Progress Update: Crazy January Challenge Days 11-14

Despite my best intentions, this is the first opportunity I've had to come on and do a Crazy January Challenge update since Monday.  Somehow I find myself getting sick (again!) and combined with a very busy week at work again, it's really slowed me down.  Bleh. 

But enough complaining.  Let's talk about funner things.  Here's a recap of what my challenge progress is.

January 11th, Monday, I did decide to pull out another WIP project rather than start something new.  I decided it was time to work a little bit of Sunshine by Satsuma Street, since it hadn't seen any love for awhile and is actually pretty close to being finished.  So I pulled it out and took it from here:

To here:

Not too much left to go on this one, so I should be able to wrap this one up pretty quickly soon, although maybe after January and the challenge is over. 

Tuesday night I started a new project.  This is Lizzie Kate's Autumn Alphabet, which I sent out this week as the start of a new Lizzie Kate round robin that my Facebook group is doing.  That's right, I'm pretty much crazy because I signed up for another round robin at the same time.   This one was hard for me to miss though, because I absolutely love Lizzie Kate designs. 

I stitched the middle "M" block on my project so my fellow stitchers have a base point to start their stitching from.  Here's what it looked like when I sent it off:

I'm super excited about this project because it's the first Lizzie Kate chart that I've splurged for the charted Weeks Dye Works and Crescent Colors overdyed threads.  Although you can't really tell with this block because the orange is the one color of DMC in the pattern and the very slight variation in the dark brown hasn't shown up in the small amount of stitching for this letter.  I can't wait to see how it turns out as a whole though.  I plan on doing all 4 in this alphabet series eventually. 

Wednesday I decided that after all the Mill Hill kits I did in December, I was really kind of missing doing the little Mill Hill kits.  So I pulled out Kitty's Stocking and managed to put in one more stripe of color, taking it from this progress last year:

To this:

Not much progress, but hey, progress is progress, right?  I was still in a Mill Hill mood the next night, so Triple Scoop got a little love to take it from where I left it last year:

To this:

Again, not much progress, and in posting this now I see a mistake I need to go back and fix.  But most of my challenge stitching this week was done on lunch breaks, since I've been working on other things during the evening.  Swirly Lollipop has got almost all of its stripes now:

Just the green stripes, white, and the stick to fill in.  I also made a dent in my chosen mandala motif of the Ink Circles piece I'm doing for the sampler round robin for January. 

So that's coming along too.  So what's my plans for the weekend?  Well, I haven't picked my project for today yet, so we'll see what calls to me tonight when I settle in for my nightly stitching session.  Other than that, I want to organize the rest of my potential crazy project pieces and choose which ones I will most likely stitch on during the rest of the month.  Oh, and rest.  Lots of resting.  This getting sick thing is no fun, I tell ya.  : (   Good thing we have a 3 day weekend which gives me more time to recuperate. 

Back with more progress updates

Yikes!  I can't believe how quiet I've been around here lately.  That little kitten is still keeping us pretty busy.  I guess I underestimated how much time can be taken up by playing and cuddling and all those things kittens are good for.  She's still really active, so stitching with her around can be a little bit of a mess, but she did decide to settle down with me the other day. 

She squeezed herself into that tiny spot between my leg and the next couch cushion and fell completely asleep.  Little stinker. 

So despite my lack of blogging updates, I have been stitching some, although maybe not at the rate I was before.  I finally finished up the Rapunzel block of Once Upon a Time for the Frosted Pumpkin Round Robin.  Here's what it looks like finished:

This particular project had a lot of pattern modifications made by the project owner, and some of them are really neat, so here's a complete picture of the whole project as it looked before I packed it up and sent it on:

The sunlight really washed out the colors in this photo.  The fabric was a beautiful color, closer to the Rapunzel picture above.  But man, was it difficult for me to work with!  Between it being linen, which I am slowly getting used to but not used to completely yet, and the dark color, and almost only being able to work on it at night, this block definitely went slower. 

While I was finishing up that one, I also got the next project in the round robin, which also happened to be Once Upon a Time.  This will be my third and last time working on this particular pattern, since the RR is coming to a close with just a few more rounds.  This time I'm working on the Cinderella block.  Not much progress so far, just a bit of the elaborate border FP is famous for:

Sadly the terrible night lighting washed out all the beautiful Weeks Dye Works colors, so hopefully I'll get a better picture of this as it goes along so you can see those better. 

