Olympic Stitching Part 1

Hello readers!

We're several days into the Olympics, so I've been working hard on my Stitchlympics and  Summer Olympic Challenge pieces.

Apologies in advance for some of the photos.  For some reason my phone has been taking really bad pictures lately.

Day 1 was the Opening Ceremonies.  The Stitchlympics challenge was to count your stitches while watching the opening ceremonies (or equivalent time).  I happened to DVR the ceremonies (yay for fast forwarding through commercials and the Parade of Nations!) so we actually watched a couple finals from American Ninja Warrior while I stitched on my Disney piece for the Round Robin (BTW, Linda I know you asked for the name of the pattern/designer, I'm trying to find out for you!).  I was able to stitch 213 stitches and finish off Aladdin's hair:

The Stitch Maynia Summer Olympic Challenge was to stitch on something blue (for the blue in the Olympic Rings).  Not a lot of blue available in my Disney project, so after finishing Aladdin's hair I also started a new project I'm calling Welcome Home.  That's where the rest of my 200+stitches came from. This will be a square for World of Charity Stitching:

Not much to look at yet, just some blue highlights.  With only two colors and very minimal backstitch, it should stitch up pretty quick though.

Day 2 of Stitchlympics was a 15 minute stitching "sprint" to see how much you could stitch in 15 minutes.  To maximize my chances I decided I should stitch on a single color block, so I chose to start the orange of Lady's face from the Disney project:

51 stitches after 15 minutes.  Not bad.  :)  The Stitch Maynia challenge for Day 2 was to stitch on something with an international theme.  I only had about 15 minutes to stitch on Saturday because we had company over so I decided to fudge and also count the Disney project for that one as well.  Hey, the characters are from international locations, right?

Day 3 of Stitchlympics was a 3 hour stitching marathon.  I pulled out the Disney project again and finished up Lady and started on Ariel's hair:

There's a lot of hair!  The other challenge for this day was to stitch on something with yellow (again for olympic rings).  Sadly I failed at this one.  I just didn't feel like pulling out any other projects because I wanted to focus on the Disney piece.  Oh well, I did stitch orange on Lady; that's in the yellow family, right?

Day 4 of Stitchlympics was another "sprint" stitch, this time a 30 minute sprint "relay".  I managed 101 stitches on Ariel and almost finished her in my 30 minutes:

The Maynia challenge for Day 4 was to stitch something with water in it, so I stretched a bit again and figured my Ariel mermaid counted for a water challenge.  So after the 30 minutes was up for Stitchlympics I finished up the last little bits of Ariel and completed her:

Since I was so close to finishing my part of this piece completely, I decided to spend a few extra minutes for the single stitches I'd been kind of leaving until the last minute (eyebrows, cheeks, etc).  Would you believe it took about 30 minutes to put in about 20 stitches?  Gah, I hate changing colors.  But it made a difference.  Here's what my part looked like when all finished:

Day 5 was yesterday which was left handed stitching for Stitchlympics and a piece with black in it for Stitch Maynia.  Sadly I had a flare up of pain in my left elbow which made stitching difficult, so I don't have any progress to report for that.  So my brother and I and a friend went to see Suicide Squad instead.  :)  But it's feeling a bit better today, so I'm hopefully I'll have something to share for Day 6.

Here's wishing you all lots of stitchy progress!  I plan on making much more as I keep watching over the next couple weeks.

A Long Overdue Update

Hello readers!  I hope you haven't all given up on me, LOL.  It's past time for a new stitching update from me, but I just have been so busy with work and personal issues over the past few weeks I haven't really found the time to blog much.

As I reported in my last post, I had some major carpal tunnel like flare ups in my wrists at the end of January the derailed my Crazy January plans.  I had hoped to pick it back up in February, but that didn't happen.  By the time I was feeling better enough to stitch, I had to get some projects for my round robins done, and well, there you go.  Best laid plans.  Hopefully next year's challenge will go better!

I did consider doing a new project a day type challenge in either April or May but I think at this point I don't think I will do that.  I really, really want to finish the stockings for myself and my family for Christmas this year, and if I want to get through all that, I'm really going to have to crack down to have them finished in time.

So since early February although I haven't been blogging, I have been stitching.  Thus I have A LOT of updates to share with you.

First of all, last check in I was working on Sweets to the Sweet for WOCS.  Well, that one was finished:

It was done on 14 count white aida with charted DMC threads.  Didn't make any changes on this one except I didn't attach the charm that came with the pattern.  I really like this one, and might do it again, but will probably do it in different colors because by the end I was really sick of that shade of red.

After that, it was time to finish up the motif I was working on in Ink Circle's Garden of Stars for the Sampler Round Robin I'm in:

The only thing I didn't like about working on this one was that I only got to work in one color.  Seriously though, the size of this project is MASSIVE.  I had no idea from looking at the model photo.  Even if you stitched it 1 over 1 I'm sure it would still be huge.  The linen on this project was a little fiddly too, which was a little frustrating (had to frog a few things).  Over the past year or so I've been doing round robins, I've really become comfortable with stitching over 2 now, but I have to say I think I prefer evenweave over linen because I just don't like the variances in thread thickness or the transparent quality that linen has in many cases. 

