Monday, April 24, 2017

Slow progress this week

Linen and Threads Mystery Stitch A Long - April 13
This past week was a slower stitch week and this coming week looks like it might be the same but will see how things go.

Linen and Threads Mystery Stitch A Long -- this piece got a bit of attention and I am slowly making some progress on the first section of February.  I am not sure how long this piece is going to take me to get caught up but at least I was able to make a little bit of progress on it.
Linen and Threads Mystery Stitch A Long - April 20

This week I hope to be able to continue with the stitching and maybe even get the first section of February finished.  I am thinking that being able to at least get that done would be really nice before the end of the month but will have to see how things go.
Joyful World - June - April 16

Joyful World - June -- now this project didn't get much attention either this week so there isn't a lot of progress on it.  I am thinking that if I can spend a couple of evenings working on this piece that I might even get it finished before the end of the month.  Again only time will tell how things go.
Joyful World - June - April 20

When I look at the piece I am seeing that I am getting through it but not as quickly as I had hoped so now to see if I can get the bear and tree finished up this week. Last week I got the bear outlined so that means that when I have a bit of  time I can fill in the bear and then finish up the rest of the design.

Stitch -- after working on projects that haven't been moving along too quickly I found a project that shouldn't take too long to finish. I was sorting some of my craft projects and came across this pattern and decided that it needed to be done quickly.  Of course, the colour thread it called for had been purchased but after thinking about it I decided that I wanted this design to be a little different.  I decided to use some overdyed threads in shades of pink/rose and stitch it on black.  The original pattern was with beige/grey on white so yes a big difference.
Stitch - April 23

I had never stitched on black even-weave or even Aida until this week so it was a bit of an experience working on it.   This piece is on 28 count evenweave over two threads so it took a bit of practice to feel comfortable working on it.  I did find that having good light really did make a difference and once I got into a rhythm it was ok to work on. I have one area to finish outlining and then the letters for "STITCH" and add the charms.  I hope to be able to get this piece done as well this week.


So now it is time to get the work done and then see if I can find some time in the evenings to get these projects moved forward.  It would be nice to see that I have a couple more things finished before the end of this month.  I am not sure how much time I am going to have to stitch this week but I know that I will be enjoying the time that I can grab.

Monday, April 17, 2017

More progress and a small finish

Linen and Threads - Apr 9th
This week  my goal was to try and focus on moving two projects ahead a bit so that I could see some results and that is what I did.

Linen and Threads Mystery Stitch A Long -- this was the first project that got the attention as I was determined to make some progress on the January section of the design.  I should say I wanted to finish the January section so that I could at least start moving forward on the project.

Linen and Threads - April 12 - first section finished
The week started out with some really slow progress and I didn't feel like I was going to be getting anywhere on it.  Finally on Wednesday I was able to sit and focus on the section and later Wednesday evening I was able to say that I had finished the January section of the project so now onto February and see how long that takes to get completed.  I know it is a small section so I hope that I can get it finished up before the end of the month but will see how things go.

Linen and Threads - April 13th
The February section is two smaller sections so will see how they go.  I got a start on them on Thursday so at least I can see that the first section is moving a little faster than January did or at least I think it is moving faster.


Joyful World - June - April 8th
Joyful World - June - April 16th
 Joyful World - June -- The next project that got a little bit of attention was Joyful World - June as I wanted to see if I could at least get a little bit of the design stitched this week.  I got a few stitches done but not as much as I would have liked but at least it got moved forward so I will see how much attention it gets this coming week.


Tiger Lily - August 24, 2016
Tiger Lily -- This is a project that I haven't worked on since August of last year so I decided that I was going to try and see if I could at least make a little bit of progress on it.  This project is a full coverage piece so I also wanted to try a different method of stitching to see if it worked any faster.

Tiger Lily - April 14th
To try out this new method I decided to start at the top left of the design and see if I could do it.  The idea of this method is to work in basically blocks of 10 x 10 and stitch each of the colours in that block and put it into the next area you are going to stitch but not stitch the next area. For a stitcher this sounds like a pretty simple idea but I have to admit that this is a new way of stitching for me so I think it is going to take some time.  I started off remembering to stop at the end of the first block and then the way I have stitched for years came back and I continued stitching using the same colour until the thread was done.

As you can see in the picture I did remember to stop with a couple of the threads so will see how this goes when I try and stitch on this design again later this coming week. I think if I can try this method a couple more times I will either figure out that I really like doing it or I am going to find a method that is a combination of my old method and this new method that will work for me.


I have been enjoying the stitching that I have been able to accomplish over this last few months and look forward to seeing how much more stitching I can do moving forward.  Evenings are my time where I can stitch if I am not working and it really does help me relax and stitch my mind back together for the next day.

I hope to have some more progress on a couple of projects by the end of next week but that also means that I have to ensure that I get the work done so that I have the evenings to relax and stitch.




Monday, April 10, 2017

One Stitch A Long caught up and other stitching

Quotes to Live By - April 2nd
It has been a goal for me to see if I could keep at least one of the stitch a longs caught up and not have to think about it right up until the last day of the month.

