Why I do what I do

For those of you who've been reading my blog for awhile, you know I do a lot of charity stitching.  Well, I thought it might be fun to show off some of the quilts that were recently finished with my contributed squares.

By the way, both charity organizations I stitch for are always looking for new stitchers and always have new themes coming up, so if you think you'd like to donate a square or two, check out their linked websites from this link.  The quilts go to such good causes (sick children and needy seniors) and it's kind of addicting searching for the right pattern to stitch for an active theme.

First up is a quilt featuring my Rainbow Mandala pattern and finished by World Of Charity Stitching.
This quilt featured the same pattern done in many color palettes by each stitcher. My block was a neon rainbow contribution, and you can see it here in the finished quilt top outlined in red.

Next up is another WOCS quilt.  This one featured the same mitten outline with different fill patterns.  (Incidentally, WOCS is currently doing another quilt along these lines, this time with butterflies.)  I contributed two squares to this one, Leopard Print Mitten and Giraffe Print Mitten .  These were actually my very first finishes for 2015.  Both of them made it into a single finished quilt, and you can see both here in red.

The other organization I usually send squares to is Love Quilts (the USA branch).  Unlike WOCS, which stitches by theme and then finds a recipient, Love Quilts takes signups for individual children whose parents have chosen a theme for the squares of their quilt.

That Baby Tinkerbell pattern I worked so hard on showed up nicely in this Disney princess themed quilt.  This is going to a 7-year-old girl who has already gone through surgery and chemo for a rare type of tumor 3 years ago, and is currently undergoing a second round of treatment for a baseball sized tumor in another area of her body.

The last quilt I have to show you today was the one I finished my Friends for Life square for.  The theme was realistic cats and dogs, and I admit my square is a little small next to a lot of the other contributions, but it ended up being a necessary evil due to time.  This is going to a teenage girl who has quadriplegic cerebral palsy.

By the way, you can click on all of the quilt pictures to see them larger if you wish.  

If you take a gander at my Finishes page you'll see several more finished squares for both organizations that have been sent in, but they haven't been made into finished quilts yet.  If you enjoyed reading this post though, I'll do another one when a few more quilts have popped up.

I've made a bit of progress on my newest WOCS stitching project too.  Here's where Sunshine by Satsuma Street is currently at:

It's coming along nicely.  The main sun is almost done, except for I still need to get more of the yellow I ran out of.  Once I finish the inner ring (that's what all the gaps in the rays is for) I'll start on the larger outer ring, and it will be ready to send off.

And I made a pitful bit of progress on my latest square for the Frosted Pumpkin Round Robin.  Still now tower for Rapunzel yet, but the forest below her is finished...

Progress Update: Rainbow Mandala is Finished

Hey all,

Just popping in really quick to share my latest finish with you.  Rainbow Mandala is now done!

That's one more Crazy January project I can mark off the list!  This is for a quilt being made by World of Charity Stitching.  It's done on 14 count natural aida with DMC threads in neon colors.  I tried to do it approximately lightest in the middle to darkest on the edge, but now I look at the finished project, I think I would have changed up the order a bit.  It is approximately 67 stitches by 67 stitches, and since the pattern was free, I can also count it as part of my Stitch From Stash earnings this month. 

I started this project on January 4th as part of the Crazy January Challenge and finished it this weekend on February 14th.  It is a free pattern from the German (?) blog Stickeule and can be found here if you'd like to stitch it yourself. I did pick my own colors though, rather than following those in the pattern. 

Now its off to go finish the Once Upon A Time sampler, since I really, really, really need to get that sent off to the next person!

Progress Update: First Weekend in February

Hello stitching friends! I realized with the January challenge, I'm not posting updates nearly as often as I did.  Of course, there's not really anything new going on, haha.  But here's a look at what I've been working on lately.

First of all, I have a finish!  That's right, Perfume Bottle is finally done, done, done!

Please excuse the wrinkles.  I obviously took this pic right after it came off the Q-snaps.  

Don't get me wrong, I liked working on this one, but I am glad it is finished.  Sometimes stitching on a deadline is no fun.  I'm not completely 100% happy with the way the colors turned out.  I think the petals in the front of the flowers don't go so well, and the purple in the stripes is a little too light.  Oh well.  I modified this one a bit too, making the atomizer part of the bottle smaller and moved some of the flower leaves around a bit to make up for a miscalculation in finished size.  (oops)

This is for a Ladies Accessories quilt being made by World of Charity Stitching.  It's done on 14 count plain white aida with DMC threads.  I started this project on January 9th as part of the Crazy January Challenge and finished it this weekend on February 7th.  Hmmm.  Almost a month down to the day.  It is a free pattern from the French blog Passion Broderie 77 and can be found here if you'd like to stitch it yourself. 

So after finishing that project, I started to work on Rainbow Mandala again, which is actually turning out to go quite quickly when you don't have huge blocks of color to fill in. 

There's something about the methodical way this design is put together that makes it very soothing.  Like coloring a real mandala I suppose.  This will be six rings in different colors when I'm finished.  I chose to do neon colors and do them from light to dark, rather than traditional rainbow order.

I also got a start on my first project for the Frosted Pumpkin Round Robin I'm participating in through a Facebook group.  The first project I get to work on is the Once Upon a Time sampler. 

I chose February to work on because, well, it's February, and it also had the convenience of being one square above the original stitching done by the project's owner.  This will be the Frog Prince when I'm finished with it, although all you can see I have done now is the border and a big "smooch!"

Progress Update: Day 26 of the Crazy January Challenge

So, moving right along with the Crazy January Challenge, here's what I was able to get done yesterday.  This is a project I am calling Polar Bear Square, since I don't really know the original name of it.  It's a pattern from an old Christmas issue Enjoy Cross Stitch magazine, which I believe means it was originally published in either Cross Stitch Crazy or World of Cross Stitching, probably also several years ago. 

