Are You Ready for Halloween??

I was just out shopping this morning, and yes, the Halloween stuff is already making it's appearance on the shelves!  With the back to school rush over with, the stores are pretty eager to move on to the next event.  No complaints from me, as I absolutely LOVE Halloween!  I have to say though, that after a few years of living up north, the early appearance of Halloween goodies was bittersweet as it really marked the end of blissful summer and reminded me of the dreaded upcoming winter (I am a warm-weather gal!).  Here in Houston I get to enjoy Halloween and the Fall season fully, with no real winter coming to dread, I am loving it!
  
Seeing the spooky goodies on the shelves today reminded me of two Halloween projects I wanted to share with you.  First off is my Halloween Night Collage, which is one of the canvases being stitched at Pocket Full of Stitches' upcoming Canvas Enhancement class with Robin King.  Here is the fabulous thread kit she has pulled for it:

I am hoping for some pictures of the stitching progress on this from the retreat, I know it is going to be fabulous!  Robin will have the stitch guide available for purchase after October 1st. 

Ruth Schmuff has also written a stitch guide and pulled a thread kit for my other Halloween Collage canvas and here it is:

Are those threads just mouth-watering or what??  I am especially loving those ribbons in the upper right hand corner.  

Hope I have gotten you in the mood to stitch one or both of these!  Be sure to share the photos with me and I'll make sure to show them off here on the blog.  Until next time, Happy Stitching! 

Finished For Friday!

I love to wrap up the week with lots of new finishing photos to share!  You all have been busy stitching out there and keeping our finishing services busy as well.  I love the beautiful work done here by Mountain Shadow Studio on my Christmas Tree Forest canvas:

And this quick stitcher has gotten a pumpkin from the Crazy Patch back from the finisher with plenty of time to spare for Fall decorating!  Love all the cute details added such as the little feet and the silk leaves.  Thanks to Louise's Needlework for the photo.

Mary Powell shared her finished Summer Tree with all of us over on Stitcherie already, but I wanted to share even more!! Such great stitching and the topiary finish equals "great job"! 

I love finishes that leave room to add more sequins!!

Last but not least is Alicia Scheu's completed Floating Hearts finished into a terrific handbag!  I am seriously jealous, I'm going to have to make one of these for myself!

Thanks so much for stopping by today, hope you have enjoyed this latest round of finishes!  Be sure to send me snaps of any EyeCandy you may be stitching, finished or not, as I can always post it again when it's done!  ;)

Join the Club!

Hi all!  I am back from a little summer hiatus after my birthday last week.  Since I have been stitching on some of my own older club series projects (as I didn't stitch the original models I'm stitching a few for myself to keep) I thought I would do a little EyeCandy club series retrospective today.

My very first club series was "Tickled Pink".  Ruth Schmuff did the stitch guides for these and they made their debut in her shop, Bedecked and Beadazzled.  These ornaments are very sentimental for me, as they gave me my start as a needlepoint designer.

I just recently finished stitching this one, it will be off to the finisher soon:

Only three more to go and I'll have the whole set of seventeen completed!

My next series was also a set of ornaments, this time with a retro theme, called Atomic Christmas.  Ruth  did the stitch guides for this set too.

I could not have been more excited when Cynthia Thomas contacted me regarding stitch guides she had done for three of my Vintage Halloween Pails.  After some consultation, we added three new designs to the original set of three and voila, my first Halloween club was created!  It made it's debut at the Chaparral in my current home town of Houston.

Cynthia did such a great job on this club, with both the stitch guides and the concept for the finishing. I'm just about done stitching the cat, then I'll have only two left to stitch.

For the next club, I changed direction completely from ornaments to a set of owl stand ups, complete with cute little wings and embellished bases. (Actually, the cute finishing was a result of Ruth and West Coast Finishing putting their heads together!) This series, called "Hoot! Hoot!" had a seasonal theme and I did the stitch guides and stitching.  

