Holiday Potpourri

What else could I title a a blog post that has both July 4th and Easter stuff in the middle of September? That's one of the cool things about needlepoint,  everything is in season all the time!  

Ruth announced a couple weeks back that my Easter Bunny Collage canvas now has a stitch guide by Julia Snyder herself!  Please, please, someone out there get to stitching this, I am dying for a model to show off!  Just look at those threads, you know know you want to order this kit right now!

Case in point, here is the kit for my Stars N' Stripes canvas that Ruth made a stitch guide for last year.  Several of you succumbed to temptation and got started stitching!

And now look, I have this fantastic finished model stitched by Catherine to show off to you today:

Makes all the difference to see it stitched, right? Always nice to see it finished or framed too, but heck, I'm not picky about that!  

Alright, enough nagging, I'll let you get back to stitching now. Until next time, Happy Stitching!

New Design "Halloween Birdhouse"

I am very pleased to share my newest design, appearing in the September/October 2013 issue of Needlepoint Now.  This is my first foray into creating a line-drawn canvas design.  I have always enjoyed this type of design for it's "coloring book" appeal-- filling in the lines with fun colors and patterns, what could be more fun?  I hope you will enjoy stitching it as much as I did!

Here is the whole design, flat, before the finishing process:

And here it is finished!  As you may have noticed from the line of chain stitches surrounding the design, like my previous "Spring Garden" series, this one too is a project you can finish yourself should you choose.  I finished this one as a Cracker ornament, albeit it is a bit larger than most, the stitched area is 3" x 4, giving you a finished piece somewhere between Cracker and Roll Up in size.

Here's another little detail-- I put pom-poms into the ends to fluff out the ruffle and add a little surprise touch:

Here's a sneak peek at the materials list, courtesy of the magazine:

And here are detail photos for your stitching reference-- the center birdhouse:

And the little Witchy-bird, stitched in Kreinik's gorgeous peacock color metallic ribbon:

Detail of the roof and dormer.  Rainbow Gallery's FyreWerks makes for a great glass in the windows illusion:

Detail of the flowers, created with layered sequins, beads and metallics:

 The Jack O'Lantern is created with the Basketweave Beading technique using Delica beads:

Finishing details are included in the article, and couldn't be simpler!  Essentially, you are making a tube that will slide over another tube, made of fabric and stuffed like a little mini bolster pillow.  Afterwards, you can embellish them both as much as you would like!

Hope you have enjoyed this preview.  Please contact me if you have any questions about stitching or finishing this design and as always, Happy Stitching!

A Winning Weekend!

I have some real winners to show off to you today!  The first is this gorgeous version of my Spring Garden Thread Keep from the May/June 2013 issue of Needlepoint Now.  Elaine Flood stitched this one with her own choice of canvas and thread colors and I think it definitely wins as my favorite color variation that I've seen so far.   

Front of tag

Back of tag

The colors really "pop" off that gorgeous blue background, don't you think?  Great work, Elaine, and thanks for sharing!

Here's another favorite color variation in this series-- Jana Bendawald stitched this version of the Spring Garden Biscornu on green canvas instead of the original pink and added an antique button from her collection.  I love getting to see these kind of variations on the original work!

This set of my Halloween mini ornaments were all stitched by "First Timers" for the ANG Auction this month in Anaheim.  What great work they did, they all came out so cute!

They were all displayed on this great little tree and ultimately won by lucky bidder Lisa Eddo!  Big Congrats to her and wishing her a very Happy Halloween too!

Thanks for visiting my blog!  I hope to get back to my regular blog schedule now that Labor Day has passed and things get back to normal.  What happened to "the lazy days of summer" anyway?  I find that as of lately, summer is much more busy and hectic than the rest of the year.  Anyway, I hope to have some new stitching of my own to show off next time!