Cross-stitch Progress

The last time I posted about the Christmas cross-stitch piece, this is what she looked like. I said I was down to the last sixth of the main design, and I hoped to be either working on the backstitch or  even have it completed by the end of January. That was last year. Clearly, that plan fell through.

But with the new crafting schedule in place, this is where I am now. Now, don't be fooled. I didn't do all of this yesterday. I should have actually had more worked, but I was lazy, and didn't begin until almost 8pm. Some of that was done last January. Or sometime thereafter. I didn't work on it much after writing that post. I don't know what happened. Cross-stitch just takes so much effort to get out all the supplies, keep them organized, figure out where to go next in the pattern....and I have so many other projects that are much easier to pick-up and put back down at the end of the night. 

But that's no excuse. So I am determined to finish it. I just won't give myself a deadline. But I will say that every Monday (or whatever day I end up with, just in case I decide to rearrange my schedule) I will be working on this project until it is complete. 

Process/progress successfully updated. Yay!

Today

I have been sub-ing and cleaning for the last few weeks. In the last 2.5 weeks, I have worked 8 days! I am currently booked for 7 days in February, with dates scheduled in March and May! Things have been looking up in that regard.

As for crafts, I finished and sent quilts to my cousin and her beautiful new twins (boy and girl!!) and have begun crocheting another baby blanket. I have made it through about half of the stash of baby gifts I posted earlier, but have been unable to finish them due to thread issues - as in...I ran out! Must wait until pay day on the 15th to bulk up the stash. Bummer. I have also nearly completed my honeymoon scrapbook. I go to a scrapbooking group once a month, and have been working solely on the honeymoon. I am down to the last 6 two-page layouts. And we have a retreat weekend coming up!! I will be able to finish the book during that weekend hopefully!

Now all I have to do is remember to post here regularly!

Media Fast

We were challenged in Bible Study on Sunday to "make a change that could change our lives forever." Since I have not been working regularly, I have found the temptation to relax on the couch in front of Netflix hard to pass up. Considering that I am married, I am not allowed cannot keep my sewing machine in the living room in front of said TV, and so most days I get only handwork completed. My challenge to myself is to not watch as much television and to concentrate on completing projects.

Yesterday was awesome! I didn't expect how productive I would become! I washed and folded several loads of laundry, organized the new Snapfish order that arrived in the mail, and I sewed!!  I pieced over 20 burp cloths together...

This is a stack of 45. I have been piecing them for months, but never finished them. That changes this week!

And organized them into the correct stacks with tag blankets and simple blankets according to what color thread I want to accent them with!

I hope tomorrow to be able to show them completed.

Here's to progress!

A Progress Post

Almost a year ago, my husband's granny went into the hospital for a quadruple by-pass surgery, and I pulled out an old UFO to work on in the waiting room.  I found the best distraction to be my Christmas cross-stitch pattern. When I pulled it out of the bag, it looked like this....

I know the angle is bad on the picture, but I was only a little over a quarter of the way finished with this pattern. In the hospital that day, I worked on the tree beside the house, and slowly made my way to the sky to the left of the completed house. As beautiful as the sky is, all of those half-cross stitches really got to me after a while. And then I moved to the trees. I thought they would be Bob Ross-worthy "happy little trees". He lied.

They were not happy, and neither was I.

Months later, I finished the trees, the house on the right and began working on the lower right quadrant. It was really neat watching everything coming together, seeing the people emerge out of the snowbanks, looking as though they really will finish lacing their ice skates and take off any minute now.

This is the piece as of last night. My original goal for this piece was to have it finished by the end of 2011. Clearly, that did not happen. But I do have less than one-sixth of the pattern to complete.

It's really exciting to see it coming together. At my current pace, I hope to have all the cross stitch completed by the end of the month, with the back-stitch and final details finished by the end of January. And now that DH has begun to cross stitch as well (I KNOW!!) we can each spend the evenings on the couch, enjoying Netflix and working on projects.

Here's to progress!!

Machine Quilting Issues

No pictures today, just some talkin'.  I'm trying to remember to stop by every few days to chat, but more often than not, realize that I thought about it, and realized I had something else to do.  Making that pledge to be more open about my process right before the holiday....what was I thinking?!  Anyway, yesterday I sat down with Stephanie's baby quilt to begin quilting it for real, and boy! Do I need some practice! My swirlys are lopsided and uneven, and my bamboo-ish filler design for the sashing is....leaving something to be desired.  I'm sad to say that I think this quilt will go down as a FMQ practice quilt that I actually gave as a gift to a close friend!! Oh, the horrors! 

