Some Tudor-themed designs

Since I'm supposed to be finishing my Tudor podcast right now and I'm procrastinating, I figured I would post a few of the Tudor-related Textile Heritage kits that I've stitched.



First is the "family" of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I. The kits are supposed to be cards, but I'm planning on framing them together.



And these two are Tudor roses. I haven't finished bookmark yet, because I've been trying to decide whether or not to use the ribbon backing that came with the kit or to put some nice fabric on the back. The coaster is all finished and sits on my bedside table. (I took the picture before I put it in the plastic so there wouldn't be any reflections.)

My largest project to date

... and probably still my favorite.



Sorry for the not-so-great picture. This obviously isn't a professional framing job either. I bought the frame before I finished (maybe even before I actually started) this design, but when I saw it in the store I knew it would be perfect. I did a temporary framing job on it a few years ago so I could have it up for Christmas and I still haven't taken it in to get it done professionally. Someday!

The design is, of course, Celtic Christmas from Told in a Garden. It's still the largest project that I've done, and it was my first large linen project. I think I had only done two very small linen projects before tackling this one.

More old projects... still waiting to be framed

And I really don't have any excuse on this first one, since I have the perfect frame. I just need to get off my butt and mount the darn thing.



This is a Welsh dragon that I bought as a kit from Cambriana Designs, who have a whole line of Welsh symbols, castles and scenery pictures.



This is the frame for the dragon. I was thrilled to find it, since it looks like it's covered in scales!

I have a goal of stitching pictures of most of the places I've visited in the UK, so I was really pleased that Cambriana had a design of Criccieth Castle, which is certainly not one of the better known castles in North Wales (being overshadowed by the big Edwardian Castles like Harlech, Caernarfon, etc.) That is stitched up below:



In both of these, I switched out the kit fabric for choices of my own. The dragon is on 28-ct mushroom Monaco and the castle is a natural (kind of linen-like) 28-ct that I bought a full yard of a couple of years ago. I really like this fabric since it adds a nice rustic look to pictures of crumbling old castles.

And one more for today's post: This is another kit I bought in the UK, this time down in Portsmouth, England and it is of Henry VIII's ship The Mary Rose



I thought this one would be appropriate to add since yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the raising of the ship. If you're ever in the south of England I highly recommend a visit to Portsmouth and The Mary Rose (you can see the HMS Victory there too!)

More recent finishes

I finally found some cute little bows to finish off the bottoms of this set of ornaments that I've posted before. So these are ready to hang now!


This next one is still not completely finished, but it is one step closer to being a completed project. The pattern is from an issue of New Stitches (pretty sure). I had this old green aida cloth and wanted to see how a light thread would look on a dark fabric, so I stitched this one up quick. I was originally just going to toss it, but I was was inspired by some of the finishes I've seen on other needlework blogs and stitched this into a little pillow. I'll probably wrap some cording around it and put a tassel at the bottom and make an ornament out of it.



The next two are some little kits that I picked up... The ribbon sachet was a kit that I bough during the short time that I was working at a craft store to make ends meet after college (the research job that I continued in after graduation was only part time). Ribbon embroidery was really taking off at the time and I wanted to try some. I finished the ribbon stitching fairly soon after buying the kit, but only made up the sachet a couple of weeks ago. I can't believe that I've had things sitting around that long!



This next one was another kit that I bought at some big-box craft store a few years back and was mostly stitched at the house of friends that my boyfriend was staying at until he found a house to buy. I spent most of the weekends there too and stitched this on some of the lazy evenings at their house. I love how seeing some of these older project have strong memory associations with where I stitched them.

Some recent finishes and a couple of framed items

First up, a few older projects that I finally framed (!!):



This one is a Jane Greenoff design that I bought as a kit on one of my trips to Britain (probably the 1998 one, so that means it took me nearly 10 years to finish it!)



