Sunbonnet Sue five and six

 it has been some months since I last posted about the Sunbonnet Sues I have been making from my Sampler Quilt scraps. sunbonnet-sue-three-and-four.html

I have indeed slowed down on them, they were just boots and skirts but I plan on getting the sewing machine out in the next day or so and may sew another couple of skirt sets at the same time I work on the main reason for getting out the machine (that's for a future gift I hope so will wait  till later to post anything about that).

So rather than have too many boots and skirts awaiting jackets and hats, I have made some progress with these.

Five is finished, six has a bit further to go, bonnet needs completing and the tulip adding.(and of course rinsing to get the pen out)

 

Birth Sampler / announcement the start of stitching

so the gown as as near the middle as anything in the design, the place to start. I had not picked the colours to use before I started, I thought I would see how the white looked and then figure out the shading as I went.

I changed the drape of the gown from the original as I went.

It was not looking particularly impressive at this point but held onto the magic of backstitch would pull that together.

The next step to add the face and hair.

On my design the curves for the head were ok but of course some of the curve was in my drawn line and not in the stitches.

I used two tones for the face to put a little blush to the cheeks, not sure that shows up.  Perhaps it is subtle enough to make a difference without jumping out.

Face and hand completed next step the hair.

I asked the baby's grandmother what colour it was, she sent me a picture.

I said a mid hazel and she agreed.  Of course with babies what you see is not always what you get so it remains to be seen if this colour will remain reflective of the child's hair as time goes on.

I did once do a sampler and just used the shade on the pattern I had picked.  I was sewing pre birth of the child and she had the courtesy of being born with exactly that shade of hair.

 Then onto the moon.....

Birth sampler / announcement from scratch

 I have done quite a few birth samplers, usually by combining elements from various pattern books with a tweak here and there to make them more individual.

This time round I has something particular in mind once I had seen a picture of the nursery, I could not find it.  I was sure I had used it before, then I thought about it and it was probably 20 years ago  and I could not find the pattern.

However it was quite stuck in my head, so I decided to try and design what I wanted from scratch. So out came the graph paper.

And the coaster, well it was the nearest circle to where I was sitting when I started and I wanted a curve.

For a moon

As a seat for the baby, in  a robe. (that had some later adjustments)

 Name and my first thoughts for stars (they would not last)

but I had a plan, I had some material thanks to my friend 

Link to the material

So that was progress.

The grass is always greener?

This week I started off as I had finished, working some of the large bluebell stems as they are the same green as the leaves in the medium trees.  I though I might then have moved to the large trees but I was just not feeling like that was the way to go.

So off back to the leaves in the tree, my friend and I working on the same area together if not exactly the same, I did not last long, my eyes did not want to get into the leaves.

Ok some tracking down of ninjas in the single strand section, four of them in all, then as one of those just happened to be the same shade as the grass well back to grass it was. 

As my friend and I were chatting about the evenings stop and start and move about and she expressed her dissatisfaction with doing leaves and I suggested she join me on the grass, she's not too taken by the shade of the grass the title of both this blog and hers popped into the conversation.

As you can see, I have a reasonable (ok its tight to those that advocate 3 inches all round for framing but for me its reasonable) margin at the sides.

The bottom, and as I started in the middle I suspect the top is another matter entirely. 

Even I think that a two stich margin is getting far too close.  And by the looks of it that will be one stitch on the right.

A bit of glue on the edge may well be called for but at least the grass down the left has confirmed the position.

Funny but there is something comforting about knowing for sure.

I am still enjoying the water colour effect if the single strand little trees and the soft tones of the design.

Now as for next week, well my friend posted her blog six hours before I have been able to do mine so the additional restrictions she though might be are at this point confirmed as coming into place from midnight tonight and there is very little chance of that changing for at least a few weeks if that.  So sadly no meeting up even for a socially distanced walk (well we had been thinking of a socially distanced walk involving food and perhaps a slight change of scene) ah well we will just have to sew instead.

So pop on over to my friends blog to see what title she took from our chatting and more importantly her progress by clicking on THE LINK

Conference Stitching, been awhile

 since I worked on this particular piece. Various reasons, it is on evenweave, it is tweeding and fractional heavy.  It takes a fair amount of concentration, I always forget when it is IHSW which I had planned long ago to use as a spur to getting this done.

I do remember to pull it out at least twice a year for General Conference which I watch via the internet, which sometimes gets me back in the swing for a few weeks.

This time it has made an appearance for the two hours of Stake |Conference, which due to the present restrictions was held as a web conference.  

Now the initial progress after two hours may not appear to be much, indeed I have to point out to my mother what areas have been worked on, any progress is a bonus.

So the middle brown of the hourglass, a bit more fill in between the angel and sword blade, more mountain and reflection and a ninja or two.  Sounds more than it looks.

