Friday Finishing!

I went away for a week to visit the Outer Banks area of North Carolina and then came home to a flood of finishing! What a nice treat, I'll have to try that more often! 

Do you recognize my Spring Garden Biscornu, pictured below?  It's amazing how different it looks stitched on a green canvas (rather than the pink I used) and with different threads and buttons.  Jana Bendawald stitched this gorgeous variation using her stash threads and her antique button collection.  Thank you so much for sharing Jana!

Here is the reverse side of Jana's biscornu:

The original design was published in the Nov/Dec 2012 issue of Needlepoint Now, available from your local needlework store or direct from the publisher.

Linda blogged last week about her finish of my Peeky Kitty canvas that she stitched using a Susan Portra stitch guide.  You may remember me posting a photo of this one half-finished just a couple of weeks ago-- I was so excited about it I couldn't wait until it was done!  It was worth the short wait, as I knew it would be, how gorgeous is that fish border??  Be sure to read more about it on Linda's blog, where you will get to see a photo of "Fred", who was the inspiration behind this piece!  Beautiful work Linda, thanks for posting your work!

And in yet another great blog posting from last week, Diane shared her experience with stitching my Fall Tree canvas.  She has posted lots of great detailed photos of her process as well as some great tips on stitching with DMC Memory Thread.  Here is a picture of her stitched canvas, which is now on it's way to the finisher:

Wonderful work, Diane, thanks for "taking the time" to write such a detailed and informative post! Will look forward to seeing this one again post-finishing.

The stitch guide for this canvas also appeared in Needlepoint Now in the Sept/Oct 2010 issue.

Thanks so much for stopping by, I hope you have enjoyed the photos!  Next week I will share some of my new designs for Summer 2013!

New Stitch Guides!

Ruth has cooked up a great stitch guide for my Witch's Garden Halloween Collage canvas-- just look at this yummy kit!

Robin King writes her stitch guides "on the fly"-- this is my original Halloween Collage that she's writing a guide for as she travels between teaching gigs.  This guide will be for a customer at Pocket Full of Stitches upcoming Fall retreat. 

The big summer TNNA needlepoint market is this week, so I thought I should give you a little peek at what is new and coming soon from me:

That's all I can show for now, the rest will be posted here real soon!  Thanks for stopping by!

A Tale of Two Kitties

It would serve me right if you never read my blog again after making a pun this dreadful, but having two cute kitties to show you today, I just couldn't resist!  

First off, here is my Purr More, Hiss Less canvas, stitched by Ann LaPlante and finished by West Coast Finishing, who always seem to add the cutest little feet-- it's really getting to be their signature I think!  I love that glamorous black ruffle trim too.  Great job stitching Ann, and great job finishing Sue, thanks to you both for sharing your work with me!

I'm showing this one too, even though it is still in progress.  I saw this on the blog "Split the Needles" and was absolutely smitten!   I'm hoping that Linda, the blog author who's stitching this, will see and know that I am cheering her on to finish this one.  The fish border that she is adding to my Peek A Boo Kitty canvas is absolutely inspired.  Talk about adding your own personal touch to a canvas, this one is really her very own now.  I have seen this design stitched several times and I am amazed that so far no two are especially alike.  This one is for sure the most unique so far, so please do be sure to send me photo if you have your own version of this canvas you would like to show off.  

  

Hope you have enjoyed my very punny post today, thanks for stopping by! 

Homecoming

I had a little "family reunion" of sorts last week when my distributor, Ruth Schmuff, sent me a box containing some of my older stitched models.  These guys have logged many a mile on the trunk show circuit, as well as quite a bit of time in Ruth's shop, Bedecked & Beadazzled.  I haven't seen these in person since I finished stitching them, years ago now.  It's nice to have them back to get reacquainted! 

These two are from my earliest set of Halloween designs, a collection of teardrop ornaments, stars and topiary trees.  Both pieces were finished by Marlene's, whose idea it was to make the Jack o' Lantern star into a magic wand.  It came out so cute!

My Halloween series right after this was a set of three Victorian-style candy cones.  This one is the "Witch's Accessories" cone, featuring her fancy red shoes.  Loading it up with selections from my Halloween doo-dad collection was lots of fun! 

I stayed with the witch theme in my next collection, which merged Halloween with my interest in stitching accessories.  The witch hat shape is such a natural choice for a scissor case.  This was also the first time I ever tried the technique of Basketweave Beading and I was very pleased with the way the little Jack o'Lantern motif came out.  I made the little witch scissor fob as well to round out the set.

Now for something different, this checkbook cover is called Floating Flowers.  This was designed for and published in Spool magazine, which is, sadly, no longer published which is a shame as it was a great magazine that appealed to every kind of stitcher.  The canvas and stitch guide however, are still available.  

Finally, this early Christmas Tree Forest canvas takes me way back to my very first collection!  This one was one of my very first stitched and finished models.  I was sequin-crazy back then, the embellishment pack for this very small design has almost 30 sequins and beads of various sizes and shapes. 

Hope you have enjoyed this little trip down my memory lane!  Thanks for looking and have a great weekend with plenty of stitching time!

Getting My Ducks in a Row

I've been in the process of reorganizing virtually everything I own since I moved late last year, and really, I think I may spend more time managing my stuff than I do actually working and/or playing with it!  Plus, there are so very many organizing goodies out there that just deciding between the options becomes another project in itself.  

To round up my fabrics, tools and such, I have them all in these cute pink and green bins that I found at IKEA:

They stacked up along the floor of the closet really nicely, plus they all have casters on the bottom so they are easy to move.

At one point, I was participating in so many needlepoint clubs that I had to have a list to keep up with them!  Originally, I had each kit in bags stored in plastic tubs, but the canvases and guides started getting wrinkled, so I took the kits apart and put all the stitch guides and canvases in a chest of drawers.  I put the work-in-progress canvases in there too: 

I took all the thread kits and (making sure that every kit was marked as to which club canvas it belongs to) put them in smaller bins that I moved over to the area where I keep my thread collection:

I keep the rest of the threads in this large chest of drawers, also an IKEA find.  I took this photo when I was organizing the drawer where all the solid-color silks are stored:

Most of the time though, I have to admit that there are almost as many threads sitting on top of the cabinet as there are inside:

One or two large projects plus a trip to the LNS is all it takes to create this mess!  It builds up quickly.  

Looking forward to getting it all squared away so I can get back to actually using it!  I also tackled the "great bead mess" a couple weeks ago.  You may remember the photo I posted last year of the "bead soup" that the movers had made of my bead collection.  That is all sorted out as well (took a couple weeks and two seasons of Downton Abbey to get through it all) and I'll post some pictures of that later on.

  

Thanks for looking, hope your week is off to a great start!