My current club is Crazy Patch Boo-nanza and it is shipping right now to needlework stores nation-wide.  This one is also stitch guided by me.

You can still sign up for Crazy Patch at your local needlepoint shop.  All of my previous clubs are currently available as individual canvases with stitch guides, so you can pick and choose or get the whole set if you want!

One of the clubs that excited me most was one that Fancy Stitches in Cleburne Texas did with my set of Seasonal Tree canvases.  Their in-house stitch guide guru, Martha Johnson, stitched all four canvases and somehow managed to make the colors even more vivid than I did!! The results were fantabulous I think-- here is the Winter Tree:

So pretty!  I love how she added even more colors with the addition of the overdyed thread and ribbon.

So there you have it, hope you have enjoyed this little trip down memory lane with me.  My next club is currently "under construction" and I can't wait to share it here with you!

Catching Up In Summer (School)!

I am doing some "catch-up" stitching this summer, much as you might have to catch up on school work in summer school.  Not to sound like it's drudgery though, not at all!  Since I'm not working on stitching new models right now, I have a little time to go back and work on stitching on stuff that I get to keep for myself!  

I will probably finish stitching this Vintage Candy Pail this week and then I'll have four out of the set of six pails completed, yay!  Can't wait for the first Halloween when I'll have the whole set!

I finished the Palm Tree Heart last week, it will be number thirteen out of the seventeen ornaments from my Tickled Pink series that I have completed.  I am also looking forward to my first Christmas tree decorated with the whole set.  These ornaments are especially sentimental to me because they were some of my earliest designs and my very first club series.

Next up on the bars is the Palm Tree tree-- the trees are my favorites in the series.  No doubt, it's because of the cool finishing, gotta love the swirly hanger and the dangling base below.  

July has brought catch up stitching of all kinds-- the ongoing project that I'm working on for this year's Stitcherie group project got a lot of attention this month.  As fitting for the vacation season, KB didn't draw a clue for us this month, choosing instead to give us our "independence" and stitch any part of our canvas we wanted.  Again, I chose to get caught up on all the areas of my canvas I had started but not finished, such as the scarf and skirt, as well as make changes to areas already stitched, such as replacing the beads on her corset with cross stitches made of Fyre Werks.  

Summertime is also great for shopping and catching up on what's new in the stitchy world-- there are so many new thread colors out that I "needed" to get, plus some fabulous sequins as well.  I picked up all of these from one of my several local Houston shops.  Those two new shades of fuchsia pink Silk Lame' braid on the lower left are so gorgeous!  Those will undoubtedly be appearing on a new EyeCandy model soon! 

Hope you have enjoyed catching up with me today, and that you are having a terrific summer!

Summer Stitching

Hi all!  Hope everyone had a fantastic July 4th weekend!  In keeping with the season and summer stitching, I'd like to share some of my summer holiday canvases and some fantastic stitching and finishing.

This is my "Uncle Sam's Happy Fourth" canvas.  It's part of a set of four designs all built around the major holidays.

The cutie pie below is "Sammy", who was last year's Summer Challenge canvas over on Stitcherie.  The group had so much fun stitching him, and everyone really made their canvas their own with lots of great personal touches.  This is Judy Gartman's Sammy-- she used such great stitches and her finished banner is so summery!

Palma Seljan's Sammy is also very fabulous, I love the buttons and the multi-color beach blanket!  Note each canvas has touches of "Ada's Rainbow" from Gloriana silks, my signature color.  Part of the challenge criteria was to use that color somewhere on the canvas.  Both ladies met that challenge very well!

This is "Stars N'Stripes", stitched by Judy Furie.  She and I both love glitz, I love all the beads, sequins and metallics she used here!

Last but not least is my Patriot Owl, part of the Hoot! Hoot! series.  This one is beautifully stitched and photographed by Angie Laube.  Note her matching magnet too!  Nice work Angie!

Hope this gets you in the mood for some summertime stitchin'!  Until next time, stay cool and stitch on!