A Finish and Some New Beginnings

Now that you've met Sage you know what's been keeping me busy and away from my blog for the past few months. But, I have had a few other things happening too! I did finish my Frances Eden Sampler back in June. Just in time to take it back to Wisconsin with me to pick out a frame at Lynn's of Madison. They are so helpful there with framing and with my needlework supplies so of course I picked up some new stash! One of the things I kitted up while I was there was the new Birds of a Feather mystery sampler by With thy Needle, that's my new start pictured here. I am stitching it on 35 count Tin Roof. I don't have part three yet and the shop was out of the color Sage (which I found amusing) and that happens to be the color used in the border so I decided to start in the middle. Now that I've seen the full chart I'm excited for part 3 to arrive so I can do the rest of the tree parts but for now I have lots and lots of leaves to stitch. The called for linen is much lighter than what I chose so when I started the leaves I wasn't sure I liked the lack of contrast. However, now that I have a few of them done I like it more, reminds me of something antique. I am also going to start Elizabeth Sheffield sometime soon but I really like to stitch one thing at a time and thought the mystery sampler would go much faster!

One other thing I've been up to (besides stitching, stamping and dog stuff as if that's not enough) is that I decided to learn how to quilt. I went to my local quilt store, which is called The Quilt Store, back in December and they had a beginning quilting class going on. The next one offered in the evening wasn't until April but I decided to sign up and purchased my fabrics, pictured at left. This is the Fandango line by Moda and is really "me". I love this fabric and would pull it out to admire it from time to time. It was really fun to quilt with too! My class was great, we made an entire quilt from start to finish in the five week class. My only homework after the fact was to finish hand stitching the binding. But, do you think I've done that yet?? Nope. Oh well, it's on my to-do list and I hope to get it done soon, especially since I've made a few other quilts, more on those in a later post.

So you can see that I've been quite busy in the past few months and will show you some of my stamped goodies shortly too! Right now I'm getting ready for a visit from my Grandfather so I've been trying to catch up on some of the things on my to do list that have been lingering, like organizing the garage (which got done yesterday) and cleaning up my gear room (which is half done). In fact, I've set a goal to finish up all the half completed projects around the house by the end of the year. There aren't a lot of them, but they are all things that will take a bit of effort to complete and aren't as fun as doing new stuff which is why they're not done yet. But, things like finally finishing the framing on my Immigrant Sampler and reframing an antique sampler will give me great joy and things like organizing the gear room will bring great satisfaction. I think I've decided on a bookshelf for the gear room and our IKEA opens this week so I hope to make it down there sometime in the next month or so in order to really finish that project! Well enough rambling for today, stay cool!

Jen