Making some progress

Twisted Rainbow Sampler - May 23

 Here it is another week and I am happy to say that I have been able to make a bit of progress on a couple of patterns.

Twisted Rainbow Sampler - now this is the piece that I started my week off with as I wanted to ensure that I had one evening to work on this piece.  It was something that I was able to see some progress on quickly and that was nice.

Twisted Rainbow Sampler - June 5

I have now finished the second colour on this piece so will see how it goes as i would like to get moving forward on this design and see how the next colours look.  These first two colours are close so it doesn't look like much of a difference but I know the next one will show some difference and then will see how they go.

Growf - here is one of the Art Show/Action pieces that I am stitching this year.  I stitched it last year and it sold so it meant that I needed to restitch it again

Growf - finished piece last year

as people were asking for it this year.  I also decided that as I wasn't too happy with the finished piece last year that I was also going to rechart the pattern.

Growf - June 10

Growf is a piece of art by an artist that I have converted to cross-stitch and am stitching it up for the show.  I hope to be able to have some good progress on this piece in the next couple of weeks because it is a fun piece to work on as I can see the differences already on the design.

Lady - finished piece last year

Lady - now this is the second Art Show/Action piece that I am going to be stitching this year.  Again this piece needed to be recharted as I wasn't happy with the piece last year.  I have made a few changes to the colours so hope it will turn out better this year.

Lady - June 10

This is a piece that I loved stitching last year so I hope that I will be able to enjoy it as much or more this year with the slight changes that I have made.  Again this is a piece that is from another artist that I converted to cross-stitch.   This artist has said that I can use any of her artwork for cross-stitch so I am looking forward to finished up the two designs of hers that I have charted and then will see if I do any more before the Art Show.


This coming week I hope to be able to find some time to sit and stitch because I would like to see some progress on a couple of the projects this week.  I know that Lady is going to take me some time to finish but at least seeing a bit of progress would be nice.  Growf, I hope to get more colour added to him this week so will see what happens.  

Work is now on the agenda for today and then I will see what happens this evening and I hope to be able to get some stitching done.

Moving things forward and a finish

Table during designing and kitting

Well this week has been a very interesting week for me as I have been trying to get some stitching done as well as figure out a few projects for an Art Show next year.  Yes, the Art Show isn't until July 2018 but figured if I was going to get all the pieces stitched by then I need to start figuring out what pieces I am going to stitch.

The mess on the dining room table is during the actual kitting part of my time.  I finished designing 2 patterns and had 3 other designs that I knew I wanted to stitch for the Art Show.  Once the designing was done it was off to figure out the fabric and floss for reach of the patterns.  Now, I was sitting at the table and figuring out all the floss that I needed and what floss I had so that is when this picture was taken.

The sewing machine is still on the table as I had two more curtains to finish before it got tucked back away for now. After taking the picture I was able to get the last two curtains finished and that made me happy because it meant that another project was now finished.

Linen and Threads Mystery Stitch A Long - April 30

Mystery Stitch A Long -- so this project got a little bit of work finally in May and that was one day.  I haven't been working on this project for a while and now figure that I am going to have to try and do little bits of it each month to at least move the projects ahead a little bit.

Linen and Threads Mystery Stitch A Long - May 29

I am currently working on the February and March sections of the design so that means that I am way behind on this piece but I know that I won't be spending a lot of time on it over the next little while so just making sure it gets a bit of attention will help.  I know that I should have finished the February section before starting the March section but I wanted something that was quick to see some results so that is why I worked on the top section of March.

Quotes to Live By - part 6 - June 4

Quotes to Live By -- of course this project got some attention this week and that is because the pattern was released on June 1st.  I quickly purchased the pattern and by the end of the day I had started working on it.

The design for part 6 didn't seem to be as complicated as the last couple of months so  I figured that if I could spend some time working on it that I would get it finished quickly.  On Sunday afternoon I was able to look at the pattern and see that I had finished the entire piece so now Quotes to Live By is put down again until July 1st when the next part of the pattern will be released.

There are three more sections of this pattern to go and I have to say that I have been loving working on this design and am looking forward to framing this piece in the fall and hanging it up at home.

Tiger Lily - May 29

Tiger Lily -- Here is another project that I decided would get a little bit of attention this week.  I finished Quotes to Live By on Sunday afternoon so figured I would see if I could get a bit done in the evening on Tiger Lily.  Just being able to sit for a couple of hours meant that I was able to make a bit of progress on this piece and I will see how much more attention it gets in the coming days.

Tiger Lily - June 4

I have been trying to get the top and the bottom attached but of course reach time I work on the pattern something else looks a little more interesting to work on so that gets the attention.


This week I am not sure which projects will be getting my attention but I know that there will be some stitching done.  Before I can get the stitching done I need to get some work out of the way so that is what i am now off to do.

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.

Very litte progress and the reason why

Quotes to Live By - May 4th

Here it is Monday morning and I can honestly say that the progress on my stitching over the last week has been minimal but there is a very good reason for that and I will show you what has stopped by stitching.

