August Operation Threadporn Report

Another month and more threads have been seeing the light of day!

First up was a freebie by Jeannette Douglas that I found on the Caron website, I stitched this one on a Crafty Kitten Ltd Ed Opal from November 2012 and used AVAS and Waterlilies silks.  I loved the way the colours turned out and *one day* I will turn it into a needlework wrap/roll with thread rings to store threads for my small WIPs:

Next up is my SOTW square for the month, I changed the threads slightly by working in another wildflower to add to the thread totals!

This saw the combination of possibly the two most hated stitches - French knots and lazy daisies to make the French daisy!

My thread totals didn't advance too much this monthly, mainly due to the addition of a few Jodyri threads that landed in my letterbox :).  A few months ago Michelle at Jodyri Designs sent me a photo of an upcoming thread she had in mind for a future limited addition thread and I knew when it was released I would HAVE to have it.  So here is Regal Peacock (August's Ltd Ed) in 32ct Belfast, stranded cotton, stranded silk and three sizes of perle lol:



Michelle had also updated three of her hand dyed regular cotton colours, so I had to have those in the interest of keeping my collection up to date.........

All in all that meant that for this month thread totals were as follows:

Percentage of hand dyed thread stash used to date: 16.18%

Number of different stitches used to date:     49

Number of finishes to date:                          29  (9 of which are FFOs)

Part 5 of Milady's Blossom Garden was released on Saturday so I stitched that one up over the weekend - not entirely without incident I have to say but here it is:

As it's a bank holiday here in the UK today I'm hoping to squeeze a little bit more stitching in on the final day of August as I haven't touched Butterfly Garden all month.  Then there are projects to finalise for Autumn/Winter stitching as I'm dying to get my teeth into some projects that have been sitting in my stash for too long!

Happy Stitching!

Aurora

Long time, no post!  I haven't been stitching as much as usual, but I am back with another finish!  I actually thought that this particular piece would be the last of my summer pieces to be finished.  However it turns out that the easy two over two full crosses of this piece were just what I felt like stitching these past two weeks, so here she is - Sleeping Beauty by The Primitive Hare:

 

I chose to stitch her on 36ct Cream Edinburgh (the same I used for Red last year) and I changed the charted colour of her dress (GAST Banker's Grey) to an (unknown) GAST Ltd Ed I had in my stash as I wanted a more blue/grey look to it.  Although this is a prim design, I couldn't resist a tiny touch of sparkle so for the fibre in the spinning wheel I used some Petite Silk Lame Braid (love that stuff!).  Now Sleeping Beauty is done I might allow myself at some point in the future to add Rapunzel and Snow White to my collection - one day they would look nice displayed together in some rustic wooden frames........

 

I'm all behind with threadporn, so just last night I kitted up my two designs for this month, my Hardanger square and an appropriate freebie for me by Jeannette Douglas that I found on the Caron site.  Here are my thread choices, so hopefully I'll find the time over this week to get them stitched!

 

 

 

 

I haven't touched Butterfly Garden this month yet, I wasn't in the mood for "bitty" stitching and the next part of MBG will be out this coming weekend  - so all of that should keep me out of trouble until the end of the month.

 

I've also been umming and ahhing over whether I want to stitch another Chatelaine next year - Joyce has been tempting me with her Serengeti!  I've swished through my stash and I have a fair amount of the fibres required, but I will probably substitute the threads that I am missing for ones I already have in my stash.  If I did decide to go ahead with Serengeti, I may well force myself to make it a year long project - it's divided into twelve parts so makes it nice and easy to stitch a part every month in 2016!  That way at least I will get my money's worth out of the project, knowing my past history with Chatelaines once I start one it's very hard to stop stitching on it when I get going.  Sometimes it's nice to have a big project to get your teeth into and at 409 x 409 stitches Serengeti definitely fits into that category..........!

 

Happy Stitching!

And Then There Were Two.........

......WIPs that is, as Living with Charm by Lizzie Kate is now complete!

 

I haven't added on the charms yet - I'll wait until I finish it properly to do that as I don't want them catching on anything while it's "in storage" lol!  I'm really happy with the way it turned out, even though it wasn't stitched on my preferred fabric (I'm not a fan of Permin/Wichlet linen, I'm a Zweigart girl), but what is a stitcher to do when you win an auction for a metre of it for £6.00 on eBay!  I also ended up with a few full skeins of thread left over, which is never an issue for this stitcher - more to add to the drawers!