Currently, I am on a break after sewing for 15 minutes, trying to prevent sore muscles and frustration.  Trying to figure out how to use my fingertips to move the quilt without having to pinch it up to move it.  I wish I could steal  snag borrow mom's sewing table; it has a nice hole to drop your machine into, leaving your quilt at the level of the needle, like a perfect extension table.  I asked for a nice extension table for Christmas, not the $200+ full-sized sewing table, but the little attachments you can add when quilting.  However, even if I do receive it (HINT HINT, I WANT THAT TABLE!! ;)  it will not come before I have done most of the work for this quilt.  Sadly, DH and I jury-rigged an extension table from a cardboard box and tape, but it's not a very smooth surface, so the quilt sandwich doesn't to move as nicely as it should.

Anyway, my break-time is over, and I must return to the quilt for at least one more round before we call this evening a total KO.  Eventually, I WILL defeat the process of FMQ, but it probably won't be tonight.

Felt Food Mania

Okay. So I promised to do more updating and here I am. It occurred to me that I posted a while back that I had finished my first box load of felt food and mailed it off, or at least I mentioned it in the Finished column.  Yet I never posted any pictures or links to the inspiration and patterns that helped me create them.  (Many of them you will see were found at Helping Little Hands' Felt Food Cook-Along) Prepare for a bunch of links!

This box is the size of one of those medium Priority Mail boxes. And just look at what all fit into it!!

 Felt cookies from this website. No patterns were used, it's really simple. Just two cream colored felt pieces layered together with a fun frosting, sprinkled. The chocolate chip cookies were inspired by these blueberry muffins.  I loved her idea that the blueberries are not always on top, and since chocolate chips usually look the same in the cookies, I duplicated it.  After sewing the random curly-q's to the wrong sides, I sewed the right sides together, leaving a space to flip them through.  Now, I also think that they look better a bit thicker, so I used scrap batting from quilting projects to stuff them before hand sewing the cookies closed.  K says her little girl is in love with the cookies right now. 

I love these tomatoes.  I'll show you the website and pattern I found them on, but when you see it, you'll kick yourself for not seeing how simple they are! It's nothing more than a large circle gathered and stuffed.  Cut out a leafy top, sew it on and you're done! And the tomato slices were just as easy, you'll see!

I have been wracking my brain and wearing out my search engine, but I cannot for the life of me think of where I saw an idea for the hamburger and buns.  At the bare minimum, I probably saw one in a Flickr pool of felt food and was inspired to create my own pattern based out of the creation of other foods, like the sliced bread (below).  The only thing that makes the burgers cuter than a bug to me is the grill marks: black embroidery thread stitched in straight lines. I don't know about you, but my hubby never manages to get the perfect cross-hatch on a burger.

These are some of my favorite pieces, and until K's little girl got the cookies, she too was in love with the first slice of bread I made for her.  Rather than create 3 different links, I'm just going to make one, back to the Felt Food Cook-Along, because that's where all but the lunch meat came from.  The lunch meat is little more than a piece of pink felt (or 2 if you want more thickness or stability), cut with pinking shears and machine stitched around the edge for a bit of detail.  The rest of the food in the picture is the Sliced Bread, the Chicken Pieces/Chicken Nuggets in the Felt Fajitas, and The Amazing Changing Felt Pizza Crust/Tortilla. 

These bananas and corn-cobs were super fun to create! I think I need a set just to keep here at the house for me to play with!  When I make them again, I want to find a way to put magnets inside the individual pieces. When K's daughter played with them, she had difficulty getting the pieces back together.  Securing the magnets so that they won't be a swallowing/choking hazard isn't actually the issue, I have that figured out.  It's finding cheap magnets that aren't cost-prohibitive!

The carrots were super cute when finished, and I kinda went overboard cutting out orange felt, and I think I made 20-ish carrots!  The strawberries, while cute, aggravated me.  I made most of them too small, which makes them choking hazards, so I had to send her only a few, with the promise to make more, larger ones, soon.  And these oranges....I'm in love. (Here's the link for the peel)  They were actually the first food pieces I made, and they clinched it....I am a FELT FOOD MANIAC!!

The Process Pledge

I, Liz, pledge to talk more about my processes, even when I can’t quite put them in the in words or be sure I’m being totally clear.   I’m going to put my thinking and my gut feelings out there.

As I'm sure you've noticed, my last post was more than a month ago. I've been working, although truthfully not as much this month, but I started this blog to help me complete UFOs. If I'm not keeping the blog updated, it may mean the UFO pile is only growing, the WIP pile is shrinking and the completed projects are not making any new friends. 

So I hereby pledge to post at least every other day.  Even if only to say hi, and that I'm shirking on projects.  For the actual completion of projects? Well, DH will be on night shift ALL month, which means any night he's not at home is a night I can freely spend at the sewing machine without feeling like I'm ignoring him. So here's to a new start.  See ya soon!