In other stitching, Sunshine by Satsuma Street is also coming along.  Just have the dark and light pink ring around the outside to finish, and then that yellow in the middle that I still need to pick up.  I just love how the colors on this one are turning out. 

Until next time, happy stitching to you all, and let's hope my next update isn't really far away this time!

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...

Well, I'm Back...

Hey everyone,

So I kind of disappeared for a lot of June, didn't I?  As I mentioned in my last stitching update post, things were a little difficult for me health-wise.  Add to that a crazy stressful month at work, and things have been sparse on the blogging front.  I even missed most of my check-ins for the last month including TUSAL, WIPocalypse, Smalls SAL, and Stitch From Stash.  I'm definitely feeling better from the almost-pneumonia, and although I have some additional health things I'm waiting to sort out, things are doing better than they were, so that's progress.  I'm hoping to get back on top of things this month.

Although I may not have been blogging much, I still have been doing some stitching, so I do have progress to share with you.

I finished my fish pond square and sent it off to Love Quilts in time for the end of the month deadline:

This ended up being a pretty quick and easy stitch.  It was done with charted DMC threads, 2 over 1 on white 14 count Aida.  It is a free pattern from Happy Stitch, which you can find over at that blog.  There's even a matching cat pattern as well. 

Moving right along, there is of course the always progressing Frosted Pumpkin Round Robin project I'm participating in via Facebook.  This month brought the Once Upon A Time sampler to my door.  This one will be interesting because the owner of the pattern actually made quite a few of her own conversions to the originally.  I'm stitching Rapunzel this time around, and here's my progress so far:

Yeah, so I haven't done much yet.  Mostly just the two borders, and then that bit of tree you can see over there on the left.  I'm actually struggling with this fabric.  Most of the other round robin pieces have more or less got me used to stitching on linen/evenweave, but I don't know if it's the color of this particular one or what, but I'm having a very hard time with the over 2.  I've had to pick out a lot of stuff so far.  The color is beautiful though, so I'm loving that. 
 
In other news, Sunshine by Satsuma Street is moving right along.  I almost finished the sun side of the face, but ran out of the yellow, so I moved on to starting some of the rays while I wait for a chance to obtain more of the yellow floss in the meantime. 

It's actually turning out a little smaller than I pictured it, but that's okay.  This will be a square for World of Charity Stitching, so although it's technically "deadline stitching" the due date is pretty flexible, so I'm taking my time and enjoying it. 

Some stitching updates

Well hello everyone.  I've been meaning to post this update all week long and for one reason and another I keep getting distracted.  Things have been a little crazy around here this week.  Monday I finally broke down and went to the doctor for this cough and cold that's been bothering me for almost 2 months now.  Diagnosis: sinus infection and/or bronchitis with the potential to become walking pneumonia.  Yuck.  I was given a steroid shot, (ouch!) an antibiotic, and told to get plenty of rest and drink plenty of fluids.  But mostly I pretty much only have enough energy to get through the work day, so by the time I get home I don't do much. 

I do have a little bit of stitching to show though.  Over the weekend I did manage to finish off my part of the Halloween Sampler for the Frosted Pumpkin Round Robin.  This is "O is for Owls":

And here's a pic of what it looks like so far before I sent it off again:

This larger view gives you a better idea of the pretty color of this hand dyed fabric, although it's still way washed out when I took this pic on my phone.  This was the third round robin project that I've done over 2 (linen or evenweave) and I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of it.  Once I was done with that, it was time to start a new project.  This is a Fish Pond pincushion design that I'm doing as a square for LoveQuilts:

Sorry for the wonky lighting, I didn't really have the energy to try and make it look better when I took the picture last night.  It's not going to be a very big design, so I expect to finish it fairly quickly.  Maybe this weekend hopefully, since it needs to be in by the end of the month and I didn't realize how quickly June was getting away from me.

I have Fish Pond on my 11 x 11 Q-snap, so it's a little big for travel, so I have a smaller project I'm working on during lunch.  This is Sunshine by Satsuma Street:

This will be one of those half sun/half moon combined motifs when it's complete, all done in the funky bright colors Satsuma Street patterns are known for.  It's not much to look at now, since I only have part of the off-white of the moon side of the face done so far.