The Big Reveal

This time last year I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of the first lesson for the Melissa Shirley Christmas Banner that was being offered as a Home Study by Amy Bunger. It arrived right on time the first week of November and I couldn't wait to get it onto the stretcher bars and put in the first stitches. Fast forward to the middle of June this year when I put in the final stitches. It was such a wonderful project from beginning to end. Melissa Shirley designed a beautiful, elegant canvas and Amy Bunger brought it to life with fabulous stitch combinations and an abundance of beads and huge variety of threads. In August, I sent the stitched banner out to Marlene's in San Francisco for finishing. It arrived home this week!

I couldn't be more pleased with and proud of the finished product! Marlene did a spectacular job with the finishing. I told them I wanted a simple, but elegant finish and that is exactly what they gave me. The sides and back are finished in an ivory silk. The sides and top are accented with two ribbons - one wide, striped green ribbon and a gold ribbon on top of that. I had asked for a ribbon bow on top but the one that Marlene used is even more beautiful than I imagined. The bow is the perfect tailored finish to this piece.

For once, I thought ahead and requested that they embroider my initials and the dates on the back. The lettering and numbers are embroidered in a taupe thread. Just perfect! You can also see the green and gold cording that was used on all sides.

As soon as I unwrapped the banner from the box, I knew that my little "point and shoot" Nikon would not be able to do any photo of it justice. So I headed out to a photographer's studio for some professional pictures. It was worth spending a few more dollars to have this piece photographed correctly!

Thanks for sticking with me week after week as I stitched and documented my progress. Seven months of stitching and blogging was worth it when I see the finished banner. Now, I am eagerly anticipating Amy's next Home Study (I skipped the Thanksgiving House). She has given us a few hints but I still can't figure out what it might be. Stay tuned....

Tucked into the box with the Christmas Banner were a few more finished treats - Halloween ornaments!

That's a Kelly Clark Halloween apple and three NeedleDeeva Creepy Characters that you see. In all of the excitement of the package arriving from Marlene's this week, I forgot to take a picture of the other finish that arrived the same day - the Frog's Breath Bottle. It's a very cute finished piece and I'll show you a picture next week.

I finished another stripe on the Give Thanks canvas this week and started a new Kelly Clark Heritage Series Christmas ornament. I also started another Christmas project that I haven't told you about.  It arrived this week as well. I'll show you some pictures next week of all three of these projects.

It was a big week for needlepoint at my house with all six finished pieces arriving on the same day. That won't happen again for quite a while! Time to get back to some more stitching so I'll see you next week.

Have a great week ahead!

Woo Hoo Witchy Woman

Remember that song from the Eagles? Their Witchy Woman had raven hair and ruby lips but my Witchy Woman has candy corn colored hair and ruby lips. Mehitabel's a little less sexy and a lot more friendly than the woman to whom the Eagles dedicated their song.

Miss Mehitabel was my finish of the week. What fun these Creepy Characters are from NeedleDeeva! Judee came up with some great designs and Robin brought them to life with her fabulous stitch guides. Mehitabel was an easy 2-3 week project and many days I didn't even pick her up to stitch. I think I will definitely have to stitch a few more of these. They are just too easy and satisfying to not stitch some more of them!

Have you seen the Geico commercial that is running on television right now with the witch trying out the brooms at the broom factory? I love it! Makes me laugh every time I see it!

This week I also worked on finishing up the first two stripes of Give Thanks. It is always fun to see how the chosen threads work with each other to add sparkle and texture to the painted canvas. I wish my pictures could convey this to you. I particularly like the Threadworx color that Amy chose for the green stripe diagonal lines. The shading moves from dark to light green with little flecks of sparkly gold and copper. So pretty!

I think my next small project will be one of Kelly Clark's Heritage Series ornaments. I added several to my stash over the last couple of months and it's time to get started on some of them. I'll show you which one I choose next week.

The Christmas Banner should be making its way home to me any day now and I can hardly wait to see it! I sent it to Marlene about seven or eight weeks ago. I also sent her a few of the Creepy Characters to be finished and I think a Kelly Clark Halloween apple ornament. Since I can't remember what I sent, it will be a surprise when they arrive back home.

Maybe I will have some finishes to show you next week - we'll see! Until then, have a great week!

" Whoo hoo, witchy woman, see how high she flies.........." Now that song will be in my head the rest of the day!

The Big Finish

The Christmas Parade crossed the finish line this week! If you arrived late to the Parade, I started this Susan Roberts/Ashley Dillon canvas in May when I attended Needlepoint University at Amy's Golden Strand in Memphis. The canvas, stitch guide, and thread kit for this project was a Christmas 2011 gift from my thoughtful son and daughter-in-law. What a wonderful gift it was, too! It was so exciting to walk into Amy's classroom that Friday morning and see this canvas on stretcher bars with a huge bag full of wonderful threads just waiting for me to put in the first stitches.

