up the oleanders, one at a time, in the front. 7 down, 3 to go. The yard looks so much bigger now and we’ll be filling in some of the space with more pleasant to use desert plants. In the back we have 2 varieties of tomatoes popping out all over the place, flat leaf parsley trying to take over the pump house wall, oregano, cilantro (in 2 different places), rosemary, pickle cukes, crook neck squash growing in, and have been enjoying salads with home grown lettuces. The lemon tree and mandarin tree both have fruit and we’re waiting to see if our little lime tree is going to have fruit this year (it had a hard time this winter and is only knee high). I also planted a peony tuber that is doing well.

3 Comments

Posted in Hannah Beeby, Petite Mexican Sampler, Quilting, WIPocalypse

Just a quickie

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Terri | 1 comment

I’m still here.

I’m unbelievably busy in a good way.

I have posts planned regarding that ticker over there on the right 🙂 , the quilting class I’m taking, a trip to Vegas (to cross stitch 😉 ), the quilting “expo” I attended yesterday, my Ort jar, and the amount of stitching I’ve been doing and the progress I’m making in rotating.

Life is good. It will be better next Wednesday when my Marine gets back home.

1 Comment

Posted in Quilting, Retirement, Stitching, Travel

A bump in the road

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Terri | 3 comments

M starting putting his training bike together yesterday. At first, after working for 3 hours on it, he thought his shifter was broken. I found this out when he came in the house and announced that he was going to have to get a part-time job to replace it. I know nothing about the prices of individual bike parts. I do know that he’s spent close to $9,000 on his official race bike. I can only image what they would cost if he wasn’t building them himself. When he starts talking about it I tell him I don’t want to know. Anyway, he disappeared back into the garage and came back awhile later to tell me that he thinks he has figured out what was wrong and now he could use 17 of the 18 gears. His words “crises averted.” Ummm, okay.

I finished up my 10 hours on Haiku yesterday. He’s starting to look like a chubby chickadee! He’s a lot of fun to stitch, but I’m thinking of moving up to stitch on the cherry blossoms next time around. Here’s my before and after pictures:

Haiku - 1/7/12

Haiku - 1/9/12

This means that I’ve worked on 3 of my WIPocalypse projects in this reporting period 😀

Next up is Harmony by Serendipity Designs. I knew there were about 10 stitches in it, and I thought it was older than Peacock Tapestry. When I got everything out there were a couple of surprises. I originally started it November 23, 1997, making it almost 2 years older than Peacock Tapestry. I also discovered that I only cut the fabric to give it 1 1/2 inch margins on each side.

The design is 3 charts stitched together on one piece of fabric and because I’ve cut the fabric so close I don’t want to take any chances on stitching in the wrong place. I’m also thinking I need to start at the bottom and stitch my way up since the bottom portion stitches all the way across the width of the fabric. So, I have pulled out what I already stitched, serged and ironed the fabric, and now I’m gridding it. The gridding will probably take up my whole 10 hours since it’s almost 50″ long. After I finish gridding, I’ll have to sew on some muslin so I can get it in my QSnaps. Twice during the gridding I’ve thought of taking it out of my current rotation, but that would accomplish nothing but my picking it back up at a later date; and, I really still love the design; and, I really want to get my old WIPs finished, so I’m plugging along. Working on it is progress, right?

I’m leaving for a long stitching weekend in Vegas tomorrow. I’m definitely taking Hannah Beeby and Harmony, if don’t finish out it’s rotation time today. I’ll have to decide tomorrow morning what else to take.

3 Comments

Posted in Haiku, Harmony, WIPocalypse

Moving right along

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Terri | 3 comments

Still stiff from Wednesday’s tumble but am thankful that’s all that has shown up. It’s still rather uncomfortable getting up if I’ve been sitting (i.e. stitching) for a long time, or first thing in the morning when it’s time to come downstairs. I’ve ditched the slippers for now and am even more cautious than before. I hate falling. I’ve always been afraid to fall. It’s why I only went snow skiing once in my life. I don’t know why it kept me from it since I used to ice skate, and water ski! Oh well. More cautious on the steps.

