Moving forward slowly

Twisted Rainbow Sampler - May 17

Here it is another week and I can actually say that I made a bit of progress on a couple of pieces which is better than I originally thought that I was going to be able to do.

Twisted Rainbow Sampler - this piece did get one evening worth of stitching done on it and I am happy with the progress that I was able to make.  I have finished the first butterfly and have changed colour, which is hard to see in this picture.  I have started on the first border and so far I am liking this pattern.  I am going to have to figure out how I am going to be stitching this piece as it is a diagonal pattern for reach of the colours.  I am thinking that I might be starting to work along the bottom of the piece so that I can be moving the fabric up as I finish sections of the pattern and not just moving it to work on a specific colour.

Twisted Rainbow Sampler - May 23

I am going to see if I can get an evening to work on this piece again this week because it is nice when I can see some results and haven't spent lots of time working on the piece.  The fabric that I am using is an overdyed grey and hopefully it will start to show up in the picture a little better once I have more of the pattern stitched.

Joyful World - June - here is a piece that I was really wanted to get finished before the month of June was on the calendar.  I have been working on this design a bit at a time but have to admit that June seemed to take me forever to stitch.

Joyful World - June - May 22

I am not sure what the reason for the slow progress on this piece but I am happy now to be able to say that I got June finished last night so now I can start working on July soon and hopefully get it finished as well before the calendar says July.

Joyful World - June - May 28

I am thinking that the piece took so long to finish or at least seemed to take a long time because I put it down in April and it wasn't until late May before I picked it up again.  I have decided that when it comes to the smaller designs I am going to try and get them done a little quicker because then I don't hit the point of wondering when they are going to be finished.

Tiger Lily - May 4

Tiger Lily - now this is a piece that I haven't been spending much time on at all.  I started it in August of last year and it got some good attention early on and then it ended up sitting without much progress.

I am not sure how much more progress I am going to be getting on this piece right now as I have a couple of other projects that are calling me to work on.  I am thinking that this is a project that will get bits of work done when I am in the mood to work on it.  I am going to be keeping it in my current projects because I am looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Tiger Lily - May 27

Other projects - now besides trying to spend some time on my cross-stitching I have had another project that has been taking some of my time over the last week.  The project that I started and hope to have finished this week is making curtains for the apartment.  We have vertical blinds in all the windows but I wanted to have a change so we found some fabric that we both liked and I have been making curtains for all the windows over the last week.  I am now on the home stretch with only 3 more curtains to make. I did cheat on one section of curtains and bought some lace curtains and they needed to be shortened.  The home stretch seemed a long way off a while ago when I realized that there were 18 sections of curtains that needed to be made, not counting the lace curtains. Having rooms with wide windows means we have had to put up four panels for each of the 10 foot windows. 

This has been a project that I have been enjoying doing because it will change the appearance of all the rooms. I hope to have the remaining curtains finished within the next couple of days and then I will be able to see them all up and covering the windows.


Well it is now time for me to get some work done so that I can focus on getting some time for myself this evening.  I hope to be able to find a bit of time to stitch this evening but that is going to wait until the other three curtains have been made.

A Bit of Progress

Quotes to Live By - May 13

Here it is another week and I am happy to say that I have been able to get a bit of stitching done.

Quotes to Live By - May 22

Quotes to Live By - this is the first project that got the attention as I figured I could get this piece finished before the end of the month.  Sure, it is just one quote that I am working on each month but this one did take a bit of time because of filling in all the background.  This quote is now finished so it is now time to wait for the new one to be released which will be June 1st.

Now that Quotes to Live By is finished for this month it is now time to work on some other projects for the rest of the month and see what I can get done.

Twisted Rainbow Sampler - May 17

Twisted Rainbow Sampler - now this is a new start that happened this week. I found this design after seeing another design by the same designer.  Of course, as this one is butterflies it was something that I was going to have to work on so I picked up the pattern as part of my birthday purchases.

Twisted Rainbow Sampler does use a lot of colours that I would normally not use but I am really looking forward to seeing this piece finished.  I am looking forward to being able to work on this piece over the next while and see how much of it I can get finished.  I am thinking that I am going to try and work on this design one evening a week to see how much I can get done. 

