An Abundance of Needlepoint This Week

This week I felt like Christmas arrived two months early with all of the needlepoint canvases and finished pieces that arrived on my doorstep. Just a few weeks ago I packed up a box of finished canvases to send to Marlene in San Francisco. I had no idea that I would see the two Halloween pieces in time for Halloween this year. But, they are here! Here are a couple of pictures of "boo".

The day before I sent "boo" off to be finished, I was shopping at Hobby Lobby and found some cute Halloween buttons which were perfect additions to this canvas. You will see that I added a little spider and a bat. I liked that they had a matte finish and were on the smallish side so that they weren't the focus of the finished piece. Marlene and I had talked about finishing "boo" as an easel-back but I am much happier with this type of finishing. "boo" is sitting in front of my huge Jim Shore black cat holding her lantern and sitting atop a pumpkin. She is surrounded by the black feather wreath I found at Target a few years ago.

I also now have my Kelly Clark Halloween apple in time for Halloween this year. I will definitely have to do the others in this series for next year. The back of this ornament is finished in a deep orange raw silk.

There were four finished Christmas pieces in the box from Marlene as well. Again, we had talked about finishing Noel as an easel back but obviously they thought better of that idea and finished it in this cute way.

I also have three new Christmas ornaments to add to the tree this year or give as a gift.

I couldn't be happier with all of these finished pieces from Marlene. It is such a gratifying feeling to have six completely finished projects from 2011 in my hands for use this year!

Now, on to the canvases that arrived this week. I now have a Kelly Clark witch hat (skeleton and snake) from The Bristly Thistle.  NeedleDeeva's Hooty was also in the same box.

The other new canvas that arrived this week came from Amy's in Memphis. This is from Melissa Shirley's new series of fairy tale witches. May I introduce Helowise.

This is really a beautiful canvas and Amy has chosen a wonderful palette of thread colors for Helowise. It's fun to stitch the brightly colored Halloween ornaments but this is a nice change of pace to use more subtle autumn colors. I wish the photograph did the colors justice! Amy has written a great stitch guide for Helowise.

On the stitching front this week, I finished stitching Fraidy Cat. He was such fun and Robin did a fantastic job with the stitch guide and thread choice.

I had such fun stitching Fraidy that as soon as he came off the stretcher bars, I put Frankenstein on in his place. I started Frank on Saturday.

How do you like my little bit of bat bling on this canvas? I saw this bat magnet on Amy's website and knew I had to have him for all of my Halloween canvases.

The only piece I didn't photograph this week is Bottle Bouquets. I made some nice progress on the first bottle and actually finished stitching the bottle and have almost finished stitching the flowers and leaves. I think it's the smallest bottle of the group so it's no wonder it has gone so quickly. I'll show you a finished bottle and flowers next week.

My bank account is telling me that that's enough needlepoint for one week! I still have the Melissa Shirley Christmas banner to arrive next week but that should be it for awhile. I have more than enough projects to keep me busy well in to the early part of 2012!

Hope your week has been filled with time to stitch! I think I spent more time this week looking at newly received projects and finished pieces than actually stitching. It's another beautiful autumn day and I think Frankenstein is going to see some time spent outdoors being stitched today.

Have a wonderful week ahead!