I finished up my 10 hour rotation on Peacock Tapestry yesterday. I finished the gridding Thursday evening at my weekly stitchin, then put it away until I was home and better able to concentrate.

I’ve decided to take Hannah Beeby out of my rotation and make her my stitchin piece until I finish her. The chart’s easy to read, there are only 3 colors, and the fabric is 28 count, making her easy to stitch on, and not mess up, while enjoying the company and conversation at the stitchins.

But, back to PT. When I picked her up again yesterday, and started stitching, because of the gridding I found a couple of small stitching mistakes that would have made it very interesting when it came time to backstitch. I made great progress on it, even with the little bit of actual stitching I did. I did something wrong with my camera when I took the before picture, so there’s only an “after” this time around:

Peacock Tapestry by Teresa Wentzler

The Great Spreadsheet spoke again, and now I’m working on Haiku by Dimples Designs. I started this during one of the Guilt Free January’s I participated in. 2004 to be exact! Here’s the before shot of the little stinker:

Haiku by Dimples Designs

The stitching is going rather quickly. This is the third WIP that fits into the Theme-a-licious-ness for January!

I’m getting a lot of stitching done but I know it will slow down when I start my quilting class in a couple of weeks.

I’m making slower progress on one of my other yearly goals (which I didn’t publicize). I want to become more familiar with all the technology I own! I made a tiny step by changing my tabs up top to drop down (I’ve had this blog for how long and didn’t know I could do that?) Part of my problem with it all is that I don’t understand the terminology. I figure if I could master the latin of law, I should be able to better handle technology terminology. Right? We’ll see 😉

3 Comments

Posted in Haiku, Injury, Peacock Tapestry, Stitching, Theme-a-licious, WIPocalypse

2012 Stitching Thoughts

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Terri | 3 comments

I was going to post this yesterday, but yesterday didn’t go as I thought it would. It started out as any other day — get up at 3 a.m. to watch the Quadrantids meteor shower, go back to bed at 4 a.m., get up at 7 a.m., fall down steps from kitchen to family room, nearly faint from the pain of falling down, while trying to not freak M out too much when I yelled for him….yeah, not so much what I had planned. Spent as much time as possible getting up and down all day so I wouldn’t get too stiff. Was shaky all day and very thankful that the worst injury seemed to be to my pride. Don’t know exactly what damage I did but when I finally came to a rest I was sitting on my butt with my left leg bent out to the side of me. I heard a loud pop when I fell and was scared to death to move afterward, thus my yelling for M, who was still upstairs sleeping. In the end, I hurt my right palm, left wrist, left knee, left ankle, and my neck and shoulders were stiff. This morning I’m stiff, but not feeling anything like I was worried I would be feeling. I’m moving sort of slow and walking around like an old lady, but I’m up and about, and not going to miss going to my Thursday evening stitchin or to Vegas next week.

Now, for the original reason behind this post:

As shown by my ort jars for 2011, I had several months where I barely touched any of my stitching. Even then, I stitched more in 2011 than I did in 2010. I’m hoping, now that I’m no longer working, that I can at least double the amount of stitching in 2012!

For the past couple of weeks while unpacking my stash, I’ve been thinking about what I’d like to accomplish in 2012. It’s been fun reading what other stitchers are hoping to accomplish and nice to know I’ll be in good company whether or not I succeed. I think I do better with goals, or rather putting down what I’d like to see happen, on “paper.” Sometimes I get caught up in the crowd mentality and forget what I wanted to do if I don’t have some sort of written plan to bring me back to earth!

