BFF SAL 9 more than expected

 completed. Why well after we had both finished SAL 8 we ended up chatting about the desire to be stitching on 9. So we agreed on Saturday to three hours over the weekend.

That went by far to fast.

The time that is, the desire to be stitching did not fade.

So we agreed to an hour stitching time each weekday with roll overs.

And we sort of agreed that we would retrospectively apply the hour a day from th day after the stitching night so we immediately had two hours to roll over. 

So basically we have set rules which lead to nine hours of stitching a week! Oh that sounds a lot, does not feel like a lot..

Stitch stitch stitch..this is where I was up to at the start of our Skype session.

I did the dashes to the side just to be sure this element of the design will fit (it will) and then down down it goes. Oddly enough we are both working on the lower section of the pattern with a big smile on our faces.

And this is were I ended for the evening. Pop on over to my BFF's blog (CLICK HERE) to see how her's is going.

BFF SAL 8 stitching finished

 the heart shaped hot air balloons have been replaced with two blue birds from Two Hour Country Cross-Stich by Susan Steadman (published by Stirling/Chapelle.

I like that better, I don't intend to mount it on felt with a dowel as a mini hanging as per the kit.  I think I will make it into a card, unless I come across a teeny frame before then.

Click here to see what my BFF changed on her version .CLICK HERE

I think I might add the backstitch swoops...but depends on the finishing.

Companions

 Back in 2021 I finished my variation on one of Durene Jones free Gnome patterns CLICK HERE for a reminder. Well finished as in the character was complete but I felt that there was something lacking.

I thought of a few options but the one that called to me was cats, it needed cats.

Out with the pencil and trying to come up with cats that looked in proportion and would fit in style. And then of course just to make it easier for myself ( well maybe not) try and have the cats look like his cats or at least two of them. 

I am quite please with how they turned out whiskers and all (yes I used that speciality thread that is all of my own making) I am not so sure about that orange, he likes orange so that is why I picked it and it is there so I guess it is staying.

So framing it that is the next task.  I have a thought connected to something in the frame stash.

BFF SAL...9..

 As my BFF explains on her blog CLICK HERE we were too interested in starting 9 to finish 8. Or maybe we were also a little nervous if we did not make a start whilst we were raring to go that enthusiasm might splutter out.

Now my BFF ordered some material and I thought there must be some in my stash. I wanted to use evenweave but had linen and I did give it a think but as I wanted to work over one and reduce the finished size to something I had space for. and as mentioned on a previous post the thick and thin over one would not work well with this pattern.

Found some grey but it is a bit small for the full design but I so wanted to start, I will only be able to dost do the central element on this go around (maybe squeeze in a little bit more) whilst I think about getting some evenweave the full size required.

So here it is the start.

and it was being such a pleasure to stitch we kept going..oh and my BFF wanted and for size picture with a bobbin for size, so we both did that. However, as you may have noted  we are always doing same but different and have put the bobbins in different places.

I think you can tell that I am going to run out of space.for the whole thing but that is OK because it is a decision at this point.

And I may well be more than happy to be stitching it twice at the same time. Remains to be seen if I do that.

IHSW March day two

 well I did manage a little bit of stitching. Not a lot but it is progress.

General Conference is at the beginning of April so there should be some more work on this before the next IHSW.

IHSW March day one

 now my starting point is a bit further on than the last time I shared this project as I was on a roll with the stitching and did not pause to take a picture.

I am not concentrating on one area in particular but choosing a colour and working it in as many places as I can at a time till it stops being easy to see.

This is todays progress.

A little closer view.

I have hopes that I will do some more tomorrow.

BFF Sal 8 There may be something

 in the Air but it is not love for this project.

Another cover kit the first issue was the material provided. For a square pattern the material was not square. If you have visited with me before you know I am often squeezing  designs onto smaller than recommended bits of fabric.

I had to count this a couple of times to be sure it would fit before proceeding.

Then well the colours, sorting those was interesting, but manageable.

Mt BFF and I started at the same spot in the middle with the top of the A and then of course diverged as I stitched all of the light tops of the letters then the darker bottoms my BFF did full letters.

We then moved onto the the pink/red lettering  but we tacked that differently as we discussed the heart shaped hot air balloons on the card (neither of us like them as hot air balloons) and options to address that.

At that point I realised I had a design deviation on the L , I also realised that I could not be bothered to unpick to revert to the original and just worked around it.

Not bothered has been an overall feeling with this. There will be minimum effort to get it finished and no idea what going to do with it at that point.

Not even sure I am going to bother doing the finish with the kit onto felt and dowel as a mini hanging, which was the test finish option for the nativity. (May still do that but without this as a test).

Pop on over to my BFF to see how she tacked our new project. CLICK HERE

BFF Sal 7 Open the window

 and the card is sort of finished.  I say sort of because I feel that the inside of the card needs a little something before it is fit for use.

I am rather happy with the way this has turned out and I can see the possibility of repeating it as a solid piece sometime in the future.

My BFF and I remarked that in the main working the projects together has helped with our getting things fully finished.

After the double sided sticky tape delight s of a finish there was an attempt of distanced tech support to get the pattern keeper onto my device.  That was not happening and will need to be an in person technical intervention. 

Pop over to my BFF's post to see how hers finished up CLICK HERE

You may have been anticipating the start of BFF 8, the place holding project before the BIG one we have in mind.

Well that is to have a post all of its own as this evening was of two halves and they do not sit that well together.

A small project

 from a charity shop purchase. This was a cover kit that came with 14 count blue aida, thread, pattern and ribbon, wadding and a needle and for all that I was lucky enough to pay 50p

It is from Cross Stitch Crazy.

