KABOOM! (3rd rundown post – May)

In the spirit of keeping track with my progress and finishes month by month, I’m starting this post as a draft at the beginning of May and updating it with every relevant piece of news until the early days of June, this way you’ll have an account of what happened as it happened. 😉

• I felt like doing some 1 over 1 stitching, so I picked up one of my Christmas WIPs and stitched a couple of rows on the 2015 Sew Advent Band Sampler by iStitch Designs, here’s where it’s at at the moment:

I’m stitching this with a selection of silks (NPI, AVAS and Gloriana if I remember correctly) on a 28ct. Vaupel & Heilenbeck linen band that is pre-finished on the left and right side, as usual.

• After all the DMC stitching I did on Tree of Life, I really craved some hand dyed stitching, so I resumed working on Holly & Hearts by Lizzie*Kate which I had left at part 1. It took me a little over a weekend to stitch up part 2 and worked on part 3 over the hermitting weekend in May, and just like that I had a finish! here it is 😊

first you see part 2 (I had left this at part 1)

as you can see I changed up the spelling to match the original (Dickens would have never spelled honour without the u 😉 )

and part 3, with the heart charm that came with the pattern

here is the full sampler stitched on 40ct. hand dyed linen using my choice of Nina’s Threads (1 over 2).

I made a few changes colour-wise and I’m so very pleased to have this one off the list – at last! 😀

• Before this I had another (even quicker) L*K finish, an oldie I discussed in my “K” post for TAC, so you can pop there if you want to read all the details about it 😊

Lizzie*Kate Merry Little Bird ornament

• Towards the end of May I was getting dramatically close to finishing Story Time Sampler, and as sometimes happens I got the finishing blues (does it happen to you too to get a little nostalgic of a WIP you worked on for so long when you know it’s going to be over soon? it’s silly, I know! I mean, the whole point of wanting to stitch them is to see them finished at some point, possibly sooner than later considering we don’t outlive our stash — 😱). Well, I wanted to delay that finish by a few days or so, so I picked up this minuscule little project I had in the back of my head and was saving for a rainy day (these were indeed very rainy days, ask the Roland Garros courts!). The chart is a bonus I received with my last purchase from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery, they printed this sweet mini cupcake on cardboard and shipped it with hard copy charts or needlework bits they sent you. I knew it was just the right size to make a scissor fob, but in doing so I wanted to honour the essence of a cupcake itself: sweetness and sugar overload! 😀 I had bought some cream Zweigart linen recently (for Joan Elliott’s Tree of Life), and with that I ventured into purchasing a cut of their PINK LINEN too. Imagine that a few years ago! 😀 – I know, it still bewilders me too 😜

At the beginning I thought I would use size 12 Perlé threads for the finishing, but I had forgotten how thick it is compared to 40ct. 😜. From the left you can see the chart, the pumpkin needle minder and Bohin scissors which granted me the free chart, and the DMC required for the job.

At any rate, I stitched these mini cupcakes using the prescribed DMC threads and alternated the pink and cream linens for the fronts and backs of the fobs; I knew there was going to be cording involved but this time I decided to go with a proper tassel and must say it’s a keeper! 😍 Fun fact, the skein you see on the stitch bow is one of those half skeins I got from my grandmother (some years ago she used to buy me an Italian magazine that included 5 half-skeins out of the DMC range with every issue) – well, with these two guys here I almost ran out of that pink and now I’ll have to get a full skein for I am sure if I don’t I’ll definitely end up needing it and not having enough, classic!

These are the stripes of fabric I used, and mind I had leftovers! 😀 I don’t know if you can tell by my notes, but the design measures only 17W x 18H – talk about mini! Also in this picture, another mini fabric cut (to be frank that’s a leftover) for Gatsby.

