She Threads a Needle

She places fabric in a hoop.

She makes some little Xs on the aforementioned fabric.

And a year or so later she has a finished project! Seriously it can happen to you.

Blackbird Designs

Beneath the Sunlit Sky

Completed 11-23-08

The buttonhole stitch kicked my butt. The version viewed in a previous post was just made up. The BBD ladies did not include stitch diagrams with this chart. It might have helped, maybe not, but I do believe that if you want to have speciality stitches in your design you should really include some visual aides for the stitcher. I have embroidery books and could look up the stitch, I have Google, I can Google the stitch but maybe, just maybe, not every stitcher has these resources available to her/him so a stitch diagram would be a nice thing to include with the chart. Just sayin'.

Yes, the picture is a bit wrinkledy, apologies. My iron has gone missing. Normally that's a pretty good thing but of course it only decides to go missing when I might need it.

The One Where

I get to be the stitcher who starts the project as soon as it's released. The only thing better would be finishing it this weekend. Don't hold your breath because that will so not happen! Apologies once again for the yucky picture, we've been having lots of cloud cover lately, so primo photography time is limited. Not that good lighting ever helps where my skilz are concerned. But I did put in the first stitches on Blackbird Designs Beneath the Sunlit Sky. I love this design. It's the new Loose Feathers. I picked this up the other day when I made a trip over to Needle Delights in Pensacola.

For a taste of summer, see above. I restarted my Grandmother's Flower Garden Afghan. I believe I started this as a CAL over at Crochetville a year ago, maybe more. Sue at Good Yarns

finished her's a long, long time ago. I was not at all happy with my previous color choices so I rootled through the good old Red Heart stash and found some brighter, happier colors and called it good. I love crocheting these hexes. The pattern can be found here:

Grandmother's Flower Garden

I can't decide if I am going to connect them with cream/white hexes or black. Once I get more flowers completed I will crochet a few in each color and see what I like best with the flowers.

After reading this post:

Knitting Iris: Quilt Retrospective. 4th Quilt.

I was reminded how much I love the Dresden Plate quilt pattern. I've been digging through the fabric in my bin and pulling out all the bright mod looking prints I can find. Mod might not be the exact right word but it's the one that comes to mind. You know, wild, 1970s inspired prints? I may just start cutting out some plates this weekend. I have a pile of fabric freshly washed, waiting to be ironed and then I'm good to go.

I'm still working on my Just Beachy quilt but have sewing machine issues so until I fix the machine I have or decide to buy a new machine, it's on hold for the time being. I don't see me handsewing through the Heat N Bond.

I finally finished listening to Shrink Rap and have moved on to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

I'm trying to finish Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert so I can then start The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp.

On DVD, I'm working my way through season one of Rescue Me.

Processing

This post comes with a disclaimer at the beginning, I absolutely do not know anything about fabric dyeing. I don't know anything about the preservation of fabric for future generations. For this project I absolutely do not care about any of that. I did this to see what would happen. I did this because I couldn't get to my LNS to purchase a really cool piece of fabric so I used basic, inexpensive 28ct white Monaco. This is fun for me, this is not about creating an heirloom, it's playing around. So please don' t feel the need to educate me about fabrics, the dangers of dyes and why this piece won't last 100 years. I DON'T CARE. Now with that out of the way--let me state please don't try this on anything you really would like to pass down to the heirs OK? Before dyeing your own fabric for an heirloom project do some research.



The picture above is Blackbird Designs First Offerings. It's a complimentary design from 2002. You can't tell but the fabric is white, it looks kind of blue on my monitor so I'm not sure what you might be seeing but it's white. 28ct white Monaco by Charles Craft to be exact. The thread is DMC 310. I decided early on to coffee stain this piece.

Here it is crammed in a small bowl. I was hoping to create some puddles in the folds to make the fabric blotchy.

Since I'm not a fabric dyeing expert, I was disappointed. It just looks light brown. Which is fine but I wanted an old, been in a leaky attic kind of effect.

I pull out a bottle of RIT Dye in Tan. I open it, pour drops, ok a bit of a puddle, directly on to the fabric. I then smoosh it in to the fabric, smearing it, spreading the dye around, decided I needed a little more, poured more on, shook it out, did a little more smooshing....

And this is the finished project. It's still a little damp and I didn't rinse it because I really love the way it looks and I didn't want to wash out any of my wonderful blotches.

The sky would not cooperate while I was taking pictures, cloudy, not cloudy, no consistency, but the beginning fabric was white, we all know white right? The finished product is above and the colors are pretty accurate.

Reading

Over the last week I read a few books:

At Home with Kate by Eileen Considine-Meara

Nice quick read by the daughter of Katherine Hepburns former maid. Sweet look into her private life.

Bare Bones and Cross Bones by Kathy Reichs

Both good, quick reads. I'm kind of over everyone doing the DaVinci Code knock off books, but Cross Bones wasn't bad.

The Last Jihad by ________ Rosenberg. I can't remember his first name.

This book could have been edited down by a 100 pages and read like, how to put this? There was a lot of product placement going on or so I felt. You know I don't mind knowing that someone ate at Burger King or sipped on some Constant Comment tea but for some reason I felt, I don't know, like I was reading a very long commercial. I did finish it, the story wasn't bad.

In the World of Blog

Recently while catching up on some blogs I started reading about some nastiness going on in the cross stitch blogworld-I don't know exactly what happened. I do know that it's a shame. It's so high school and you know people really need to get over themselves and be good to each other. For bloggers who may decide to stop blogging, please don't. I realize this nastiness leaves a bad taste in your mouth and seriously why put yourself out there if some people are going to try to tear you down? You know why? Because in general the cross stitch blogging community is a pretty happy place. I find so much inspiration from all of you. Don't let the bullies win. Keep stitching, keep taking pictures and for those of you who stitch an amazing amount of projects so fast, you know you start the piece when the chart comes out and finish it in a week? I think you are fabulous! Keep stitching and please keep writing about it.