So, for 2012 I plan on:

Get back to blogging more frequently. I stitch more when I blog. I am a horrible photographer, but I enjoy sharing my stitching just like everyone else!
Get back to rotating my stitching and tracking my time. I know a lot of people think this is too much work but when I was doing it before I felt such a sense of accomplishment and I seemed to stitch more, just like when I blog more.
Stick to my WIPocalypes goals and keep my page updated.
Post to the Theme-a-licious challenge as often as my rotation works into it.
Post my monthly TUSAL.
Participate in at least 6 Fair and Square exchanges.
Finish out all 6 received Fair and Square exchanges. I plan on taking advantage of the great finishing tutorials in bloggy land.
Stitch 3 Santa ornaments for my Santa display.
Take at least 1 stitching related class.
Finish logging my charts into my spreadsheet.
Start organizing my freebies.
Organize my magazine designs.

When I read back over my list I feel like I’ve set an extremely overloaded year for myself and am so tempted to “downsize” that list.

What I don’t plan on doing….depriving myself. I don’t handle deprivation well. Just see how I respond when you try to take chocolate away from me — and it never fails that just as soon as I say “I’m not going to buy anymore stash until I stitch ____ number of pieces” someone publishes something I can’t live without. I’m just going to take it month by month. Or maybe, newsletter by newsletter 😉

I have non-stitching goals this year too! But those, I’m keeping to myself.

I picked up Peacock Tapestry Tuesday and immediately remembered why it became a UFO instead of a WIP.

Back in 1999, when I first started it, gridding was something new to the stitching world. I didn’t grid before I started it and while I love stitching on it, the backstitching is what got me. I have requested a copy of the backstitching chart. I tried to backstitch it Tuesday, but gave up. Yesterday I started stitching on it, but decided the smart thing for me to do is to grid it. So, that’s where I’m at. I’m 5+ hours into it this rotation. I’ll finishe the gridding during this time, and get some more stitching done, too. Next time I pick it up I should have the backstitching chart and I’ll go back to that before adding more stitches.

I’m trying to decide whether or not to take it with me tonight if I don’t finish up the 10 hours by then, or to take Hannah Beeby again, since she’s so “easy.”

3 Comments

Posted in Goals, Hannah Beeby, Injury, Peacock Tapestry

2012’s first stitching report

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Terri | 12 comments

Petite Mexican Sampler

Petite Mexican Sampler - 1/2/12 - 10 hours

The colors in the 2nd photo are a little washed out. The gold borders shows up better in real life 🙂 It’s fun to stitch now that I’ve figured out the secret to using the silks (dampen them and make sure to use my stitcher’s lotion). I did have to frog a couple of times because the chart has an “x” next to a “+” so now I know to pay better attention 😉

Next up is Peacock Tapestry. I’m using a random generator code on my spreadsheet and it has spoken.

I still need to put my Santa collection away and take down my stitching tree, then M and I are headed out to a movie and the home improvement store, so the stitching will have to wait until this afternoon. He needs some stuff to get his bikes stored, and I’m hoping it’ll take him most of the afternoon to get that sorted so I can stitch guilt free.

I’m almost finished with my 2012 stitching “goals” list so I’ll probably be posting that tonight.

Before I forget, here’s my Christmas present from M. I love the ideas I’ve been getting from Pinterest!

And here’s where it went

I’m in the process of moving my linens from upstairs to the closet next to the dryer, so don’t judge me 🙂

12 Comments

Posted in Domestic, Peacock Tapestry, Petite Mexican Sampler, Teresa Wentzler, WIPocalypse

January is full of excitement

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Terri | 2 comments

I sat on my bee-hind and stitched for 5+ hours yesterday. Today my whole body is stiff from it! 😆 It took me no time to get back into the rhythm of timing myself while stitching. I plan on adding to that 5 hours today while watching a ton of college football. I should be watching the Rose Parade right now but for some reason I’m just not interested.

Last month when I switched from working on HOHRH to Hannah, the change from 40ct to 28ct was like working on burlap. Here’s my progress pic (don’t judge the wrinkles ’cause it was too much hassle dragging the ironing board back out).