Hallowe'en Trick or Treat Blog Hop 2017

Fairly sure given the "letter" assigned to me by Jo our hostess for this blog hop  that I am not the beginning of this years journey.

So if you have arrived here direct and not as a redirect from Jo or someone else on the hop may I recommend you click on over to serendipitousstitching.- read the rules and start at the beginning.

Here is my little Halloween contribution this year.   

and of course the letter...well sort of....

Good luck with the blog hop, one and all.

click here for the next page in the hop

A touch of pyrography Prague Castle

After a trip to Prague a work colleague brought in a box of chocolates for us to share.

This is the cardboard wrapper, and what did it wrap (other than chocolates?) a small wooden box.  Nice as the chocolates were and as much as I do like chocolates the wooden box was also most tempting, I do like boxes.  

So the box came home with me and had the rather nice line drawing of Prague Castle or Prazsky Hrad from the wrapper image burned into the wooden box.  I placed it a little lower on the box than I had intended but it did not come out  too badly.

Prague Castle

And what will I do with the box, take it back to work and give it back to my colleague as a remembrance of her and her daughters city break.  

Sunday stitching, pink and green

three colours more and the image is a bit clearer.  This might get some stitching before next Sunday as my mother has a hospital appointment and some sewing whilst I wait may be just the thing.

Sunday stitching on to the red

I was briefly joined by a five year old girl and her mother today.  The young lady looked at my progress and asked if I was sewing a ship? My mother thinks it looks more like a tropical fish!

What do you think?

Sunday Stitching a new begining

a visit to a Charity Shop resulted in 4 cover kits (for 50p each) so I am back with cross stitch for the Sunday stitching.

Started today with the pale lilac.

Its a good job I prefer to stitch in hand and not on a hoop as the fabric in the kit certainly would not go on a hoop.

The fairies or elves have been!

now they may not have fixed everything  when they visited and I am not sure what item left out enticed them to provide assistance.  However, from my last post on this quilt (although I have sewn on it between then and now) something has occurred, as with the top sewn up the points are mostly points and the seams are mostly lined up.

Amazing! 

You may recall that when I cut the fabric for this quilt originally I cut  strips from the patterned material for the border on this quilt.

The four rolls in the middle of this picture are intended for the edges.

The pale strip on this will go in the seam allowance.

I have not sewn them on yet, this is the strip laid against the top to show how it should look.  I am hoping to mitre the corners.

It should bring the size of the quilt up to the same size as the top of a double bed.

So far I am pleased with the way this is progressing.

Stitching the rows to set the squares on point was odd.  It has not put me off trying it again (the on point) that is.  

Love it or hate it...backstitch

I guess I feel both emotions about it depending on how much there is of it, how complicated and whether I am just about to start it, in the middle and wondering if I should have started it or out the other side with the item finished.

I have been thinking about this conundrum again recently due to a birth sampler I have been working on.

You may recall my mentioning I had offered to do one and the only parameters the mother set were, pink and yellow. 

My BFF brought over her collection of patterns from magazines and I found one I was drawn to.  Another Forever Friends design (I have used one twice before) but to meet the parameters it needed some colour swapping.

The recommended material 16 count, I chose to do it on 14 as I had 14 to hand (I had contemplated 18 and I am so glad I did not, I will come back to that) and anchor threads.

I figured as I was changing blue to pink (and a pink bit to purple) anyway, and did not have a full range of the anchor threads I would colour match as best I could. 

With just the cross stitching finished it does not look particularly  prepossessing. 

Particularly the flowers, insipid is more the word that springs to mind.  However the design gave me hope that once the backstitch goes on then things will improve.

You can see the original with blue flowers here.

I had a bout of selective amnesia when looking at this design and recalling the previous successful Forever Friends (twice),  I forgot that the designs have that most beloved of backstitch styles (not), they don't follow the x-stitches.  They go between stitches, half way, in the middle, small stitches a third of a square!  They require a needle with a point. Not too bad on the bear, but on the flowers, oh my so glad I was not trying this on 18 count.

I did the bouquet first and encouraged by the marked improvement moved on to the bear.  Then the flowers in the border. It felt like there were more than twelve.  Now initially I was not sure how much thread this was going to take and to ensure all the flowers were the same I decided to do them first, then the ribbon if there was enough dark pink left, if not I would change colour. I was already thinking the purple might be OK as was.

However, the more I looked at it like this, the more I liked all the ribbons without any backstitching.  I even left it over night just to be sure it was a choice of taste rather than an avoidance of more maniacal backstitch.  I even did one section along the bottom, contemplated it and unpicked it. 

I like it like this, honest I do. I still have the name (more backstitch) and details to add and the frame to go.  I will update with that later, at the moment I have run out of steam (but I do like it like this, it is not the lack of very hot water that is putting a halt ot the ribbon backstitching..hmm am I protesting too much perhaps? Nah this is good ) 

Before and during, not liking the backstitching at all, done it works and most of it was indeed needed.

Perversely, considering my comments about backstitch I like blackwork!

Cutting it fine

(as in close, not as in well!)

You may recall I decided to set the beige and blue squares on point. To do that I needed another twenty triangles the same size as the half square and four double sized triangles.

There was some of each shade of blue material left. Less of the dark blue, which was my preference to use than the light blue.  There was not enough fabric to do the twenty small and four big triangles.  Hmm what to do, there was enough for the twenty small and two larger triangles, use that? Change the plan?  Then it occurred to me was there enough for twenty eight small triangles.  Sew two small together and get a big one, sorted!

So here they are cut out and next to the trimmings which are all that was left over from blue material when I was done...so as you can see I was cutting it rather fine.

Small triangles

The plan

   

Whilst I was cutting triangles I decided to cut the strips for the next block in the sampler quilt.

It is back to the sewing machine for this block.