Spring Destash!

Yes I know, it's been a while!  There is a very simple reason for my absence - I have not done any stitching since my last post.  No you read that correctly, your eyes did not deceive you, I have not picked up a needle and thread since 1 January 2017.  With this being a stitching blog, that sort of gives me very little to write about lol!

I thought I might stitch as January went on, but alas no.  February was the same and then I decided to pack away my Lowery and stitching accoutrements, as I was sick of the sight of them sitting there unused.  I don't feel optimistic about March either, so maybe April will be my month?!  Who knows!  To be honest I'm not worried about it, although it feels odd not to spend most days doing a little bit of stitching as I have done for the past 6 years, I have neither the time or the energy for it at the moment.  I still have a few projects swimming around in my brain that I am excited about, so I know the desire is there and will surface at some point.

Ultimately eating away at me is the fact that The Drawer is full to the brim and the spare room littered with poster tubes full of completed stitching - is there any need to add to it with more of the same?  Maybe I have come full circle and am back to where I was in my teenage years where it was enough to complete a project here and there as the mood took me once or twice a year.

Anyway, I hadn't touched or been near my stash in about 3 months and I knew that it might help my lack of stitching if I had a good sort out so that I could see the wood for the trees so to speak.  I finally summoned the nerve last week and the result is a little Spring Destash Sale, so if you want to take a look, click on the For Sale tab at the top of the page. (Edited to add: all items have now sold - thank you!).  Some of the fabrics I dearly love - but 28/32ct just isn't my jam anymore so there is no point holding on to them.  I have kept a few pieces (I could never part with my nom de plume fabric!) but it's mainly all about the 36/40ct these days.  Threads are always hard to part with but there are only so many you can stitch with and only so many varieties of the same colour you need!

If you've reached the end of this post thank you and to all of you that have messaged and emailed me during my stitching hiatus -  thank you.  I hope that I will stitch again at some point this year, but until then.........

Happy Stitching - put a few in for me while you're there!

Hard Habit To Break......

Every year for the previous 6 years I have always had a New Year's New Start.  With me currently stitching next to nothing, I thought that 2017 might be the end to that little tradition.  I've put a few stitches in Band Sampler over the past month, but I haven't looked at any of my stitchy accounts/groups on FB or IG for weeks and have just been enjoying the hour or two I have spent stitching for me.

Current progress on Band Samper - another band bites the dust!

So 1st January rolls around and at about 7pm I decided that yes, I will have a new start please and that it doesn't matter that I probably won't finish it until the end of the year if that!  It's a design I've had kitted up in preparation for 1st January and one I have had in my stash for five years so it deserved to see the light of day:

 

It is Elle Brode des Lettres Carmin by Reflets de Soie and I have this pattern spread across several issues of GOSM from 2010, but I think it has been recently re-released by Isabelle.  I love samplers, I love anything French, I love fonts and lettering and I love red silk and flax linen so this is pure joy to stitch for me.  Despite using AVAS Soie D'Alger on quite a few pieces, this will be my first time using Soie de Paris so I am looking forward to seeing how it compares to other filament silks I've used in the past.

 

The stitch count is 250 x 400 and I'm using 40ct, so as it is stitched using only 2 colours of silk (and a bit of ribbon work) it is perfect for me to pick up sporadically as and when the mood takes me - especially as it is an alphabet sampler band sampler.  Here is what I managed to do for a couple of hours on 1st January:

 

 

 

 

 It is a strange feeling to love a piece very much but not feel the need to stitch on it for hours on end taking up all my spare time as I have on other pieces prior to this.  I'm not complaining at all - I feel much more balanced than I have for a while.  Rather than stitching taking up all my free time, it now occupies a fraction of it, leaving me time for reading (currently reading Julian Fellowes' latest, Belgravia) and other interests that I have never really talked about "publicly" such as diet, nutrition and wellbeing.

 

 So the blog may be quiet for a while, I will post when I have some more substantial progress to show.  Keep your eyes peeled for a destash post soon as I have threads and fabrics that really need to find a new home instead of just sitting in my stash when they could be better put to use in yours :)!

Happy Stitching!

2017 Needlework Musings......

This is going to be one of those posts that is more for my benefit than my poor readers.  So if you aren't in to plans and general rambling, feel free to skip...........:)

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I think it's fair to say that I am one of life's planners!  My stitching is pretty much wrapped up for 2016, so that's when I start to think about what I want to do in 2017.  What I want to stitch is easy, how I'm going to achieve it, well that's another story!

So as for the what, here's a little selection of next year's projects:

 

 

 

I'll be stitching projects from both of the books and treating them as "learning projects" as a way of improving my stitching techniques, reading around the subject and generally enjoying immersing myself in a project.  I'm looking forward to the Hardanger and using entirely new-to-me-threads that thanks to a specialist lacemaking and tatting shop I was able to source online in the UK.  I'm still wavering on which of the samplers in The Proper Stitch to go for.  Being a Tudor nut, I'm thinking maybe I should go for the Tudor Rose Sampler but the other two samplers are beautiful too.

 

Alongside that will be more samplers including a piece I have wanted to stitch for about five years by Reflets de Soie.  It's a redwork sampler to be stitched using the AVAS silks and flax linen in the left hand side of the photo along with a bit of ribbon work.  At 250 x 400 stitches, I'm hoping the bands of letters will be a soothing stitch to possibly last the year.  Then there are the other samplers pictured which will be stitched on high counts of linen probably using Nina's gorgeous threads.