And this was another kit that I bought on a trip to the UK, this time north Wales. This is a small design of Conwy Castle that I bought at the castle giftshop. At least this one only took me 7 years to finish. If I remember correctly, I did most of the stitching on it on one of my trips to Maine.

Here are a couple more old cover kits from the mid-1990s that I finished up a few weeks ago. I think all of these are from Needlecraft magazine. The leaves one had some lettering that I left off, since I liked the design without them. The wreath and egg were punched card designs, which I had never done before. I like the results, but punching 6 strands through those holes can be a little hard on the fingers (actually 12 strands where they double up through the eye of the needle!).



And last but not least, here is my progress on the Winter section of the four seasons design. The photo was taken early on Saturday and I did a bunch of work on the upper pine needles yesterday (and I'm about to finish another snowflake this evening). I generally don't set monthly goals (since I know I mostly won't meet them) but I'm thinking I'll get this one finished by the end of October. I wanted to do a Halloween piece this month, but I'm trying to not have too many things going at once right now.

Where has the time gone???

You know, for all the physics and astronomy classes that I've had, I still have no real grasp on the concept of time. It still amazes me how you can look up and all of a sudden you're flipping the calendar over to October when you're sure you just got back from a July 4th cookout the day before.

I've been really busy over the past two weeks and it is only going to get worse until about Thanksgiving, but I've been jealousy guarding my evening and weekend "downtime" to so some stitching and finish up some old projects.

First up, a couple of recent finishes:



This one was sort of a finish of an old cover kit. The materials (including the lavender inside) were from a cover kit on Needlecraft Magazine (I think) in about 1994. It originally called for a little embroidery design of a lavender plant, but I decided to use this little lavender sprig from Needlecraft's September 2000 issue instead. To make it fit, I did it over one on 32 count fabric. I love to stitch small but I made a big mistake starting it on an evening that I had a terrible headache. It certainly didn't help any. The finished product is now residing in my underwear drawer. :)



And yes, the infamous (to me anyway) 15-years-in-the-making Christmas ornaments are finally done! I stitched the backing on and stuffed the remaining two over the weekend. Now I just need to actually put up a Christmas tree this year so I'll have somewhere to hang them (hopefully out of the reach of puppy and kitty!).



This is another recent finish. The stitching had been done for ages on this one, but I hadn't finished it into the little potpourri bag until a week or so ago. I have long since lost the potpourri that came with the kit (I think it was a Cross My Heart product that I picked up at the Spirit of Cross Stitch festival), so it is currently empty. I'll probably get something with a nice cinnamon smell for the holidays.

I've got a pile of large and small items that are still awaiting framing. Here's just a sampling: (I'll post more about some of the individual ones eventually... maybe when I finally get them framed!)



And finally, a little bit about a medium-sized part of a larger project I'm working on. This is the Fall section from the Dimensions leaflet pictured next to it:



Instead of working it as one large picture, I decided to do it as four separate ones. I'm planning on framing them separately as well, but arranging them on the wall like they are in the overall design. I'm currently stitching the Winter one, which is the largest project I have going at the moment. I'll post some pictures of my progress in the next few days. Pretty much everything else I've been doing is finishing the old projects above and working some Textile Heritage miniatures, which I'll also post a picture of soon. I'm about 60% of the way through their Tower Bridge miniature at the moment.

More of my past projects

I forgot to mention in some of my past posts that I used to hang out on the rec.crafts.textiles.needlework USENET group many years ago and through that I became part of a group that got together in Austin every so often to stitch. We did a fun shop hop down to San Antonio too. Through one of the members of that group, I had a chance to volunteer at the Alma Lynne booth at the Spirit of Cross Stitch Festival when it came to Austin in 1996. It was tons of fun and I spent tons of money! In the process of working the festival I finally "got" the idea of what really high-quality stitching was about through looking at some of the competition winners. Since then, not only do I take more care in getting all my stitches to go the same direction, but I've also taken more care in "carrying over" and making the top stitches lie flat (well... flatter... I'm still a little sloppy at times) and not letting fuzz from dark threads show on light and vice versa. I'm by no means a competition quality stitcher, but I am definitely improving.