Joyful World - June - April 20th

Joyful World - June - Here is a piece that hasn't got any attention for almost a month so it was time to get back to working on it.  I am now going to try and get this piece also finished before the end of May so that I will remain ahead on this design.  I figure that now that Quotes to Live By is finished for this month that I will work on Joyful World to at least get June done.  I know that being able to get a second project finished would be great this month.

Joyful World - June - May 22

Joyful World normally doesn't take me too long to get a month design done so now to see if I can just finish this one up this month.  I had always been over a month ahead on Joyful World until I started June.  I am not sure what really happened but this piece seemed to slow me down so now to get back to stitching it.


I am now working on getting the apartment back to being organized after the window replacement and that project continues.  We have done a lot of work cleaning up so now it is just to find the new places to put the different things. 

I now need to get some work done and then I think this evening I am going to try and sit and do some stitching and see what gets the attention.  Hopefully Joyful World will get enough attention this week to get the June section done.  Time will tell what I feel like working on but until then I won't worry about it and see what happens this evening.

A week with some progress

Stitch - April 23

This week I didn't get as much stitching done as I wanted but at least I have been able to get a bit of progress on a couple of projects and that made me happy.

Stitch - Now this is a project that I figured wouldn't take me too long to finish and I was right about it.  The challenge with this piece was stitching it on black evenweave instead of a different colour piece of fabric.

Stitch - April 29

By Saturday I only needed to stitch the two T's and put the charms on so I turned on a hockey game and sat and finished up the piece.  Being able to work on it during the day light was good because it actually made it a little easier to see the holes in the fabric.

Linen and Threads Mystery Stitch A Long - March 31

Linen and Threads Mystery Stitch A Long - I finally got the focus back so that I could work on this piece and actually make a bit of progress on the February section of the pattern.  I was hoping to get more of this piece done in April but I just couldn't seem to find the time where I could spend sitting and focusing on this piece so it didn't get the amount of work done as I would have liked.

Linen and Threads Mystery Stitch A Long - April 20

Linen and Threads Mystery Stitch A Long - April 30

Over the month I know that I finished the January section of the piece and that was on the 12th and I figured that I would be able to get the February section done without a problem but it was amazing how much time each of those small motifs took to do. I finally finished the top part of February on Saturday of this week so now to see if I can make some faster progress on the other part of February. I have already seen that the second part of February seems to be going a little faster but will have to see how long it takes me to actually finish this part of the design.

Now as it is the beginning of the month, they have released the May part of this design as well so that means that I am really behind so I am going to continue to try and get caught up over the next little while.

Joyful World - June  - now this piece didn't see any stitching this week.  I am not sure why I didn't get this one finished in April but it does mean that I should get a finish early in May.

Joyful World - April 20

Quotes to Live By - I finished the fourth quote for this design in early April and have been waiting for the May quote to be posted.  I am really looking forward to working on this piece again so will see when I get the pattern and when I actually start working on it.


I don't think I will be getting a lot of stitching in during the first couple of weeks of May but I am going to see how it really goes.  If I can find a couple of evenings a week where I can spend a couple of hours I will be happy because it should then help me see some good progress on a at least one of the projects that I have on the go.

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.

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.

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.

Another small finish

Joyful World - March 18th

This past week I decided that I was going to focus on just two projects to see if I could see some results on both of them and I was able to do that.

Joyful World - May (finished) - March 22nd

The first project that got the attention was Joyful World - May because I figured it was one thing that I could get finished without too much of an effort and I did that.  It makes me happy to see that I have been able to keep  up with this project and I am ahead of where I wanted to be on it.  I figured making sure that I was always a month ahead was great and now I have been able to get an extra month done and I will see if I can at least get June done in April.  These designs are a lot of fun to work on and they aren't too difficult so it means that I am able to get them done quickly once I decided to sit and work on them.

Quotes to Live By - March 18th

The other project that got some attention this week was Quotes to Live By.   After finishing the second quote a week ago I decided it was time to try and get some of the border done as well as start the third quote or the quote that was released in March.  I got some of the border done this week and have started working on the quote. 

With the border I still have two more colours to do before I have reached the bottom of the design but at least I know where the bottom is now and that is nice. The third quote is working up ok as I haven't had a lot of time to sit and work on it so hope that I can spend some more time on it this week. 