The last part of Story Time Sampler came with a bonus frame that was designed but never included in the final piece, and the Pumpkins decided to share it with members of the club in case we wanted to swap A Christmas Carol for The Great Gatsby or just stitch an extra frame for your own amusement – guess what I did? 😜

Well, I knew I left a ridiculously small leftover in one of my tin boxes that I got last summer when I last cut some Cloudy Sky linen.. I couldn’t possibly throw away hand dyed linen in possibly my favourite tone, and it proved a very sensible choice because it turns out to be just the perfect size for a Story Time frame! hurray! 🎉

I didn’t want to risk missing any of the fabric threads when stitching this on a hoop, that’s why I took out the sewing machine and fed two birds with one seed and prepped for the fobs as well – you know me, if I have to take the machine out, I better make the most of it! 😀

here you can see a recent snap of my stitching tray, with everything ready to make one of the cupcake fobs. I wonder when those other pumpkin ornaments will get their finishing done.. 😱

I spent a lazy weekend working on the mini fobs while watching tennis, eating tortilla chips (my favourite!) and gelato – and by Monday morning..

TA-DA! at 2,3 cm these are by far my smallest finish to date (possibly ever!) 😀 see the needle minder and cardboard bobbin for size comparison.

• And now, at last, the other big item hitting the finished pile, Story Time Sampler! It was such a journey – I started this one back when it was first released in January 2015 and it feels like half a lifetime ago now..! I took a break in September of that year and picked it up again this month, when I finally got the chance to cover up that slug accident I had many moons ago 😜

I also stitched up the extra Gatsby frame that I plan on finishing as a flat ornament:

• Last but not least I got yet another piece off The List, a small one I intended to be a simple “bunnies pincushion” but in fact when I picked it up again I spent a little time playing with motifs and borders, flipped this, rotated that, and so on and ended up with a fully stitched 100 x 100 stitches chart with two bunnies already on fabric and LOTS of plans for mice, flowers, snails, bees, butterflies – even an ant! 😀

Nature au point de croix scene on 32ct. Zweigart linen using the prescribed DMC (2 over 2).

I enjoyed the composing process so much, at one point I was almost scared it wouldn’t look as good on fabric as it did on screen – but it did! 😀 Of course you won’t see me stitching on 32ct. any time soon but the end result came out wonderfully despite my whining over threading 2 plies all the time. 😜

In case you’re curious about this, the design is a mix of items, borders and motifs taken from the Nature au point de croix booklet series (these are featured in the Animaux booklet) published by Mango Pratique, and they are designed by Monique Bonnin, Véronique Enginger and Corinne Lacroix – unfortunately it doesn’t credit each design so I cannot tell if these were all by one artist or two, or three, so I always mention them all! 😊

It turned out way too big for a pincushion finish but I think I have the right fabric to turn this into a pillow — when the finishing bug bites me again!

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One last shot and I’ll let you go – this is TUSAL for the month of May, as you can see I got many ends and bits and things (and sewing thread I removed when I took off the dowels all these projects that I kept there lingering! HURRAY!) ..

wait, what is that brass whatnot?!

That, my dears, is the fruit of my polishing endeavours one evening – I found it blackened and dreadfully neglected in the attic and decided to see what it actually looked like, and a bit of an idea in the back of my head.. I really like Karen‘s Ye Olde Project Randomiser, whenever she want to rotate her stitching she just picks up a random slip of paper and finds out what project she’s going to work on next. Now I’m not much into rotating these days, I would rather choose one and get monogamous stitching until we’re done (if you know what I mean 😜) but I find myself not knowing which project to pick up next, and there’s still plenty already started in The WIPorn List!

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This is it, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this May Multitude, I don’t think the 4th rundown at the end of June will show even half as much, but I’ll definitely have time to test the randomiser and see what happens next! 😀

Enjoy the warmer weather, happy stitching!

Chiara

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P.S. I always forget to mention this, I started a Flickr account where you can see better shots than the ones WP allows me to post here, you can reach it through this link or click on a preview thumbnail in the left sidebar of the blog and get immediately redirected to the photo stream. 😉