A Much Anticipated New Start!

Any of you that have been following my needlework adventures since my YouTube days may remember a video I did last Summer on my top three wishlish charts for 2015 which I planned on stitching.  Red by Mirabilia was the first, Plum Pudding by Glendon Place was the second and now begins the journey of stitching the third :).

I'd never been one for reproduction samplers, that is until several years ago when I discovered Nicola's wonderful blog and exquisite stitching.  After following her stitching journey through several beautiful Scarlet Letter pieces, I knew one day I would have to stitch at least one of Marsha's samplers myself.  As I'd decided that in 2015 I would be stitching what I want when I want and not be tied down to my usual designers - this year seemed perfect timing to fit a Scarlet Letter sampler into my stitching schedule!

Being the type of person that I am, I read everything that I could on Scarlet Letter samplers, I've never been one to jump in feet first and panic later!  I'm so grateful to Nicola and Jo and all the contributing bloggers on the various Scarlet Letters Years blogs for taking the time to explain and photograph their work.

I had a few questions about fabric choice - Edinburgh or Floba?  Who better to ask than Nicola herself!  As Floba was a fabric I'd not tried before, Nicola very very kindly sent me a sample piece so that I could see its merits for myself.  I took the opportunity to give it a trial run and stitched up this little freebie by Blackbird Designs:

I loved stitching on Floba!  It's lack of slubs and fine appearance compared to 100% linen made it the perfect choice for me for whatever Scarlet Letter chart I decided upon.  It was a given that I would stitch the sampler in the charted AVAS d'Alger as I adore stitching with those silks.  I find by planning my projects early that I can work large 100% silk projects into my stitching budget and thereafter it encourages me to stitch from stash as much as I can :).
 

All that was left now was to decide on the sampler!  I have a real love of bargello/Florentine/flame stitch (call it what you will), so the solution was obvious and screamed at me from the Scarlet Letter catalogue - it had to be 🔥✖️!

 

 

35ct cream Floba and the recommended AVAS d'Alger

Now you can see why this start is much anticipated as after being in the pipeline for over a year I can FINALLY put silk to linen - well linen mix if we want to be 100% accurate :).
 

So here is my start!

 

 

 

It goes without saying that stitching on this one was well worth the wait - I absolutely adore it!  For someone who loves stitching fonts and lettering, it really is a wonder that it took me this long to stitch a reproduction sampler!

 

 

Now I really should put this down and work on my Operation Threadporn pieces for this month - including a freebie in commemoration of a much anticipated TV programme returning to UK TV screens for its final series:

 

 



 

But maybe I'll do just do one more row on Flamestitch...........

 

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!

My Wimbledon Fortnight!

It was a fantastic tournament as always, the best man won on Sunday, I just wish that man had been Roger Federer :).

Anyway I managed a fair bit of stitching in between all the excitement - four new starts and two parts on my SALs, here are the pics!

Firstly I completed Block 5 on Box of Delights - the colours:

Top L-R: Hearts and Flowers Ltd Ed PB24, Argentine Tango PB59, Clockwork Orange PB49
Bottom L-R: Rainforest, Blue Morpho Butterfly PB18, Over the Rainbow

  

The "sweets":





 

One more block to go!

 

 

Up next was Part 3 of Milady's Blossom Garden:

 

Hello coral knots!

 

Then on to the new starts, firstly Living with Charm by Lizzie*Kate:

 

Slightly wishing I'd chosen my own colours on 40ct but still enjoying stitching it this way!

A levitating Sleeping Beauty by The Primitive Hare:

 

I changed the colour in her dress from GAST Banker's Grey to an unknown GAST Ltd Ed

 

Just Nan's Emma and Eliza in the Garden:
 

 

Absolutely adore this one!
I changed my choice of purple Mo cotton with a Dragonfloss one

And finally The Butterfly Garden by The Drawn Thread:
 

I just have to remember to add in the French knots to the Tansy.
I'm stitching this one in hoop and didn't want to squash them!

 

It was great to get back to regular stitching after quite a few months where it's been a bit hit and miss.  Unplugging from social media was definitely a bonus and is something I will be carrying forward.

 

In exciting international post news, I had a wonderful parcel of joy from Chiara over at The Grey Tail when she sent me the prize for winning her Stitching Enigma.  To say I was thrilled with the contents is a complete understatement and I cannot thank Chiara enough for her generosity (as well as the time and dedication organising the Enigma took!) and also Nina who chose and included the beautiful silks.  Despite knowing about Nina's Threads since 2011, I'm ashamed to say that these are the first in my collection - but after a bit of shuffling they now have their own dedicated drawer as I plan on adding to their number next year when I'm back on the thread wagon :).

 

Behold the Beauty!  Purples!

 

That's me all caught up!  I haven't pulled my Threadporn threads for this month's projects yet.  I'm feeling uninspired for Summer themed projects courtesy of the dull, grey, damp and misty weather we're currently experiencing - I can't believe it hit 30 degrees a few weeks ago!  I'm sticking with my Just Nan for the minute, maybe I'll be OAATer for a while, well at least a few days ................

 

Happy Stitching!

 

June Achievements and July Goals

I've updated the tabs above with the evidence for the below, some of the things I stitched I didn't get around to showing as they are yet to be fully finished :).

June Goals

• Complete Block Four on Box of Delights  - DONE!
• Complete Part 3 of Milady's Garden (Part 3 due out towards the end of the month) - DONE!
• Stitch the June Hardanger square for Operation Threadporn - DONE!
• Stitch and finish my Operation Threadporn freebie for the month  - Stitching complete but not yet finished, gathering supplies :)
• FINISH Golden Daisy - This one may well be on hold for the Summer, we'll see how it goes
• FINISH Confetti of Hardanger (only 1 part left, a pretty big part though!) - DONE and HURRAH!
• FINISH Jodyri Butterfly - will be made into a cushion, fabric has been bought and tassels need to be made :).
• Then and only then can my care free easy summer stitching plans be embarked upon! - Paid notattention to this and started L*K's Living with Charm :)
• June will be a NO SPEND stash month, I was lucky enough to be the winner of an awesome needlework prize in May so there is no excuse (unless I use the last needle I have on the planet of course!) - NOT A PENNY was spent on stash, although a few new needlework books found their way into my collection courtesy of some Amazon vouchers = FREE STASH :)

 

The graph representation:

12 days with no stitching!

July Goals

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

If you haven't already done so, please check out Chiara's post here, where she suggests a small way that we can show our appreciation for needlework designers by using #realstitchersdontsteal and including the original hardcopy chart in our WIP pics (pdfs are a bit more tricky but totally doable for me).  As it is something I feel strongly about, I have chosen to apply this to all my WIP pics wherever I post them.  Whilst it won't stop stealers from stealing, I hope it will help designers to realise that genuine stitchers do exist and that we greatly appreciate the time, effort and love they put into their creations and that we don't want them to give up the fight!

Now back to the tennis............................

Happy Stitching!