Quotes to Live By - March 26

The Mystery Stitch Along that I have been working on didn't get any attention this past week as I wanted to see if I could at least make some progress on these two pieces.  I am now going to focus on getting this third quote done on Quotes to Live By and then I think it will be April and there will be more stitching to be done. 

April 1st means that there will be two more parts for the stitch alongs so that is nice.  I am looking forward to seeing what the next quote is for that project and then there will be fourth part for the Mystery Stitch Along which I will need to work on getting caught up.

The weather is finally getting a little better here so that is nice.  It is now time for me to get some work done so that I can see if I can find some stitching time this evening.  Quotes to Live By is calling me to work on it so I hope to be able to do that this evening.

Quotes and Joyful World

Quotes to Live By - March 12

This past week I decided that I was really going to try and focus on getting something finished.

Quotes to Live By - March 18

Quotes to Live By was the main project that I worked on this past week as I really wanted to get the second quote finished and I did that on Saturday.  Just seeing that I have been able to get this much of the design done is making me feel so much better.  I still have one more quote to stitch before I am caught up but at least now I am feeling a little better about the overall project.

Besides working on the actual quote I have been working on getting the border of the entire project done as well.  I figured that by the time I finish the next quote which is at the bottom of the design, I would like to have all of the border done as well.  

Quotes to Live By - March 18 - full piece

At the end of the month I will post a picture of where I started on the overall project at the beginning of this month and where I am at the end of the month.  As you can see the piece is rather large and I think it is going be measure around 15 x 19 inches when  it is completed.  I am actually loving the piece and look forward to seeing what the rest of the quotes are going to be.

I like this project as each quote is a little project itself and it isn't like working on a design that is as large as this but only seeing it finished when you complete the entire pattern. The third quote is the one for March so I am going to try and get it finished soon so that when the April quote is released I won't feel like I am so far behind.

Joyful World - May - March 12

After finishing the second quote I decided it was time to spend a little bit of time on Joyful World - May to see if I could make a bit of progress on that piece as well.

Joyful World is another stitch along but it was from last year so no matter what I am behind on this pattern but my goal is to always be finishing the month design before the actual month is on the calendar.

Joyful World - May - March 18

This project is another one that I will be taking a picture of at the end of the month so that you can see the sign of the overall piece.  It is 12 months and I am doing it on a layout of 3 x 4 months and I am enjoying the work on this piece as well.  I hope to have this project done before the end of the year because it would be nice to have it so that I can hang it up.  Once it is finished I am going to have to figure out how I am going to either frame it or finish it so that it can be hung up.

It feels so great being able to find the time most evening to stitch and see some progress on a piece.  This week I wasn't able to spend as much time stitching as I have some other weeks but I was able to stitch most evenings.

This week I hope to be able to work on Joyful World and maybe get May completed and then I will get back to Quotes to Live By and see how much of the third quote that I can get done.

Work now needs to be done so I am off to do that and then will see if there is time to stitch this evening.

Some progress again this week

Quotes to Live By - March 5

This week I have been able to find a bit of time to stitch and of course I have been trying to focus on only doing a couple of projects instead of what I did in the past and try and work on everything at once. Being able to focus on only a couple of projects means that I am starting to see some really good results each week even when I am only stitching an hour or two each day.

Quotes to Live By - March 12

Quotes to Live By is coming along and I am really happy as I have finished the first quote and am working on the second quote and it is coming along.  I would love it if this quote was working up faster but considering everything I shouldn't be complaining about the speed. The second quote is about Patience and here I am complaining that it is taking me too long to stitch it.  I haven't spent a lot of time on this piece so just getting it as far as I have should make me happy.  I am going to continue working on this project as I would really like to get both the second and third quote done by the end of the month but will have to see how things go.

The second quote sits right below the first quote so that means that I am slowly working done the middle of the project.  The quote for March is again below this design and that will be the bottom of the project so that means that I am going to have to continue to work on the border as well so that I have the entire project outlines as well by the time I finish stitching the quote for March.

Linen and Threads Mystery Stitch Along - March 5

Linen and Threads Mystery Stitch Along got one day of attention this week and I was able to make some progress on it as well.  I am trying to focus on getting the top section done which is the January release so that is what I have been trying to focus on.  I am going to be happy when this top section is completed which is to the first solid line on the picture.