But, moving on.  I also finished up the next square for the WOCS "sweets" theme.  This is Chocolate Box by Little House Needleworks:

For various reasons, including time and convenience, I did this one much different than charted.  The original has a 2 part border surrounding the chocolates, complete with beads.  Since the deadline on this one was coming up, I decided to only do the chocolates themselves and I left off most of the lazy daisy, french knot, and backstitching embellishments.  This is also on 14 count white aida, and I used the DMC floss conversions in the chart.

The first project in my Lizzie Kate round robin came to me, so I finished up my section of that one.  I forget the name of it at the moment.

Overall it was a pretty quick stitch and nicely cheerful.  It was weird to completely start a new project for someone though, LOL.  Usually the project owner does a bit before they send it out into the world for the RR's I've participated in before. 

My section for February for the sampler round robin was also a really quick stitch:

This is part of Country Cottage Needleworks Snow Sampler, and surprisingly I actually got this done in all one night which is unusual for me.  I'm kicking myself for not taking a picture of the whole thing before sending it on though.

So that's it for the finishes, which brings me to my current stitching.  First up is the next project in my Lizzie Kate Round Robin:

I'm doing the February Block of the Monthly Stamps Flip-It series.  The floss colors were a bit modified by the project owner, but I think it will still be very pretty when finished.  I'm actually a little farther along on it than this, but I haven't taken a new picture lately.

My work project is another WOCS square, this one for the Snowman theme.  Here's what Let it Snowman looks like lately:

He's much father progressed than the white blog I shared after his start during January.  I'm pleased with the way he's turning out, but I'm thinking I will skip a lot of the fussy backstitching on this one.  I just don't think he needs it really. I'm hoping to have him finished and on his way soon!

Progress Update: Crazy January Challenge Days 15-18

Well, I hope everyone had a good weekend, and those off in the US had a good 3 day holiday.  It was nice to rest and relax for most of the weekend.  Luckily my cold hasn't blown into full on sick mode yet, but I definitely am still feeling off my game.  Monday I had a visit to my thyroid specialist for my monthly checkup and apparently the radioactive treatment I had in October has finally taken full effect.  So my sick symptoms could be caused by the fact that I am now officially hypothyroid.  I'm going on a new medicine for that starting tomorrow, so hopefully that will help bring me back up to feeling better in the next few weeks.

In other news, my brother made it to Florida okay and has now completed his first few days of working at Walt Disney World.  Yay!  So proud of him. If anyone would like to read his adventures about working as a Walt Disney World cast member, he has his own blog here.

But now onto stitching.

Things were slow on the January Challenge side of things, mostly because I got far enough into Swirly Lollipop that I wanted to hurry up and finish it.  So ta-da!  It's now done:

This is a chart from Dailycrossstitch.com and was done on 14 count white aida with the charted DMC threads.  I did modify a few of the stripes slightly and I made the lollipop stick only 1 row instead of two because I thought it looked better.  This is a project stitched for WOCS (World of Charity Stitching) and was started on January 3rd and finished on January 17 of this year.

Friday I decided I wanted to start something new since I have a bit more extra time on the weekends instead of working on a WIP.  So I pulled out this piece of fabric for a project I'm calling Butterfly Sampler:

As you can see I only got a stripe of 1 color of 45 stitches in.  By the time I tracked down and pulled all the colors, I was pretty tired from the long week and ready to go to bed.  This is a series of 4 freebie butterfly charts by Durene Jones that I'm stitching together as one piece.  I think it will look really neat when it's done.

Saturday was another new start.  This is Homegrown Melons from an old copy of the (US) magazine The Cross Stitcher.  Sadly, I'm not sure who the designer is.

My plan is to frame it and gift it to my mother, since watermelons were a large theme in our kitchen and house when I was growing up.  Right now I just have a few stripes of a pink blob, but I actually didn't want to work on this one too much because I ended up working on it when we got together to watch a movie Saturday night.

My project for Sunday was also a new start (noticing a theme?).  This is Britty Kitty stocking by Brittercup Designs.  I've gotten the crazy idea in my head to attempt to stitch stockings for my family over the next year, and these is the one I've chosen for myself.  I spent most of my stitching time on Sunday finishing up Swirly Lollipop so this actually didn't get much attention, but I got two rows of a tree branch done.