 

Speaking of thread drawers, although I feel as though I've talked enough about my storage and threads on the internet - I haven't done it on this platform, so I thought I would show you how I store threads and fabric as stitchers always like to know about that stuff for some reason!

 

Last year I decided it was high time that instead of storing my stitching supplies in various boxes here and there, I would collate my supplies in one place!  I figured as the value of my stitching stash runs quite high (the value not necessarily being what I paid for it:)), it was worth investing in some decent storage that would work for me.  This is what I came up with:

 

 

 

Two custom storage towers from the Really Useful Boxes company which houses my entire fabric and thread collection!

 

The smaller drawers are mainly jam packed full of floss away bags like this:

 

 

 

 

Or with perles like this:

 



 

Each of the thread brands has its own drawer or drawers, depending on the amount I have, so for example this is one of my Caron thread drawers:

 

 

There are other supplier specific drawers for Jodyri Designs, GASTs, Dinky Dyes, Gloriana, Thread Pickerz, Mo's Sale and Threadworx etc, as well as some for hand dyed perles, miscellaneous silks and miscellaneous cottons.

 

 As you can see I store all my hand dyed threads in floss away bags - I don't like my special threads getting kinky on bobbins (the same rule does not apply to DMC and Anchor, I'm very devil may care with those!).  I put an index card in each one, so if the thread is for use in a particular project I can make a note on the card and it also gives the bags some strength, making them easier to file in the drawers! 

 



 

I only begin to kit projects up a few at a time as I come to them, so some threads in my collection are ear marked for different Chatelaines and other special projects.  I just choose to keep my threads as one collection rather than spread across a lot of kitted projects.  Threads that I have used already this year as part of Operation Threadporn are denoted by a little stick on crystal, so as I flick through my drawers looking to pull threads for a project I know which ones I have used already this year (the rule being no duplicate threads allowed this year!).

 

 

So that covers the little drawers, but just in case you were wondering what is stored in the others - in the medium drawers you will find my hand dyed fabrics and fat quarter finishing fabrics along with trims and other notions:

 

The larger bottom drawers house "The Drawer" (of finishes) along with my plain metres of evenweave and linens and my Anchor (100% complete) and DMC (90% complete) cotton collection (all bobbinated in boxes):

So there you have it - a sneak peek into my stash!

Happy Stitching!

Box of Delights by Liz Almond

I had so much fun stitching Box of Delights and "auditioning" threads - but now it's all finished!

Here are my thread choices for the final block:

Top L-R: Charleston Glisson Gloss, Ginger Tom PB48, Pink Zebra PB24
Bottom L-R: Wrath, Whale Song PB08, Chocolate Frog PB06

The final block stitched up:

And the finished piece!

I do have some ideas for finishing it, but knowing me who knows when that will happen!

Liz will be having another SAL starting towards the end of the year, Pandora's Box and this design will involve Assisi and pulled work as well as blackwork!  Another design for the list........

Happy Stitching!

July Achievements and August Goals

July Goals

I've updated the tabs above with the evidence of the below!

•Complete Block 5 of Box of Delights DONE!
•Complete Part 4 of Milady's Blossom Garden DONE!
•Stitch the July SOTW square for Operation Threadporn DONE!
•Stitch and finish freebie project from Operation Threadporn (an obvious choice from The Snowflower Diaries )  DONE!
•Start any or all of my Summer Starts and stitch as much or as little as I like :) DONE! All Summer starts started and Emma and Eliza in the Garden was completed!

The graphical representation:

Only 7 days of no stitching this month!

 

August Goals

• Complete Block 6 of Box of Delights - DONE!
• Complete Part 5 of Milday's Blossom Garden
• Stitch the August SOTW square for Operation Threadporn
• Stitch a freebie project for Operation Threadporn - yet to be decided
• Stitch on Butterfly Garden by The Drawn Thread
• Stitch on Living with Charm by Lizzie*Kate
• Stitch on Sleeping Beauty by The Primitive Hare

 

Probably no new starts until September..........!

 

Happy Stitching!