 

Once again it will be stitching from stash which is what I have basically done for the past two years.  The only exception would be completing my collection of Nina's silks and cottons and buying linens as and when I need them. My Pinterest board is so full of the many patterns in my stash that I want to stitch that very few on my wishlist make it much further than that these days!

 

Now for the how.........  I no longer have the time and energy I used to have to stitch.  I'm okay with that, after all my life amounts to more that the number of stitches I make and the stash I buy (or don't buy in my case!).  This means that when I do get a chance to stitch, the project has to tick all the right boxes - otherwise I feel I just as well sit making random stitches in a piece of linen to no end and to no avail!  I've been stitching for long enough to know what I love and what works for me and basically that is what 2017 is all about - quality not quantity I guess.  Taking patterns I love and using the stash that I love to stitch them.  I see no point in starting a project just because I can, which is why despite the fact that I've been contemplating starting another Chatelaine for a while,  I haven't done it because they no longer tick all the boxes for me.  I like to have projects that are easy, mindless, soothing stitching and I like to have projects that are challenging and 2017 is going to be a mixture of both.

 

Where this leaves blogging I don't know, less stitching means less to blog about - but I'm thinking I should be able to manage a monthly update.  I've really enjoyed the bits of OAAT stitching I've done this year (thanks to Justine), so that will be something I will be taking forward to next  year. 

 

I'm really looking forward to my projects for next year and a much more chilled approach to my stitching. By now you know that I'm not much of a "social stitcher" and all the hoop-la that goes along with that side of things - but it's nice to share what I've done in this little corner of the interweb :).

 

 

Thanks for reading.........

 

 

Happy Stitching!

Stash Diving

As stitchers we are all different - some of us stick to kits, others will only use high counts of linen, some stick to crosses, other like to use a more mixed bunch of stitches, whilst others shudder to alter anything about a pattern and someone else just can't leave a pattern without adding their own touches to it!  We all know what makes our hobby enjoyable for us.

I think anyone who has followed this blog for even a few posts has a pretty good idea of what camp I fall into, which explains why stitching 3,000+ cross stitches in 3 shades of blue DMC on Cinderella was doing nothing for my creativity and I was losing the will to stitch.  I had an inkling this might happen as I had a similar feeling when I was stitching Mirabillia's Red last year.  When it comes to stitching, I'm much more about the journey than I am about reaching the destination in 90% of my projects.  It explains why I love chopping and changing colours and stitches in projects as it keeps it interesting for me as the project comes to life, all the more so if it means learning a new technique or stitch.

Don't get me wrong, I love Cinderella and she will be finished this year - but I think her stitching needs to be spread out over the year, no way could I go OAAT on her.  So here is where I leave her for the moment:

 

 

I haven't forgotten Berthe Massiet either, although I haven't picked her up since the beginning of January, but I think I can chip away at her whilst stitching on my new projects :).

 

I had a day off yesterday, so spent it cutting fabrics and picking threads for 7 new projects all of which have me much more enthusiastic about picking up my stitching again.  They range from small to medium-small projects and I think only one is kitted with most of its original colours, everything is kitted entirely from stash of course, some are 100% cross stitch - others not so much!  Here is a sneak peek:

 

 

It was nice to be reunited with my thread collection again, so far this year the only drawer that has seen any action is the Caron drawer for Mabel's SAL, so it was nice to get reacquainted with them all again!

 

Here's hoping to more stitching taking place at Milkybar Towers!

Flowers of the Field

Hey Stitchers!  Time and energy have eluded me when it comes to stitching and consequently for the first time in years my stitching mojo is on the wane - my reading mojo has replaced it though, so every cloud and all that!

However as some of you who follow me on IG know, I finished Flowers of the Field last week, so I actually have something to blog about.  It was a lovely design to stitch, but I'm glad I chose 32ct and not 40ct after all that over 1 lettering!

Here is a close up of the final part:

 

And the whole design completed:

 

 

A terrible photo, but long and narrow designs are so hard to capture!

 

I know that samplers aren't every stitcher's cup of char, but I love them - original and repros!  I love their deceptive "perceived" simplicity.  Flowers of the Field, though not a difficult stitch by any means, contained a much greater variety of stitches than is found in any Chatelaine Design - designs that look very busy and complicated, but are actually quite simple to stitch.

 

Difficulty, like beauty, is very much in the eye of the beholder though - which reminds me of a recent article by The Oracle of Needlework.  There are some reproduction samplers that I would love to attempt in the future that scare me to death, that other stitchers wouldn't bat an eyelid at.  In a weird way the difficulty makes me want to stitch them all the more so - much safer to be an adrenaline junkie from the comfort of my stitching chair lol!  The designs themselves look simple, but if you are fortunate enough to be able to look closely at an original (or if you are stitching a reproduction), you can see the variety of stitches used and the perfect tension (my personal nemesis!) applied to thread and fabric.  The really mind blowing thing though after you've admired such a piece of stitching, is when you realise that the needlewoman that created the original piece was actually only a young girl!

 

In the future I would love to stitch a "scary" repro sampler as a learning piece for myself, really focusing on the quality of each and every stitch to produce the best piece of needlework that I can.  For the moment though, the closest I can get to that is by stitching vicariously through SANQ, by reading through the last collection of the final issues on CD that will hopefully be dropping through my letter box sometime today.

 

In the meantime, who knows when I'll put another stitch in a piece of fabric.........my next blogpost may be quite some time lol!

 

Happy Stitching!