Also at the festival, I caught the bug for stitching small. I've mentioned it before, but I really enjoy doing stuff on high count fabric, although I'll admit that I haven't done a lot. The project that caught my eye was a small section of "Jacque's View" from Graphs by Barbara and Cheryl done on 28 ct. over one. I was working with Cheryl of the above design team and she had the model for that chart in the booth with us, including the section around the cat done small. I was entranced!



The above project was probably the biggest that I've done on 18 count to date. I started it in around 1993, but it wasn't finished until several years later. It's from a Candamar Designs book called "Something Special: Home Sweet Home".



I also thought I would toss in a picture of one of the few needlepoint projects that I've done so far but I've got a couple more kits in my stash. I think that the sunflowers above are from a Dimensions kit, but I'm not 100% sure. I also did a eyeglass case for my mom that was a needlepoint kit... I'll have to get a picture of it someday. I also did a magnolia for her a little over 10 years ago that I also need to grab a photo of.

One of the things that kept me sane in the days after September 11, 2001

In the days following the attacks, I, like so many others, found it hard to tear myself away from the news coverage. There were several things that kept me going in those first few days... reading "Lord of the Rings", knowing that a friend of mine who worked at the top of the north tower wasn't in his office yet that day and was okay, going ahead with the public viewing on Sept. 12 at the telescope I run at work (which was very well-attended that night by people wanting to get away from their TVs for a while) and stitching the Tower of London design you see above. It gave something to do with my hands while the news coverage droned on in the background. I'll probably always think of those days when I see this design.

The pattern is from Heritage Stitchcraft, designed by Susan Ryder. I finished it in around October 2001, but I still haven't gotten around to framing it.

Some more of my past projects

Here are three more of the past projects that I've stitched. I think all three of these were begun and finished in the 1993-1998 range.


The first is an ironwork gate design from New Stitches issue #10. Anyone who is familiar with the design might notice a big mistake in the gate stitching, but thankfully it isn't obvious if you don't know better. (If you're curious, the mistake is that I ended up making the space between the brick posts for the gate one stitch too wide, so when I went to do the backstitching for the gate I had to make the gate a stitch wider... I ended up doubling the center of the design.)


This next design is another from New Stitches, this one from issue #13. This is one of a pair of designs, where the other one is looking in to the house through the window. They've run several "in and out" designs over the years, but this is the only that I've stitched so far. This was also my first experiment stitching on a higher-count fabric. It's over 1 square on 22 ct. aida. I actually found that I liked working small and have done some more since, although several were given away as gifts and I never took pictures of them (bad me!).


This is from a different British magazine, Needlework, in the July 1994 issue, and is one of my favorite things that I've stitched. I'm probably going to do it again on linen eventually (I have this weird desire to re-do a lot of my earlier projects on different fabrics and in different sizes... you'd think I would be more interested in doing new designs instead!) I think this was the first thing that I stitched with variegated floss (the symbols at the bottom of the "England" and "Wales" strips) and I really liked how it turned out.


From roughly September 1994 to May 1995, I worked at a craft store to supplement the part-time job I was still working at the university (when I went full time at in June 1995) and of course worked in needlework and fabrics. This was the time that I caught the quilting bug (which will be its own series of posts eventually) but I also started learning about doing some new techniques. It was around this time that I got my first little linen project, the rose sachet in the picture above. I can't remember if this was a cover kit or something I bought separately (I think the latter), but the other two are cover kits from more British needlework magazines. The rose card was, I think, the first time I did beading on a design.

That's more than enough for today!

