Calling for Round Robin Participants

I really shouldn't...but I did.

Since the Sampler Round Robin I have been participating in since last September through Facebook is about to wrap up (only one more project!) I decided to join another round robin, this one themed for patterns purchased from Etsy.  We start in June (or maybe July) and guess what?

We need 2 more people.

So yes, I am resorting to begging to see if anyone would be interested in joining us.  I know I've gotten comments on here before from people who were wanting to know how to join a round robin, so here's your chance.

If you've never done a Round Robin before the basic idea is that you pick a project, divide it up into parts (for however many participants you have), kit up your project with fabric, pattern, floss and mail it off to the next person in the round.  The person behind you in the round then mails you their pattern, and you work on a part of their project with the included pattern and supplies.  Then, in the next month you mail off that project to the next person and receive a new project in the mail to work on for the month.  When the round has been completed, you receive back your project completed (or almost complete depending on the size).

It's a great way to try out just a bit of lots of different patterns and projects!  If you're new to the blog and you'd like to see some examples of things I've worked on for the 3 round robins I've done so far, you can search the Frosted Pumpkin, Sampler, and Lizzie Kate round robin tags I have on my blog posts.

As I mentioned above, this particular round I'm recruiting for is for Etsy patterns, which simply means it's a pattern that you purchased from a designer who sells their items through the Etsy website.  So it's a huge open theme with lots of possibilites!  Some of my favorite Etsy designers are Brooke's Books, Satsuma Street, Tiny Modernist, Fiddlesticks AU, Cloudsfactory, DoNaStitch, Fangirl Stitches, Pinoy Stitch (home of the cutest owl patterns ever!) and of course one of my favorite UK magazine designers Durene Jones even has her own Etsy store with exclusive and out of print patterns.  So far for this round I've selected a typography pattern from Plastic Little Covers.  And there's tons more designers out there that I haven't even found yet!

Anyway, if you think you might want to join us, here's a few of the requirements:

1.  You must live in the US or Canada.  This is because it's hard to mail projects across the sea in a timely manner.  If you live in Europe,  they're going to a specific round for you guys too!

2.  You have to check in monthly on Facebook.  Since this is a Facebook based group, you will have to check in using your Facebook account.  That doesn't mean you have to be actively on Facebook all the time, but you will need to record your mailing/receiving in the group.

3.  You must have the time to complete a part of the project every month.  As you can see from my progress updates, this does cut a lot into personal stitching time.  But for me it's totally fun and worth it anyway to try all different sorts of things.

So if you're intrigued and you think you might want to join up, here's the main Facebook group page.  Make sure you read all the requirements in the pinned post at the top, then go to the Etsy event page to sign up for this round specifically.

Hope to see a couple new faces!  And you can of course expect to start seeing new projects here in my updates too.  :)

An Explosion of Stitchy Progress

Well, somehow despite my best intentions I disappeared for a little over a month again. Oops.  Life has been super crazy and I've been working the equivalent of a second job during the weekends, so lately it seems like things like blogging get pushed out of the way.  Luckily though I haven't lost my stitchy bug, so I have A LOT of progress pics to show you. Here's what I've been working since my last overdue post.

It's been awhile since you've seen Mr. Let It Snowman.  Here's what he looked like the last time I took a photo of him:

I've actually gotten a bit farther with this, but I haven't worked on it in quite awhile. I got sick of all the white I guess.

Also, a lot of stitching has been done for my round robin projects lately.  On the sampler front, I finished my section of two rounds.  The first was a couple blocks in Frosted Pumpkins Spring Sampler:

I really do like Frosted Pumpkin's patterns, but for some reason I really struggled with this one and I'm not sure why.  But I got it done in the end, so there you go.

The next sampler round was the bottom-most part of this Strawberry Shortcake Sampler:

My section was the green cake plate and the little plaid stripe underneath it.  This one was a fun pattern, it went pretty fast for me and I ended up ahead in the round robin for the first time ever.

I also have a lot of progress to show for my Lizzie Kate Round Robin projects.  First is the finish of the February stamp that I showed progress in last time:

I wasn't sure how I was going to like the colors on this one together as I was stitching it up, but I decided once it was finished it wasn't too bad.  Those little blank spots in the flowers will eventually be covered up by little purple buttons when the owner gets the project back.

The next project I got in the mail were for Lizzie's Boxer seasonal patterns.  We could choose which part we wanted to stitch and I chose the top half of the winter pattern:

This one stitched up really quick, even with all that blue fill in.  Although I totally miscounted the snowflakes the first time and had to frog them all.  That's what I get for starting it on a road trip I guess.

My most recent Lizzie Kate finish is one of the Boo Club series of patterns.  The frog turned out a little weird because his black eye buttons won't be applied to the end:

The interesting thing about this pattern was that the owner asked us to do it in only 1 ply thread, which was new for me, but it kind of grew on me the way it turned out.  I personally don't like that kind of coverage, but I bet it makes your overdyed threads go much farther!

I've been digging through lots of my old magazine issues lately and even though I have tons of WIPs to work on, I couldn't help picking a couple patterns that stood out to me for World of Charity Stitching's friendship quilt theme.  These will probably get there a little late to be included in that, but I'm sure they'll be put to good use (or I might find another use for them in the meantime).

This one is a pattern from Lucie Heaton, and the individual pattern doesn't have a name, so I called it Dancing Divas in my head.

Not much to look at now but I stitched all I could with the colors I have on hand at the moment, so that's all there is for now.  This is definitely a pattern that will greatly benefit from the backstitching, which seems to be a common theme in Lucie's patterns.  But they're super fun to stitch and work up really quick!

The second pattern I pulled is a card design called Best Friends Share from a really old copy of Cross Stitch Card Shop.

I just started this one last night, so right now it's pretty much just an orange blur, but eventually this will be two cute little kitties curled up in a basket together.

I think that catches me up with everything for now, and of course I promise to try and update more frequently, although the way life has been lately, who knows?