Elizabeth Sheffield Finish

Here she is, my Elizabeth Sheffield all finished!  I finished her last weekend just in time for the Sampler Guild of the Rockies meeting.  I brought her just to show a few friends who have been following my progress on her and ended up getting lots of nice compliments on her and showed her during the show and share portion of the meeting.  I've already ordered a frame and will post another picture when she's in her frame and up on the wall. 

I just love the bright colors in this piece and for those who don't know, I stitched her using 35 count WDW Straw linen and the called for DMC threads.  I did make one minor color change but don't have that in front of me at the moment.  I changed the centers of the pink flowers under the brown bird to just mute it down a tad.  I haven't decided where to hang this yet.  I do have another Rhode Island samper that I stitched and was contemplating stitching Anne Anthony by the Essamplaire but I need a break from over one stitching.  I would love to hang a collection of Rhode Island samplers someday but for now I think she'll be pretty hanging in my guest room with other pieces with pretty colors.

It's been nice here today so I've got the windows open for the kitties to enjoy.  Why is it that whenever the weather is great, my black cat sits in the sunniest spot to soak it all up?  I think this would be hot but he seems to enjoy it!  That's all for now!

Jen

Done with Over One!

That's right, I'm done with all of the over one on Elizabeth Sheffield, and there was a lot of it!  I was able to finish all the over one for the people and the windows of the house and now all that's left is to finish filling in the house itself.  The windows were all charted for over one and after finishing up the people I was really tempted to just fill it in over two threads so it would go faster but wanted to stay true to the reproduction so I stitched them over one linen thread as the chart called for.  No picture today but check back soon for a finish! 

In the meantime, here is a photo of my completed snowflakes so I can assemble them at our next guild meeting: 

And, I don't know what happened to the photo I attached of my cute TUSAL jar last time so I'm trying that again...

New Year's Starts

I know that many of you out there in blogland started new projects for New Year's day and so did I.  Only I started not one but two new projects!  First, I started Paradise Lost by Plum Street Samplers.  You might remember that I was trying to decide between this and Ann Grant and this won.  I'm so glad I did too, it's such a fun design!  I started with the verse at the bottom because words are never my favorite. 

I did a little grass above the words so I'd have something other than red done.  :)  I'm stitching this on 36 count Vintage Light Examplar fabric with the called for silks.  Sorry for the poor picture, you'll see better photos when I come back to this.

Then, I started the pre-stitching for a project that we're assembling at our next Sampler Guild of the Rockies meeting, a snowflake biscornu.  I have never assembled or stitched a biscornu before so this was a great opportunity for me to learn!  But, ugh, all that backstitching...  Here's my progress, I hope to finish the rest of the snowflakes in the next day or two:

Once I finish the pre-stitching for the biscornu project then I'll go back and finish up Elizabeth Sheffield.  I made some nice progress on her and ordered a frame at Lynn's when I was home at Christmas.  I'm going to wait to show you an overall photo until she's done but all I have left is the band with the little people and the house:

For some reason I keep thinking that the guy on the left looks like some of my old lego dudes from when I was a kid.  Maybe it's the shape of his face, maybe it's the funny (but cute) smile but I kept thinking Legos when I was stitching.  What do you think?

And, last but certainly not least, I signed up for a couple challenges this year.  One is the BAP (Big Arse Project) challenge hosted by Becky Bee.  Paradise Lost will be my challenge piece for this challenge since it's larger than 10" x 12".  I'll be posting updates here on this blog as I work on her (after finishing Elizabeth Sheffield of course) so check back to see how it's coming along. 

The other challenge I signed up for is the TUSAL Challenge.  For those who don't know, TUSAL stands for Totally Useless Stitch A-Long.  It's where stitchers post a photo on their blogs of a jar filled with their ORT's (Old Ratty Threads) on or around every full moon.  I had a lot of fun seeing these ORT jars on other people's blogs over the last year so I decided to jump in too!  The challenge is open, anyone can join in at any time of the year and all the information is on Daffycat's blog.  I have had this pretty fluted jar in my basement forever trying to figure out what to do with it.  So, I tied a pretty ribbon around it and voila! that's my TUSAL jar.  My first update will be later in January so check back for more photos of this one too. 

Well, that's it, I'm off to go work on snowflakes so I can go back to stitching on Elizabeth Sheffield.  I hope to have a finish on her to show you sometime soon! 

Jen

And They Sinned...

I have been wanting to show my "And they Sinned..." sampler for quite awhile now.  Isnt' she beautiful??  I stitched her on 35 count Highland Mist with the called for Gentle Arts Sampler Threads.  This sampler took me 4 years to complete.  I started stitching in January 2005 and then put it aside when I went to the GLR seminar where I took the Immigrant Sampler.  Shortly after the seminar I became a Stampin' Up! demonstrator and poured my heart and soul into becoming a rising star.  That was great but this poor sampler was horribly neglected in my WIP pile of 1 (I tend to stitch on one thing at a time so this is all I had going).  I picked it up again and stitched on and off on it. 

In 2008 I moved to Colorado and this (and the frame I had purchased) came with me.  By Christmas 2007 I had everything but the green area at the bottom completed so I stitched the outline of the grass so I could at least order my frame.  In early 2009 I spent a few months in upstate NY for work and was determined to finish this project so I brought it along and got it done.

While at the GLR seminar in 2005 there was a fair amount of chatter about this piece and several people had talked about how they were personalizing it.  I decided to stitch my three cats into it.  I love this band anyway with the Lion so I removed a sheep or two and added my kitties.  I just love how it turned out!   You can also see a good close up of the frame in the below photo, this frame was also ordered from Lynn's of Madison. 

 

Sarah Holmes Buck

This is an antique sampler that I purchased several years and I finally finished reframing it!  It's finished in the same manner as the Immigrant Sampler and I kind of used it as practice for framing that piece. 

You can see from the piece that it has a dark stain near the top and is faded, some spots more than others.  Also, the sampler isn't dated so it wasn't worth much but I liked it so added it to my collection of exactly 1 antique sampler.   :)

It's also curious that the last band is a different color, so either the personalization was added later, stitched in a different fiber or were sitting so it didn't fade as much as the rest. 

When this sampler arrived it was glued into the frame that it came in.  I removed it from the frame and carefully removed as much of the glue from the linen as I could.  I then found this teal fabric to back it on but before I did I sewed a piece of muslin to the back of the sampler to help stabilize it and to prevent the blue from showing through too much.  I think it turned out well and looks nice hanging in my living room with a bunch of other blue samplers. 

Sarah used cross stitch, eyelet stitch, rhodes crosses, cross stitch over one, rice stitch, queen stitch and satin stitch in her sampler.  I've though about charting her just to see how that would go but haven't gotten around to it yet.  I'd rather stitch or stamp!  LOL! 

Here's a close up of her frame, also purchased from Lynn's of Madison:

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of my friends, family and blog readers (although many of you fall into one of the first two categories)!  I wish you a day filled with family, friends, good tidings, cheer, peace and happiness! 

Stocking Card

I love this card!  I designed this for a swap that I participated in with my home group of demonstrators back in September.  I know, I'm a bad blogger for waiting so long to post this, oops!  This card is made by using a 6 x 12" piece of cardstock folded in half and then running it through the Holiday Stocking die (124098).  if you place the fold just below the top of the stocking in the die then you get a card that can be folded open instead of having to write on the back.  I embossed the front of the stocking with the Vintage Wallpaper Embossing folder (120175) and added a mini jingle bell (124116) as a finishing touch.  Enjoy!

Don't forget that your last day to order items from the Holiday Mini Catalog is January 3 so don't miss out!