I do remember that the designer is Maria Diaz, and this is part of a set of 6 matching designs (polar bear, reindeer, snowman, angel, penguin and Santa I believe).  It will be fairly small, about 4 x 4 I think when finished, and 100% coverage with no fractionals or backstitch. 

Since there is no backstitching in this whole project, the outline of the characters is done entirely in black stitches.  So I decided to start with the black outlines first, and then fill in as I go.  So yesterday had the beginning's of the polar bear's head.  This is one of my Turtle Trot pieces, but it will probably go to the back of the rotation for now, since I have several projects with screaming deadlines approaching.

I didn't get much more done, mostly because at the moment I am trying to finish up two squares for World of Charity Stitching, the Perfume Bottle and Rainbow Mandala squares.  Here's the stitching I did on the mandala over the weekend:

Last night luckily was a nice relaxing night, so I was able to get quite a chunk of Perfume Bottle done while I was watching some of our DVRed programs. 

It's finally actually starting to look like something.  Now I just have 3 purple stripes to finish (one big and two small) and to fill in some of the shading, then do the sprayer and the two yellow flowers at the bottom of the bottle.  I can handle that, right?  Unfortunately, tonight through Thursday are going to be CRAZY so I don't know how much more progress I will be making with this one until Friday.  *sigh*

Well, at least I already know what today's new start will be.  It's going to be Reindeer Square, one of the companions to this piece.  Out of the six, the polar bear and reindeer were the two I really liked, so I will only be stitching those for now. 

Until tomorrow!

Progress Update: Christmas Gifts and Crazy January Challenge Days 1-5 (Long and Picture Heavy)

I was finally able to remember to take pictures last night of what I've been doing, so it's time to post a few updates, mostly for the Crazy January challenge.

First off were the Mill Hill kits I was finishing up for Christmas presents for my aunt and her family.  I did manage to finish them a few days before Christmas, so that was good.  So Tropical Kitty, Provence Rooster, Hot Stuff, Be Merry, and Teton Santa have been moved to my 2014 finishes page. 

The bad news about that is that I completely forgot to take pictures of them before I gave them for Christmas.  Oops!  Luckily 3 of them were still on the tree when I went over to my aunt's for New Year's Eve, so I managed to grab a picture of those ones.

I already posted a finish picture for Tropical Kitty, but here it is hanging among the branches and lights:

And Teton Santa (so much beading, but turned out pretty good):

And Hot Stuff, pretty much the easiest project of the 5:

I am still trying to get pics for Be Merry and Provence Rooster, but for now you'll just have to use your imagination. 

So that updates me up until the end of the year.  Well, then starting January 1st, I started on my Crazy January Challenge, which is to start/work on 31 different projects, one for each day in January.  Unfortunately, my plans I originally posted about have already changed, since I've had a couple projects I thought I would get done after above ornaments and before the end of the year.  Needless to say they didn't get done as planned, so now I'm shuffling my Crazy projects a bit.  But that's okay, I'm just going to spill over into February a bit (haha).

So onto my daily updates, since the lack of internet access has put me behind on reporting a bit.

For January 1st, I spent the morning making a big breakfast for my cousin and my brother, and then we went to go see Into the Woods in theaters (which I highly recommend, by the way).  Then the afternoon was spent preparing for a date (yay!) so needless to say, I didn't get home until 10:00 and I didn't get much stitching done.  Since it was the start of the year, I decided to pull out my January start for the 2015 Flower of the Month SAL I'm hosting this year.  Since it was so late, I only got a bit done:

And by a bit I mean like 7 stitches.  But hey, I finished one color block, so there you go.  I plan on picking this one up again before the month is over.  

January 2nd was the first of the imposing projects I mentioned. I needed to finish my mitten squares I am stitching for World of Charity Stitching.  I started with Leopard Print Mitten, since that's the one I had started already.  This one was a WIP, so this is where I started:

And after several good hours of stitching, I was able to scrape out a finish:

My first finish of 2015!  It is VERY unusual for me to have something done so early, even if it's something small.  But oh well, it's a finish.  So happy dance anyway.  So Leopard Print Mitten has been moved to my brand new 2015 finishes page. 

January 3rd I spent most of the day trying to unpack boxes, and we also had a massive rainstorm/tornado watch that meant we spent several hours sheltering/trying to entertain our sister missionaries.  So my stitching plans kind of went out the window.  But I did manage to start Giraffe Print Mitten, which is the second of my mitten squares for World of Charity Stitching:

Doesn't look like much so far, but hopefully I'll get a good chance to work on it this week and finish it off. 

January 4th was Sunday, and my brother's family birthday party, so again a short stitching day.  Also, it was the season premiere of Galavant, which I enjoyed immensely, but didn't get much stitching on during it.  But I did get one ring done in my Rainbow Mandala square.  This is a freebie pattern that I'm changing the colors on, also a project for World of Charity Stitching (notice a theme going on)?

January 5th, yesterday, was a start on Frosted Pumpkin's 12 Days of Christmas pattern.  I'm doing a Frosted Pumpkin Round Robin through a group on Facebook, and this is my pattern I'm sending out.  I'm doing the border of the piece before it leaves, and each member of the group will complete a different square from the pattern until it eventually makes it way back to me.  So I got a good start on the border, which hopefully I can finish tonight really quick. 

Don't know what will be for tonight's stitch, other than there probably won't be a ton of progress made on it.  Mostly because I need to finish the above border and mitten (not to mention the Rainbow Mandala) soonish, so those will take precedence over anything new.  So my new start may look like the January Carnations one up there.  Only like 7 stitches.  But I am determined to start something at least!