Catching Up

It’s been a busy summer! My last post was in July. Holy smokes!

I spent a good part of July stitching on an Amy Mitten reproduction sampler: Forgery #14 Sarah Verrier 1737 Sampler. It was supposed to be a Sunday stitch, but truth be told, I was enjoying it so much, I worked on it most of July. The sampler is The Lord’s Prayer in French. I have put it away for a bit and will come back to it in a few months.

More recently, I’ve been on a finishing kick. My PIC and other stitchy friends and I will be heading to Quilter’s Station next week and I wanted to finish last year’s Chessie and Me piece before we went. Linda from Chessie and Me will be there again this year. Appropriately titled: Harvest Huswife.

Do you watch Lady Huzzah on Flosstube? After seeing her episode dedicated to Merry Cox finishes, I was motivated to finish one of my own Merry Cox pieces. This was a class I took through the Orange Coast Sampler Guild. The design is called 1871 Sewing Set. I stitched 1889 on mine; the year my maternal grandmother was born.

This past weekend I finished some smalls that go with the Birds and Bees Sewing Roll from Stacy Nash. Joy finished the sewing roll for me. I finished the biscornu and the scissor fob. The set is now complete!

My final finish - I popped this Prairie Schooler design into this simple frame! (I don’t remember the chart number, the name of it might be Autumn Leaves.)

Our two babies are getting big! Rosie is about a week shy of five months old and weighed in today at 36 pounds. She’s a happy pup and makes my smile every day. Lizzie has adjusted to having another puppy in the house too. They love their walks, they watch for the mailman every day (he has treats!), and they love to play in the yard.

Last but not least, and perhaps the most important of all, is Baby Griffin! Griff just turned three months and he is developing quite the personality. His mom and dad are going to be in trouble when he gets older!

That’s an update on what’s been going on in my world! Hope you are well and stitching to your heart’s content.

Floss Friends Retreat

What happened to June? Before I can talk about July, I have to finish telling you about June. My PIC and I squeezed in one more stitching weekend. We attended the Floss Friends Retreat held in Waverly, IA.

It was held in a community room in their City Office building right in the heart of downtown Waverly. In fact, we were just a block away from Fiberworks, the needlework store in Waverly.

It was a great retreat - comfortable seating, great lighting, excellent food (we had some great lasagna one night made at the local hospital cafeteria!) Two local stitchers had hosted the event and they put in a ton of effort to ensure we all had a great time!

The highlight of the weekend was meeting Jacquelyn Fox from Waxing Moon Designs. She is a local designer, based in Osage, IA. We’re always up for meeting a cross stitch designer that we haven’t met before!

She brought a trunk show with of her designs…

And she designed a patriotic piece just for us!

We had a great time with old friends and new friends!

Before I sign off, let me share a couple photos of Griffin and Rosie. Griffin is our grandson. He was born at the end of May and is just a little over six weeks old now. In the last week or two his personality has really started to show. He loves to have his hands up!

And Rosie is our new lab. She is 13 weeks old. We decided that Lizzie needed a companion. They are getting along famously.

 

Have a great weekend! Keep on stitching!

Country Sampler Stitch Camp - Part Two

And the retreat continues…our second project was a beautiful sampler and coordinating drum from Kimberly Nugent of Samplers Not Forgotten. This was my first class ever with Kimberly. It was such a treat to meet her!

We went back to the shop on Friday for some additional stash enhancement. I never get tired of looking at stitched models or trunk shows!

Saturday was our final day of retreat and Stacy Nash was on deck. Her project did not disappoint. 

I had finished the Stacy Nash biscornu from the Quilter’s Station retreat this past April and wanted to share it with her, so we took a picture!

It was a great weekend with great teachers, great projects, and an inspiring shop to feed my soul. Many thanks to my PIC for always joining me on these journeys.

Country Sampler Stitch Camp - Part One

It’s been awhile since our last road trip! We just returned from a long weekend in the Madison/Spring Green area. As with any trip that takes us East on I-94, we made a stop at the Norske Nook and our stop was perfectly timed for lunch! 

I forgot to take a picture of the pie. I had a delicious piece of banana cream and my partner in crime had a piece of Cherry, Cherry Crunch. Onward we traveled. First stop Lodi, WI. We stopped in a couple cute shops and continued on. Spent the night in Middleton, a suburb of Madison.

Day two of our journey took us to Lynn’s of Madison. Lynn’s is a multi-craft store, selling art and needlework supplies. They have a wonderful selection of linen, and some of their older cross stitch charts were discounted.

My primary goal at Lynn’s was to work with them to get one of my antique samplers framed. Before leaving home, I had taken it out of it’s frame. A lot of dust came out with it! Fortunately, no bugs. The stitched piece had been basted to another piece of fine fabric and then the edges were nailed to a wooden frame. I gently vacuumed it front and back. Lynn removed all of the nails. Once we laid the sampler on a piece of white mat board we could see how beautiful she really was!

This is the front - not much damage! She used four-sided stitch for her first alphabet. There’s also a row of eyelet stitches. I think she then gave up on specialty stitches - the rest of the sampler is done in cross stitch. Toward the bottom, the house and the tree to the left of the house, the stitches were pulled very tight - maybe she was dealing with some stress in her life, or maybe she just wanted to get her sampler finished.

Here is the back. As you can see, the colors did not fade much on the front. The sampler was stitched by Eliza Guy in 1845 and she was 10 years old. Some day I’ll try to see if I can find out more about her. Thanks to Lynn’s this beauty will be preserved for many years (centuries) to come!

Which brings us to Thursday and that means the start of Stitch Camp at Country Sampler in Spring Green, but first a visit to the shop is in order. I took lots of pictures of their displays for you to enjoy. Such an inspiring place to be!

More shop photos later!

The retreat started Thursday night with dinner and a meet and greet with the designers, but the classes started on Friday. First up was Alma Allen from Blackbird Designs. I love everything Blackbird. I’ve probably stitched more Blackbird than any other designer! I’ve probably also had the good fortune to take more classes with Blackbird Designs than any other designer! Alma did not disappoint! Her project was based on motifs and colors taken from an old sampler she had acquired on eBay.

We’re just getting started! I will come back with Part Two either later today or tomorrow!