Quotes to Live By - Last week I wrote about how much I have been enjoying working on Quotes to Live By and once again this week I put the energy in on this piece so that I could see if I could get the actual quote finished within the first week of it being released.  The good news is with some work and having to run out and pick up some more of the background floss I was able to get it finished on Friday evening.
Quotes to Live By - April 7

The April quote is now finished and I will be waiting until May 1st when the next quote is released.  I am happy having it done but it means that this piece won't be worked on until May 1st and considering how much I have been enjoying it I am a little sad.

It is nice knowing that I have been able to get one of the projects caught up because it now means that some of the other projects are going to be getting a little bit more attention over the rest of this month.

Mystery Stitch A Long - March 31
Linen and Threads Mystery Stitch A Long - This is the project that I decided that I am going to try and move forward some as well this month. This is another stitch a long and I am really behind on this one as it also started on January 1st and I haven't even finished the section for January yet.

Mystery Stitch A Long - April 9
Joyful World - June - April 8
With the Mystery Stitch A Long I decided that I was going to try and focus on getting the January section done and then I will decide how I will approach February and March.  I have all the outline done for the two months so now it just means filling in the bands that both of the months have.  Both months have two bands of stitching so that means that there is quite a bit of actually stitching to do after I have finished the January section.  I was able to spend a bit of time stitching yesterday and I have seen a bit of a change in the piece already and that does make me happy.


 Joyful World - June - I actually was able to get the border on the next month done this week and it is another project that will be getting a bit of attention.  I hope to be able to get this piece done quickly as each of these don't normally take me too long to complete. Seeing that I will be half way through this project is also making me happy and I may work on getting this moved forward as well this month but it will depend on how things go with the other project.


I have been loving the projects that I have been working on and as I start to get them caught up I might be able to add a couple of the other projects that I have on the go back into the projects I work on each month. I also figure that if I can get these projects caught up especially Linen and Threads I will be able to work on a couple of things that have been sitting without a lot of attention lately. This month I am going to continue to work on getting this caught up and then I will see which projects can get moved from the currently on hold bag into the currently being worked on bag.  I know that I am not going to have a lot of a chance to get things caught up this month but at least i am going to work on making a bit of a dent in the projects that I am currently focusing on and then will see how things go after this.

It is a short work week this week so that means I have a lot of things that need my attention so now it is time to get working on all of them and see how that goes.  I hope to have some stitching time in the evenings this week.

Monday, April 3, 2017

A Good Stitching Week

 I decided that I would take some pictures of where some of the pieces are at as of March 31st and also to show how large some of the pieces are that I am working on.

Quotes to Live By - Feb 26th

Quotes to Live By - March 25th
Quotes to Live By - now this is the project that has seen a lot of my attention since the beginning of March.  I was really trying to get the three quotes stitched before the end of March so that I was caught up on this project.  I had been able to start the final quote before this week and am happy that I did that.  Once I was able to finish the quote I still had some of the border to complete before I could say that I had actually caught up with all the stitching on this piece.

Quotes to Live By - March 31st - full piece
With some determination this week I was able to get the quote finished as well as the border so I have been able to get this piece fully caught up. I was able to give myself a couple of days of not having to try and work on this piece as everything was finally caught up and that was until this weekend.

Quotes to Live By - April 2
The new quote for Quotes to Live by was released on April 1st and of course I had to make sure that I had the new pattern so that I could start it quickly. The pattern was quickly purchased on Saturday morning so that I could figure out where it was going to be done and then it was time to figure out when I was going to have a little bit of time to actually sit and start working on it. I was able to get the border of the design done and started on the working so now to see how long it will take to get this quote done so that I can be waiting for the May quote to be released.

Linen and Threads - Mystery Stitch Along - Feb 28
Linen and Threads  - While I was waiting for Quotes to Live By to be released I was able to make a bit more progress on the Linen and Threads Stitch Along.  I am still working on the January section of the design so yes I am really behind on this project but now that Quotes to caught up I am hoping to be able to spend some time working on this piece throughout April.
Linen and Threads - Mystery Stitch Along - March 10th
This project is nice to work on when I want to work on just one colour but as there are a lot of stitches in each section the progress that I made isn't seen very quickly.  I decided last week to see if I could at least get the outline done for the February and March sections and I am close to having them all done.

Linen and Threads - Mystery Stitch Along - March 31st
Joyful World - March 31st
This project is another one that is released once a month and with the designer being in Australia it gets released a little bit earlier.  This month they decided to release the April part of the design on the 30th of March for us in North America so that means that I am really behind on this project but will see how I do this month.


Joyful World - the design for each month is getting there but still have another 7 months to stitch on this piece. Each design is around 97 x 79 stitches so they are a project in themselves.  I am now finished May and hope to get June finished off in April and will see how things go on this one.


I have really been enjoying the stitching that I have been able to get done so far this year and am looking forward to seeing how much stitching I can do even in April. I had never really worked on a Stitch Along before this year and I am really happy that I decided to do Quotes to Live By.  It makes me want to stitch and maybe now I will be able to get each quote done in the month it is released.

It is now time to get some work done and then see if I have some time to sit and stitch this evening.  If I do stitch I think Quotes to Live By will be getting the attention but will decide then I sit down to work on something.