Quotes to Live By -- this was the project that got all my stitching attention this week and you can see I didn't have a lot of time.  I am now working on the background of the design and the back stitch so I hope to have this one done very soon.  

Quotes to Live By - May 13th

It isn't taking me very long to actually get the background done so I hope to be able to get this done during this week and then maybe get working on some of my other projects over the weekend.

This coming weekend is a long weekend here in Ontario and I have to say that I am really looking forward to it.  I hope to be able to spend some time stitching and hopefully make some good progress on a couple of the patterns that I have on the go.

Other stitching news -- last weekend I was talking with an artist about some of her designs so you may be seeing a few more original patterns being stitched in the near future from me.  I am looking forward to seeing how that goes.

Schlock with Dice

I didn't mention something that happened last weekend while we were at a convention so figured I would write about it here. Schlock with Dice, is a piece that I stitched based on a pin by Howard Tayler.  I stitched this and loved how it turned out so I always wanted him to see the piece but didn't know how I would ever get it to him other than just putting it into a parcel and mailing it to him but that required me knowing where to send it. A week ago we were at a science fiction convention and Brandon Sanderson (author) was there and he knows Howard Tayler as they do a podcast together. I decided that I had nothing to lose so I asked Brandon if I could show him something based on Howard Tayler's art.  Brandon agreed to spend a couple of minutes and after showing him the piece, I gave the piece to Brandon and he is now going to be showing it to Howard.  I have to admit that there was a lot of excitement after this because it means at least Howard is going to be able to see the piece I stitched.

The reason for not stitching much -- As I have been saying my cross-stitch time has been really limited over the last couple of weeks and now I can show you the reason for that.

Old windows

new windows

I haven't been able to do a lot of stitching over the last couple of weeks as we have been preparing to get new windows and balcony doors in the entire apartment. Sure it doesn't sound too bad at the beginning when you think that finally the windows shouldn't let a lot of cold air in and the screen on the balcony door will get fixed. 

The work that is involved to prepare your apartment for getting the windows is a lot of work.  A lot of the instructions you get (4 days) before they replace your windows are common sense.  We have been working on getting ready for this window replacement for a while as the overall project has been going on in the entire building for over a year now.  So we finally heard that our windows were going to be replaced on the 12th of May (weather permitting).   Over the last couple of weeks we have moved a lot of the furniture around in the unit as we needed to ensure that everything was between 3 - 4 feet from all the windows and balcony doors.  Thursday of last week involved putting drop sheets over everything to help prevent the dust from going everywhere.  Another reason for the drop sheets was to prevent things from blowing around as they take all the windows out at once and then put all the new windows in. 

The end result is some really nice windows but of course now we need to put all the furniture back where it was.  We are going to be taking our time doing that because we are also going to continue to clean up and organize things.

So while getting our unit back to what we want I am also going to try and get bits of stitching done some evenings.  I now have some work that I need to do for clients before I can do any of the organizing so I better get that done.

Very little progress this week

Quotes to Live By - May 4th

Here it is the first week on the month and yes Quotes to Live By came out and I quickly purchased the pattern so that I could see how quickly that I could get the piece stitched.  Well, as you can see I haven't been able to get a lot of time to stitch this past week so didn't get a lot done.

I am going to try and work on Quotes to Live By this week as I would like to see a bit more progress on it but will have to see how things go. 

Tiger Lily - Now this is a project that I started last year and it got put aside for a while because I wanted to do all those other projects.  I decided that it is a project that I can work on a little bit at a time and have now put it into the bag where all my currently being worked on projects are.  Sure it doesn't get a lot of attention but even an hour or two ever couple of weeks is more than it has been getting.

Tiger Lily - April 14th

Tiger Lily - May 4th

I decided that I am now going to work down on the left hand side of the pattern to see if I can get it all joined.  I am not sure how long this is going to take me but at least I am slowly starting to make some progress on this design.


This week I hope to have one evening where I am going to be able to focus on some stitching as I haven't been able to do that for a while.  I also have a lot of other things that are going to be needing my attention this week so I know that I might not get a lot of stitching done again this week.  I think once this week is over that I should be able to get back to seeing some good progress on a few projects.

Over the weekend we were at a science fiction convention and it was the one that I had participated in the Art Show over the last couple of years.  Well, given everything (time, energy, interest) I didn't participate in the Art Show this year. I didn't think it was something that was important to do and then I find out that people were looking for my artwork.  It did make me feel good that people like what I do so now I am going to start thinking of what projects that I can do for next year.  I also think I am going to try for some smaller pieces to see if that helps me sell some of them.

The planning for the Art Show will have to wait for just a little while until I have the time and energy to do it but at least I have just over a year to get ready for the show and I won't be making the decision to participate at the last minute next year.

Well it is now time to get some work done that needs my attention as this is going to be a very busy week for us. I hope to get a little bit of time to stitch but will have to see how it goes.

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.