Monday's project was also a stocking; this one is called Tate's Stocking and is done by Raise the Roof Designs.  It's originally charted on a 20 count linen from Weeks Dye Works, but I don't particularly like working on linen because of the uneven weaving and slubs, so I swapped it out for a sparkle evenweave instead.  I then spent like 30 minutes (no kidding) on trying to decide to do it over 1 or 2 threads.  If over 1 thread, it will be slightly smaller than the other stockings I'm doing, but if over 2 it will be much, much bigger than the other stockings.  So in the end I decided to stitch it over 1 and just have this one turn out a little smaller.  I'm probably going to get flak for it later on from the person I'm giving it to, but oh well.  After all that time debating, I only had the energy to make the barest of starts on it:

After that I needed some mindless stitching, so since Swirly Lollipop is now done I moved onto Sweets for the Sweet for a bit more progress on the lettering.  That turned out to be a good thing because most of the night was spent stitching while having a massive discussion/argument with my aunt about getting scholarships for college and so the mindless stitching was nice to not have to think too much about:

Not sure what today's project will be yet.  Honestly, I was still pretty tired from being sick/not sick/whatever all weekend, so I didn't plan the rest of the challenge out all the way like I was thinking I might.  So we'll see what I pull out of the WIP or new pile when I get home tonight and see. 

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. 

April Finishes

So as promised, here's a round up of the finishes I mentioned in my Stitch From Stash check in yesterday. 

First off, Friends for Life which is from an old issue of CrossStitcher magazine. This is the one I posted about at the end of last week, frantic because I needed to finish it no later than Monday.  I spent Thursday and Friday nights furiously stitching, got up super early Saturday to work on it some more, and then had a brainstorm.  The pattern originally called for some grass and sky detailing around the cat and dog, but by eliminating that it was still big enough for what I needed it for, and I was able to get it done much quicker.

This is definitely a pattern that benefitted greatly from the backstitch.  Here's where it was on Sunday night after all the main stitching and just a little backstitch was done:

 And here's where it ended up Monday after being completed:

Stitching details are 61 x 41 stitches (modified size) with charted DMC colors, done on 14 count aida, 3 over 1.  Stitched for a Love Quilts project (and I really hope it arrives in time, because it was down to the wire).   I started this on April 17th and finished in record time on April 27th. 

This was definitely one of those most challenging pieces I've done in a long time.  So. Many. Color. Changes.   So many fractionals (which are challenging at best on Aida).   Several french knots (which I'm terrible at).  And I made a TON of mistakes.  Hopefully despite all that it turned out okay.  I think if I had known starting at the beginning I was going to leave off the background, I would have stitched it with 2 strands instead of 3.  The pattern calls for 3 because some of the sky/grass are stitched with 1 strand to give it a varying thickness/shading effect, but it was a moot point since I didn't stitch those parts in the end. 

Anyway, I also finished up my latest WOCS piece last weekend, the one I'm calling Egg Topiary:

The green egg has pink dots in it, although the photo on my phone was a little funky and didn't pick them up very well.  This was stitched on 14 count white aida as a project for a spring quilt for World of Charity Stitching.  It was stitched with the recommended DMC threads, and is a free pattern from Stickeule.  I can't find the link at the moment, but I will post it later if I come across it. 

So now those are over, I need to work on my latest round of the Frosted Pumpkin Round Robin I'm participating in through Facebook, as this will be due at the end of next week.  Here's my latest start:

This is Woodland Sampler again, but I'm working on the October block this time (and owl).  Working with linen again, yikes...

A bit of progress

Yes, I know, I already had a post today for the A to Z challenge.  But I realized afterward that I forgot to share my latest progress with you:

Hopefully you can tell it's supposed to be part of an Easter egg?  This is my latest World of Charity Stitching donation.  It will eventually be three Easter eggs in various pastel colors set up to look like topiary trees in pots.  I expect to have a big stitching weekend, so wanted to make sure I had at least a little snapshot at the beginning so you can see the progress come Monday. 

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 23 of the Crazy January Challenge

Moving right along with the updates today, here's the progress I made yesterday on Friday.  It was another Mill Hill day, this time with Autumn Circle:

Got the veins of one of the leaves done (I think there's 4 main leaves in the circle).  I've been doing these Mill Hill kits a lot during the week, because they are easy to grab and take to work with me, which some days is the only stitching time I have (on my lunch break).  But I only have 1 left in my "have to stitch soon" pile now, so I need to figure out some other quick projects to take with me for the rest of the week. 

I also made quite a bit of progress on Perfume Bottle.  It's actually starting to look a little like a bottle now.  You can start to see a bit of the stripes forming. 

I always work with projects with large blocks of color like this that they won't look "blended" enough in the finished project, but I think this one might turn out okay.  Sorry for the not-so-great pictures on both of these, it was storming when I took them and the lighting was less than stellar. 

I'm going to have to sit down this weekend and go through the remaining projects I have kitted up and ready to go.  Because of a few projects that have interjected themselves into my original list, I have more projects in my "to start" box than I have days left in January.  But I can't really spill into February starting things every day too much because I have several things due in March that I will need to use February to work on.  Is it silly to just do like an extra week of starts into February?