But more importantly for me this has brought it out, got me started and after the conference was done, and dinner was all settled, then there was more sewing and more progress and the over one sections are becoming less of a scary thought and more of a future delight.

So all of the stitches between sword and robe is completed, and a goodly bit of sky, Everest is almost visible now.

Dotting about, BFF stitch along

I did do the house, and some medium trees and some leaves (although not the variegated ones) even some large tree trunk and big bluebell stems an leaves and basically dotted about as the thread and the mood took me. I even sorted out a few ninjas!

It was a very relaxing evening that felt like lots of progress made. 

Yes it should have been a walk week, but it rained, a lot!

Pop over to my BFF's blog by clicking on THE LINK.to see how her picture is progressing.

I can almost see my house from here!

that was my cry after a few more tiny bluebells, a bluebell hued front door and our first foray together into the delights of variegated thread cross stitching. It might be a house made of negative space but I will take what I can get in more identifiable features.

We both pulled the thread till we could cut at a point it ran the full range of its variegation from light to dark, which was quite long, longer than I would normally stitch with. 

Then the decision would we start dark or light, we both plumped for a light start. However where to start from well there we diverged.

As it has a very gradual colour change I decide to work up from the middle just above the blue bells and below the door, working some stiches across and some on the diagonal. Stitching a single full stitch at a time, It needs a change of mindset, the same as half stitches, when you are not doing a row of bottom stitches and then coming back.  Planning how you get from one section to another is another mental exercise.  Well it keeps things interesting.

I am quite pleased with the dappled effect the variegated thread has produced, I am hoping it will look like light diffused by the medium sized trees, well once I have medium trees that is.

I did get some more grass completed and the trunks for the last of my my little trees.  So next week  I think it is time for a move up in tree size to those medium trees and the variegated green leaves on the top of them that beckon to me. Oh or perhaps I will finish building my little house, many possibilities.

Pop over to my friend's blog to see how her variegated went. Link to Blog

Green, green a bit of blue

 so this evening it was back to sewing, but double strands, I was rather looking forward to that and possibly completing the grass on the right of the pattern.  Going along quite nicely I thought might get it all done about the same time my friend finished the second big tree?

Nah! Although got quite a bit done I still had plenty to do as my friend finished tree, did one thread length of grass and announced she felt the need to do blue as she just was not feeling the green!

Well I could not have her making a start on the big bluebells and just keep going with the green!  So I did a bit of blue too, on tiny bluebells.  

Fits in with the split approach so far, her "big" trees my "little" trees so the same approach to the first bluebells felt appropriate.

 

You know as I look at that grass at the bottom and I think it looks a bit like Jabba the Hutt's head or maybe Slimer from Ghostbusters.

We are both now chomping at the bit to do some of the variegated sections, so we have decided to do one of the green variegated section and to do them at the same time. 

It should be interesting to see the difference the count  size (14 for my friend and 18 for me)  makes to the way the variegation  appears. I would assume there will be faster movement in the shading on the lower count.

I also have the feeling that my centring may have been off and I might run out of material at  the bottom before I run out of pattern to stitch, who knows maybe I measure all wrong and I will do the same at the top, happily given the way the pattern is laid out I think that will still be OK.

It fits side to side at least......

Oh I almost forgot to add THE LINK to my friends blog so you can see BIG things!

From a distance

 this looks a little bit more as if there will be a viable picture at some point, close up the colours of the little tiles don't look as is they should work out at all.

I am a little concerned that the sticky will wear off before I get all the tiles stuck, I think that the one colour at the time method is not the best of ideas here for that reason. Ah well lesson learnt too late perhaps.

Gifted gorgeousness August 2020

as organised by Jo over at  serendipitous stitching

just a small post for a double in the gift category.

A friend's daughter has had her first child, actually I guess the daughter could also be classed as more friend than acquaintance, she has on occasion attended a quilting night or two. Anyway this momentous event calls for a birth sampler.

With a picture of the nursery provided for ideas and a hunt for a pattern not resulting in a find I am trying my hand at designing. I will share that later, after completion and gifting. Presuming all goes well.

But the background material was being a bit difficult I did not have the shade required, and dye pen experiments aside did not think I could get as dark a shade as required, and matching to a photo is fraught with pitfalls I was going to default to black or navy blue neither of which felt right.

And he comes the gift from my BFF a piece of Blue Spruce 14 count Aida that whilst not the colour of the nursery focus wall will tonally coordinate and go well with the colours in the design element.

Saved by my BFF, I am still tempted to experiment with the dye option but when the result is less important and less time restrictive. Now to hope I have a suitable frame in stash, although at the moment climbing up the ladder into the loft is not a pleasant thought as my hip and knee are not feeling very friendly at the moment.  I have photographs which had narrowed it down a little but a first hand check for size is important.