Each time I stitch a canvas using one of Amy's stitch guides, I think it can't be better than all of the others of hers that I have stitched. But, each time it is and I learn something new - trying new stitches, a new technique, or stitching with a new thread.

Turkey work was definitely a new stitching technique for me. It certainly adds so much dimension and texture to the piece.

It's been a fun parade throughout the summer and into the fall! Thanks for sticking with me through the entire process and leaving such nice, encouraging comments along the way! There is another Parade in my stitching future - the 4th of July parade (also by Susan Roberts/Ashley Dillon). Love it (!) and look forward to stitching it but I think I will take a little break from another parade for the moment.

So, what to stitch next if it isn't the 4th of July Parade? The Melissa Shirley Whimsy canvas? The Melissa Shirley Helowise canvas? How about the Give Thanks canvas from & more Designs? That's the one, I think, and it is certainly season-appropriate as Thanksgiving approaches.

I started this canvas Friday evening and completed the first two steps of the first green stripe this evening (Saturday).  This is just the type of project I wanted to work on after coming off a lengthy piece like the Christmas Parade. It requires some careful counting but there aren't a lot of thread changes. And, a stripe is such a nice, compact way to measure your progress on a canvas - especially when all the green stripes are the same pattern and the cream stripes (which are also all the same) are a variation on the pattern that has already been established. A perfect project!

I had some quality time to give to Miss Mehitabel this week as well. Her face and neck are now lovely shades of green. Her hat is a work in progress at the moment. It needs a brim and a pointy tip to it. I hope I can do justice to those big red lips and even bigger teeth!

I made another trip to Pier One this week. We haven't even made it to Halloween and I have already started thinking about how to decorate the mantle for Thanksgiving. I just remember thinking how empty the house looked after I took down the Halloween decorations last year (sort of like how you feel in January when the Christmas decorations are put away). I picked up some beautiful mercury glass pumpkins and a gourd from QVC that are lighted with a battery powered light (that's on a timer!) to use as a focus on the mantle. They just glow so beautifully at night when the lights come on. I couldn't wait another few weeks to try them out so I loaded the batteries right after they arrived just to see what they looked like. I love them - an excellent purchase!

Anyway, didn't mean to get sidetracked on the lighted gourd and pumpkins, but I was looking around Pier One for some garland or silk flowers to use with the pumpkins. I found what I needed and also found one more Halloween decoration - a glittery purple broom.

I'm showing you this because it's a hint for another project that will be finding it's way to my door in the next couple of weeks. Can you guess what it is?

Hope you have a great week ahead!

The Fur is Finished!

I had one goal in my stitching this week and that was to finish the fur on Santa's coat on my Christmas  Parade canvas. Thanks to some early Ryder Cup golf on television on Saturday morning, I settled down for some concentrated Turkey Work. In no time at all, I put in the last loop! Of course, I had stitched all week to get to that place on Saturday where I could put in that last loop!

Out came my favorite pair of Friskars embroidery scissors which seem so well suited for the cutting step of Turkey Work.

The cutting and trimming of the Turkey Work is a necessarily time consuming process. The fur created by the Turkey Work is very (!) dense and it becomes more difficult to cut as you get closer to the canvas surface. You don't want any cuts that go to deep. I moved the canvas to the dining room table so that I could move the canvas around to check how the cutting was going from all sides. After about an hour of careful cutting, this was the result -

Amy suggested french knots along the edges of the candy cane walking stick and around the head and neck of the goose. Otherwise, the fur would overwhelm both areas. Great idea! Now that the fur has been completed, I really see the finish line in sight with this fun project!

Mehitabel received some attention this week, too. I worked on several of the background sections as you can see.

She's the perfect project to stitch when my cat decides she needs to sleep in my lap in the evenings. The Creepy Characters are easy projects to pick up and stitch on for a few minutes at a time.

I signed up for two needlepoint clubs this week! I can look forward to the Faberge eggs from The Needle House and Melissa Shirley's Golden Crackers club from Fireside Stitchery. I'll have a nice selection of small projects to stitch over the next year. Can't wait to get started on them!

That's it on the stitching front for me this week. Hope you have a great week ahead!

Meet Miss July 2012

I had a fun, pint-size finish this week as Miss July 2012 came off the stretcher bars.

Miss July is from a series of July 4th children designed by Melissa Shirley. Carolyn Hedge Baird wrote a great stitch guide for this series. Thank you, Melissa and Carolyn! I wish the photograph could do justice to her sparkly personality. She has hex shaped beads on her dress which really pick up the light. I added some star sequins at each corner that I purchased from Amy's Golden Strand this summer. They also add some extra sparkle. The big, blue bow in her hair is the icing on the cake! I have a companion piece from this series that I want to stitch - a little boy holding a flag - so that they can be finished together (whatever that may be).