I started with the shade of turquoise and immediately made an error, it was supposed to be a single strand of thread and I used two. However by the time I spotted that I hade done quite a bit and liked the coverage so I was happy to leave it and dip into my stash for the extra I would need to finish.

When I went to do that the number referenced on the card ( (DMC 958) did not match the thread I had been sewing with! It did however match DMC 959 so that was ok.

I really enjoyed sewing this, it was very soothing. So much so I did the pattern twice as there was just enough material to do that.

As you can see I changed the colours on the second side and enjoyed doing that just as much as the first.

I finished it as a scissors keeper, although the kit had the ribbon coming from a corner, I might try that next time. I used some small scraps of dark blue from Peter's quilt to line it so the wadding would not work its way out and to strengthen the seams.

I think there may well be next times with this design, can use up little bits of aida  as it is only 27 by27 stitches and random threads and bits of ribbon and I can do corner ribbon or side or it might even be possible to make it a biscornu!

That was a well spent 50p

BFF SAL 7 Once more

 the backstitch makes such a difference to how it looks.

I did an unusual amount of google searching this evening in between bits of stitching as it was evident that I had time to do so .

My BFF thought she had found the perfect next project a blackwork dragon, but it was a head only image and sadly did not appeal to me.

So having looked at that there was some searching and I came across a design we both liked, really liked, really really liked a lot.

But, you knew there was going to be a but, it was so big, going to sew up big as it is marketed as a cushion. Neither of us likes the idea of all that sewing just to sit on it or of a cushion that is not to be sat on. Sigh! shame looked at other sites other patterns however that one lingered.

Discussions about the size, material options and a would we regret it and we both ended up buying the pattern (another one from the site fell into my basket just before check out!).  It is intended to be one colour but there is the scope to change that up.  I will let my BFF tell you just how much thread it says it will take as she looked at that, sending me a message saying "what have we done"

So that won't be BFF8, that will be another small cover kit (once we have finished 7 into the card it is intended to be) and that will give us time to settle on what we are going to do with out "how BIG"( as if we did not know before we bought it) mad purchase.

CLICK HERE to see my BFF's blog.

Tom and Sunflower

 all of the backstitching completed.

and Tom looks wistful I think.

The other Country Companions designs that I like the look of are rather larger and I don't feel up to starting any of them just yet. Not whilst I still have Millennium on the go.  I think at the moment I am more inclined to "smalls" as my BFF calls them.

Sunflower

This is a design I was working on as a Sunday stitching project, it stalled because the pattern came with some threads but not all of them for each pattern.

I kept forgetting to get out the few greens and oranges to finish and started on something else.

Current events reminded me that the pattern was waiting and so I set to and got the sunflower completed.

I would normally backstitch top down but in this instance the flower was my focus.

I quite like it like this but I expect I will finish the backstitching on Tom 

Quilt as you go (part three)

 Once I had the layout planned it was time to sew the blocks together. Once they were sewn together  then the seam is folded over the front of the block and sewn down.  The video tutorial (Teresa Down Under) shows this both better than I can describe it and better than I could sew it.

I thought sewing down the edge of the sewn strips would be easy, but oh I had issues still it was done 64 blocks became 32 paired blocks and so on till I had eight strips of eight.

The folded seams were to again be machine sewn , again the tutorial covers that. I made heavy weather of it and found it difficult to ensure I caught the edges in. So I ended up doing it by hand.

By hand took longer than I expect by machine would have done.

The finished top looks pretty much the way it did on the layout, just a little bit sharper.

The back however was a very nice surprise, it looked better than I had anticipated.

It reminds me of patterns on Illuminated manuscripts. However my delight in the back gave ne a bit of a labelling conundrum. I did not want anything that would obscure or detract from the pattern created by the quilting lines or the blocks.

So I sewed on the "label" information in a dark blue thread. It is there if you look but not standing out at all.

Peter's sewn down shirts...2022. Why, well this quilt is going to my friend Peter. When he was much younger (and littler and I could rest my elbow on his shoulder) he regularly wore shirts with button down collars to church. He disliked them being buttoned and would delight in undoing them and I would button them back up. It became a running joke for many years. Until as he was older (and bigger and could rest his elbow on my shoulder) and I could not reach those buttons and he stopped wearing that style at all.

So the material for this quilt made me recall that and is reflected in the title of the quilt.

It is big enough for a throw and happily he liked it (front and back) that is always a relief when you do a quilt on the basis of what a person might like.

By the time I was finished this journey into the quilt as you go I was firmly of the opinion never again.

But perhaps I might, maybe I would get better at it, of the joining method night work for other quilting designs.  Only time will tell which is the case. 

BFF Sal 7 Now that's yellow

 not even a mellow yellow but an acid yellow. I contemplated the colour provided and it just was not to my mind yellow so I changed it for the flowers.

And although my BFF's Puddy Tat is delightful CLICK HERE to see how nice it is, I changed the colour on mine.

OK so I changed the butterfly as well using the orange not used for the cat to replace the "not yellow" shade it was supposed to be. 

I am looking forward to doing the backstitch next week. It is nice sensible in holes not in the middle of stitches backstitch and as most of it will just be outlining the window frames it should be soothing.

My BFF and I have been discussing what to do next, styles or themes or potential challenges. She mentioned that she had not found anything that she felt worth the effort of working on linen. I noted that evenweave might be a better starting point for over two stitching given the way linen has irregular thick and thin strands and at times really thick bits. I had intended to stitch Millennium on linen then I worried about how a thick thread might mess with the the design and restarted on evenweave.  I noted that it might have distorted the planets shape or imagine what would happen if a big slug landed on an angels nose..my BFF followed that exactly  but her husband passing at just that point exclaimed what are you two talking about!