How Anne Boleyn nearly lost her head for a second time

(From New Stitches Magazine, Issue #8)

The next big thing in my needlework life was the discovery of British needlework magazines. In particular, I became a big fan of New Stitches. I was browsing in a bookstore in Dallas during a visit in c. 1993 and came across NS and saw the design of Anne Boleyn (I was already long down the Tudor path at that point) and of course I had to buy it. I was also intrigued by the blackwork design, which was a technique that I was unfamiliar with up to that point. While I was up there I bought some 22 ct. fabric and two thicknesses of thread and began to stitch. Unfortunately, I completely screwed up the starting place and by the time I started to get to the top, I realized that Anne was about to end up "historically accurate" without a head. As you can see above, I did actually managed to squeeze in the top of her French hood on the very tip top of the fabric. I actually plan to do this design again someday (and start in the right place, and probably on a different type of fabric) although I've been keeping the "mistake" version around for some reason. I guess as a reminder to "measure twice, start stitching once".

More Christmas ornaments

Not much extra commentary on these.


The first batch is an older set (as you can tell from the "wrong" way stitching). I enjoyed painting the little house on the one on the left. These are from those little kits you can find at the craft stores for about a dollar. They aren't the most challenging stitches, but they are fun to whip out on a lazy afternoon.


This next set is from another kit set I bought at Michael's or some other chain. These technically aren't finished yet because I'm looking for some small ribbon bows to put on the bottom over the ends of the cording. (I added the cording... it didn't come with the kit. I thought it finished the edges off nicely.)


Cute little gingerbread man kit, stitched over 10 years ago.


Some of my first experiments with beading and ribbon embroidery. I think these are all from Mill Hill Beads kits. I think I have at least three more bead ornament kits somewhere in my stash.

The 15 year Christmas ornaments

Christmas ornaments are another favorite project-type of mine. There's just something about stitching Christmas ornaments in a hot Texas summer that is refreshing. :)

The above ornaments are from a Janlynn kit I bought in or around 1992 and began shortly after. Being of the easily bored personality type, I stitched all the 'interesting' parts (the instruments) and then got totally bored when I got to the greenery part. So the projects languished for ages. A while back (maybe 5 years ago?) I finished three of them, as you can see above on the left. The other three ended up in my WIP (works in progress) pile. Until last week, that is. I've been on a kick of finishing a bunch of smaller projects that I've had stashed away in a plastic shoe box.

Of the three remaining ornaments from the kit, I recently finished the drum and the clarinet, although they are still waiting to be made up into the little pillows and finished with the gold cord. I had planned to finish the horn over the long weekend, but as I started on the greenery, I realized that the mouthpiece and the thin part of the horn on the right were in completely the wrong place and I had to rip them out. Thankfully I still had all the remaining threads from the kit. So, now I'm working on replacing the bits of the horn and finishing the greenery. Hopefully by the weekend I'll have all three ornaments completely finished and my longest work in progress will finally be done.

The cross-stitch castle obsession begins

The picture above is the next big project I tackled and it turned out much better (except for the whole "crosses in the same direction thing". It looks a little wrinkled because I recently took it off its old mounting board (something else I needed a good lesson in doing correctly) and washed it. The dust and dirt I was trying to get out still need another soak before I remount and reframe it. I stitched this one mostly, if not entirely, during my freshman year of college.

The castle is Lichtenstein, from the book Medieval Castles from Jeanette Crews Designs. I also did Neuschwanstein Castle from the same book a year or two later (which wrinkled in the photo for the same reason as the other one).



I still haven't gotten around to stitching the other two castles in the book, which is slightly ironic, considering they are British castles, which are my special love. The original book was totally destroyed, so I threw it out and bought a new copy last year, which I was pleased to see was still around about 17 years after it was first published! BTW, the other two castles are Craigievar in Scotland and Hever, in the south of England. Hever is best know for its associations with Anne Boleyn. I visited there in 1998 and bought a cross stitch kit of it there, which I stitched a few years ago (see below). It, like many others, is in one of my UFO piles... in this case, and Un-Framed-Object. As with most kits of medium and larger projects that I've stitched in the past few years, I changed out the fabric (usually 14 count aida) with a 28 count evenweave.