Last week, I promised you some pictures of the Christmas Parade. This parade just keeps on keeping on! I am so close to finishing it but I think it still has another couple of weeks on the stretcher bars. The bottom border seems to stretch on forever. I haven't worked on it every day this week but it has taken me a week just to get half way across.

I took a break from the border and started the turkey work on the bottom border of Santa's coat. I'm thinking I probably don't need loops as large as I have made them but I suppose it's better to have larger loops with too much thread than small ones and not enough to work with. Larger loops just mean a little more thread is required and a little more cutting and trimming. I must be ready to wrap up this project because right now every section I stitch seems to drag on into infinity! Do you ever feel like that with a project? No matter how much you love a project or have enjoyed the work put into it, there comes a time when you are just ready to be finished. That's where I am with Christmas Parade.

What's the upcoming Halloween season without a Halloween project to stitch? This season's project is Mehitabel from NeedleDeeva. I made a good start on her last night while watching the Georgia-Vanderbilt game. Go Dawgs! Mehitabel has a winning smile that is sure to make her the belle of the Halloween Ball this year!

Robin King has written the best stitch guides for the Creepy Characters of which Mehitabel is a part. Several of her fellow Characters are off at the finisher as I write. Hope they make it home for Halloween this year!

Here in Georgia, our first weekend of Autumn is off to a beautiful start with cool nights and warm days. At Publix yesterday, I bought a beautiful bouquet of sunflowers and eucalyptus to welcome the first day of fall. Pretty, isn't it?

Well, time to go get the slow cooker ready for the Boston butt pork roast that will cook all afternoon. I'll have barbecue pulled pork on the menu for the rest of the week - not a bad thing!

Hope you have a great week ahead!

A Bottle of Frog's Breath

I took a little break from blogging last week to visit with my son and daughter-in-law who were in town to pick up some furniture they bought here over the Labor Day weekend. A locally owned furniture store is having an unbelievable sale and it was exciting to see Andrew and Anna  load up a rental truck with all the elements of a brand new living room.

While the blogging was on hold last week, the stitching was not. I finished my Kirk & Hamilton Frog's Breath Poison Bottle canvas. The stitch guide is by Amy Bunger.

This one will be off to the finisher tomorrow in hopes that it might come back to me before Halloweeen. I'll have it finished as a standup. I was doing a little Halloween shopping at JoAnn's this week and they had some cute "poison" bottles for sale in their Halloween decor area but none had the character of the Frog's Breath bottle.

I was on a mission to JoAnn's this week to buy two specific pieces to add to my Halloween decorations. On an earlier trip there, I had come across a stack of two "books" - Curses and Spells - that I wanted as props for my Halloweenie characters. I held off buying them until I had two coupons that amounted to 60% off. I don't think the ink had dried on my printed out coupon before I was out the door to buy my books.

It's a good thing that Amy's Home Study only included eight characters or else I would have needed a larger mantle on which to display them. I don't think there are any more additions that can be made to the mantle's Halloween display. There's no more room!

If you are looking to add some new pieces to your Halloween decorations, don't miss trips to Pier One and JoAnn's. They both have a fun variety of decorations.

My other addition to my Halloween decor was this witch's hat wreath from a favorite local store, Cudos. It's almost as big as my back door!

My work on the Christmas Parade continues. Each week there are fewer and fewer open spaces left to stitch. I've finished the snowy ground and the trees and have moved on to the final details. I'll have a picture for you next week.

If you are wondering about the header photo I am using for the next few weeks, that's the "Boo" canvas by & More Designs with a stitch guide by Amy Bunger.

Well, friends, that's it from Halloween Central for this week. Have a great week ahead!

Equal Opportunity Holiday Stitcher

I thought it might be a nice break from Christmas Parade to show you some other holiday canvases that I am working on. The Parade has been front and center for a while now but I have found some time to work on a couple of smaller canvases for Halloween and July 4th.

I showed you the Kirk & Hamilton Frog's Breath bottle a few weeks ago.  I have been stitching black on black for a large part of the bottle so there really isn't too much to see other than the fact that I have finished the black areas. Now I can work on adding the frog's fingers, toes, and tongue. I started on the lettering this week and had hoped to get that part finished but I didn't quite get to the finish line.

My little July 4th girl is really coming along. It took a while to stitch that head full of curls. I used Twisted Lazy Daisy stitches for the curls. She has a big, navy ribbon bow in her hair that will be added towards the end of my stitching. This week I finished her blue dress (except for the white beads) and red and white sash. I'll probably work on the background over the next couple of days and then move on to the border.

I added two more canvases to my Kelly Clark Heritage Series of Christmas ornaments this week. I found these on eBay.

Hope you're enjoying the Labor Day holiday and can settle in for a nice weekend of stitching! My Ott Light bulb burned out last night after many years of use so I'll be off to Joann's today to replace it. I'm too dependent on that light  - my primary source of stitching light - to go for too long without it.

Have a good week ahead!