Linen and Threads Mystery Stitch Along - March 10

I did start working on the outline for the February section or at least part of February but that was because I just wanted some stitching that didn't require any counting so that is why these lines have been done already.

Linen and Threads is a great design and I am loving how it is turning out but considering it is 22 stitches per inch I can't work on it as long as I can some of the other projects.  This project requires good lighting which I have and my eyes not being too tired from sitting at the computer and working all day.

Joyful World - May - March 12

Well besides working on those two projects I decided that I wanted to start Joyful World - May and see if I could get it finished quickly.  I love these patterns as they are small and it also means that I can see some results quickly when I spend a little bit of time stitching on it.  This was started on Saturday and within a short period of time I was able to get the border done and have started the inside of the design.  I still need to add the colours to the corners of the border but I will do that when I am working on those colours in the main part of the design. It feels good seeing that I am making a bit of progress on this project as well because I would like to see all of this done before the end of this year.

I am happy with the progress that I have been able to make on my projects and look forward to seeing how much I can do this week.  The forecast is for snow between today and tomorrow so it sounds like tonight might be a good evening to just curl up and stitch.

Another week and a bit of progress

Yes this post is a day late but that is because it was Family Day in Ontario so it was a holiday so I decided that my blog entry could be a day late and I might have more to show you this way.

This past week I tried to focus on only three projects as I wanted to see if I could make some progress on some of them.

Quotes to Live By - Feb 9th

Quotes to Live By:
This is a monthly stitch a long and I have been trying to make some progress on this one but I haven't been able to focus on it as much as I would have liked.  I would like to get the top part finished and the first quote but it is taking me longer to finish then I thought so now to see if I can get more of it done this week. The top section and the first quote is the January part of the design and then I still have February to stitch so I am a little behind on this project but that's ok because I will work on it at my speed. I only started this piece in February so I don't feel too bad for not having as much done as a lot of people have accomplished.  I am also working on more than one design at a time so that is another reason for not getting as much done as others.

Quotes to Live By - Feb 17th

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL:

Mystery SAL - Feb 9th

Another monthly stitch a long that I am working on is this project and once again I have been working hard to try and make a bit of progress on the  month pattern but it hasn't been going as quickly as I would have liked.  I have at least got from the middle of the design over to the left side but there is still a lot of work to do to even get the January part of the design done. February is also available for this design so yes I am behind on this design as well but I think once I can focus on the design I should be able to make some good progress on at least January.

Mystery SAL - Feb 20th

This is another piece that only got started in February so I hope that I will be able to get the January section done soon and then start seeing that I am making a bit better progress on the design.  February's design isn't as high so that is one good thing so once I have January done I hope to get better at trying to keep up with the designs or at least I hope to do that.  Now that I have completed Joyful World - April, I think I may try and focus on spending a bit of time of either Quotes to Live By or Linen and Threads Mystery Stitch a Long. I would like to see one of these projects moved a bit further forward before the end of the month.


Joyful World - April

Joyful World - April - Feb 20th - finished

Joyful World - April has been getting some work done on it and that makes me happy.  I started this piece last Monday and I have been working on it to see if I can at least get this one done.  This is also another stitch a long but these were released last year so I am actually a year behind but I am still trying to get at least one more done each calendar month and I have already finished March in February. I am now finished April as well so that means that I am now a full month ahead of the stitching as I wanted to ensure that I always have the month finished before it started on the actual calendar.


It feels so good seeing that I have been able to make the progress that I have on the projects this week.  I have been trying to at least spend an hour each evening on stitching because it does help me regain the focus after working during the day. I use my stitching also as a means of thinking through the different things that have happened during the day so that is also what I do.

This weekend I was also able to use my stitching to help me heal as I found out on Saturday that a friend of mine had passed away suddenly.  She was a cross-stitch friend and this weekend as I worked on the different projects, I thought about her and could hear her laughter.  She was always one that could make people laugh but she was also someone that was there to listen when you needed that.  I am going to miss the chat times we had together and all the laughs we shared.  There were times when we didn't have to say anything but just look at each other and we would both start to laugh.  I know she is looking down at all of her cross-stitch friends and will always be making sure that even when we make a mistake we can at least smile, take it out and try again.