Next time I'll post some pictures of my other frequently-stitched-objets... Christmas ornaments, along with the story of my longest unfinished objects to date.

How I caught the cross-stitch bug

So, I last left off with the tale of my first cross stitch project and some half-hearted attempts at embroidery. But I didn't really catch the cross-stitch bug until the summer of 1990.

The summer of 1990 was the time between high school and college for me and a friend and I took a short trip to Galveston Island to visit her aunt a couple of weeks before we were due to start school. We wandered into a needlework shop somewhere on the island (attempts to locate it when I was back in 2003 were unsuccessful) and my friend found a pattern of her aunt's church on the island to make for her for Christmas. While I was wandering around I found some space-themed designs and thought I would buy a few and give this cross-stitch thing another try. So I bought 5 patterns in all (see, I was already obsessive!), took them back to Austin and started gathering materials. My big mistake at this point was not asking my friend how to do any of it!



So... I went to Wal-Mart and bought the materials for the first design I decided to stitch, a launch of the space shuttle, which was a view similar to the photo above. I think there may have been some rudimentary instructions on the pattern for how to do cross stitch, but if there were, they weren't very good. So, I proceeded to stitch the design on 14-ct light blue aida --- with 4 strands of floss, knotting the threads on the back as I went. So, you can imagine how lumpy and awful the final product was. Also, I had no clue about making all the stitches go in the same direction. I'm not sure if I have a picture of the project anywhere, but if I find one I'll post it as a great example of what NOT to do!

Thankfully, the next few things I stitched had better instructions and I learned more about the proper way to start and finish threads and how many strands of floss to use for which counts of fabric. Unfortunately, the importance of making all the stitches go in the same direction was a lesson still several years in my future...

My first cross stitch project, c. 1984

I wish I could remember exactly when I bought this, but I'm guessing it was around 1984, maybe as late as 1986. I know I bought it at a craft store in the Rio Grande Valley when I went with my grandmother to get some yarn. She was a madwoman with the crochet hook! I never got the 'yarn craft' bug... I mostly end up with a tangled mess when I try. I don't think I actually stitched until I got back to Austin and I don't think I actually put it in the painted frame until sometime in the 1990s. As you can tell from the large picture, I didn't have a clue about making all the stitches go in the same direction (which will be a recurring theme), but it is a cute little picture. I have a thing for castles, which will be another reccurring theme.

I also tried some embroidery on and off but never really got anywhere with a project. I think I finally threw away the kit I bought and started also around 1984. I left it in a hoop for too long and it rusted! The other attempt I made at doing some hand embroidery was copying some patterns from a calligraphy book onto white cotton. They also didn't really amount to much and joined the other in the trash bin. The inspiration for trying the pattern from the calligraphy book was the young adult fantasy books that I loved as a kid. Okay, I *still* love some of those books. In particular, the second book of "The Ash Staff" trilogy by Paul R. Fisher has one of the characters making a cloak and embroidering a leaf pattern along the bottom, which was on the cover painting. How obscure that seems now! I still haven't done much more embroidery, but I have some kits in my storage bin that are combination embroidery and candlewicking. I bought them for next to nothing during the 10 months or so that I worked a Hobby Lobby to make ends meet after college. I actually ended up buying a lot of stuff during that time that are still around the house waiting to be stitched... it was also the place where I got the quilting bug, but that's another post for another day.

Welcome!

Welcome to my needlework, quilting and sewing blog! When I set out to re-do my homepage, I was trying to figure out what to do with the previous needlework, etc. section and eventually I came to the conclusion that a blog was a good solution. It is rather ridiculous that it took me so long to figure that out, since I had already come to the same conclusion ages ago for the front page of my website!

I'll post some works in progress, as well as some older projects and the stories around them. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the first large project I did, and I don't have the actual piece any more... I'll explain why in a future post!