Mary Beale Update

Today is going to be a beautiful day! Our temperatures have returned to normal and there’s even a bit of a breeze outside!

I’m keeping up with my progress on Mary Beale’s Days of Advent. Rather than stitching it as a sampler, we are hoping to create a book. (Full explanation on my April 23 post.) There are six of us working on this project. Yesterday, I completed the fifth block. I’ve got 20 more blocks to go. As the saying goes though, slow and steady wins the race, right?

Here’s block #5 - Elisha (I still need to refresh my memory of this bible story!)

Here are the first four blocks that I stitched:

And here’s the entire piece so far:

Keep in mind, we started in the middle and are working to the end. When finished, we’ll go back to the middle and work the first half in reverse order. Looks like my toes snuck into that photo - oops!

Well, I need to get moving. My new little grandson (almost 6 weeks old) is coming to visit so his mom can go get a haircut. He’s such a little sweetheart.

Have a great day!

Shakespeare’s Peddler Retreat

Just returned from Allentown, PA where my PICs and I spent the weekend with about 100 other stitchers at a retreat hosted by Theresa Venette, aka Kitten Stitcher. We had such a great time!

Each “neighborhood” (table) had a name. We resided at “Pincushion Parkway”. Some of the other neighborhood names included “Sampler Street”, “Smyrna Crossing” and “Embroidery Estates”. These creative names added an element of fun and played into the weekend’s theme - “community”. Theresa, aka the HOA supervisor, periodically announced several HOA violations in the communities. But with every violation came a door prize! 

My tablemates, with Theresa:

Theresa designed a beautiful sampler for us titled “A Beautiful Day”. Makes me think of Mr. Rogers… “it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood….”

The best part of the weekend was meeting long time friends, as well as new friends. I wish I had remembered to take pictures! Sometimes I get so caught up in the moment, that I forget to do things like that.

• Special shout out to Terri who said she has been reading this blog since the beginning!
• Also had fun meeting Robin and Loretta, both of whom read and comment on my blog on a regular basis!
• What fun it was to see Stasi of Bee-Mused and Bee-Stitching. We met at the Attic once, many, many years ago. It was so great to see her again.

There were many, many more people from guilds, blogs, flosstubes - oh it was so much fun!

Back to reality now, but I will enjoy thinking about this weekend for a long time to come!

June Stitching

Now that I am retired, I have more time to stitch. I try to stitch 3 - 4 hours every evening and if I’m lucky enough to have a guild meeting or some other stitchy meet up during the day, I might add another 4 hours to that. I am working through WIPs and other projects in my stash. I don’t do WIPGO or any other kind of program to determine what I will stitch on; I work on whatever is calling my name. That works best for me.

Here’s some of what I worked on in June:

1) Band #4 - My Favourite Things from Betsy Morgan. This is a project offered by the Willow Tree Sampler Guild in Texas. Each month we complete one band. I think it is quite pretty!

2) Abigail Colby from Primitive Traditions. This pattern is OOP. This will be the top (cover) of a Nantucket basket; I have 7 or 8 more pieces to stitch - the smalls that will go inside the basket. I started this at least a year or more ago and have been working on and off on it. In June, I finished the last medallion located at approximately 10 o’clock. Picture doesn’t do it justice - 36 ct Vintage Luna from Lakeside with Belle Soie silks.

3) Spring Parade Sewing Basket from Stacy Nash. Sweet. This was one of her market releases this year. As soon as I can find the right sized box, I will get this one fully finished.

4) One Hundred Hearts from Samplers Not Forgotten. This was a Silver Needle kit a few years ago. I think I swapped the 32ct linen for 36ct which made the over one words a bit more challenging. The hearts should have been over one too, but I modified them and stitched them over two!

5) Gingerbread Man from Stacy Nash - this was her Jingle Ball class last December. It’s supposed to be a needlebook. My kit included enough linen to stitch the little guy twice. I personalized them and am going to make them into ornaments.

I worked on one other project in June. Our guild is working on a 15-sided biscornu. I finished stitching my first one and started stitching a second one. Maybe I can share this picture next time.

Happy 4th of July.