This tutorial has moved – you can find the whole how-to part one and part two here

image: © C Findlay-Harder

Finally.
I hadn’t been doing as much stitching, as it was making my eyes hurt. But now I have new lenses in my glasses, and the mad rush of many houseguests has calmed a bit. That means over the last couple of days I have had time to work on my needlecase! yay!
I realized in the reading of my chart last evening that I need to backstitch around the flowers in the center motif with gold metallic. I’d thought I was done with that one (except for beads & crystals, which I’m going to …read more

During the last few days that I’ve been working on Lorri’s Needlecase, I stitched my first ever Hardanger spiderwebs. They were a lot of fun, even though I seem to still have to learn the trick of getting them centered in the squares. Speaking of tricks, I’ve tried being extra slow and careful when snipping out the threads, and still I have little nubbins of thread poking out around the edges. I’m not sure what to do differently so that I have beautiful smooth kloster block edges. I am a bit paranoid of snipping the silk …read more

I’ve stitched various projects in the past using single floss colors in the needle, and I have to say now that I’ve been working on Egyptian Sampler that I love the result you get using blended floss. It gives the work some depth and dimension, instead of being somewhat flat in feeling. As time-consuming as it is to prepare the floss, it is entirely worth it.

On this progress pic, I’ve done the back-stitching on the left portion of the border. On the right corner I’ve back-stitched just the flower motif. Back-stitching makes all the difference in …read more

Just a short note this morning. The last few days I’ve indulged in a frenzy of combining colors and stitching like mad, and what I have to show for it includes a slightly stiff arm and framing for border motifs across the top of the Egyptian Sampler. I am feeling rather clever for stitching in this manner. The little motifs would be a major hassle if I had to fuss with the floss tails for each one, but with the outline frame of the border stitched, I have somewhere on the back to catch tails. This …read more

It has been a while since I posted a WIP update, so here is where I’m at with “Coffee is Magic” currently. I was going to wait until I’d finished it, but I’m not so good at waiting

I decided to use some DMC light effects ‘glow in the dark’ white in place of the ‘white fuzzy stuff’ threads the pattern called for. Mostly because I didn’t want to have to special order one skein of thread. About half the beard is stitched so far, and you can just make out where the bunny ears of …read more

Last evening as I stitched, I actually remembered to take some pictures as I went along. First, I stitched the kloster blocks around the perimeter:

Next it was time to set scissor to cloth. This is as traumatizing to do as it is to see.

Pulling threads is the Moment of Truth- here are two shots, one where I’ve pulled only a couple threads, and one after I pulled them all.

It is at this point that one stitches the various webs and ladders and woven bars and things. This last image is after I stitched the first of four …read more

I’ve finally made enough progress on ‘Coffee is Magic‘ to get a general “feel” for the piece. I like the ease of this piece. It’s fun, quick to stitch, and a break from keeping track of a lot of color changes or tricky new stitches. My only dilemna is whether to order the Rainbow Gallery fuzzy white thread, or substitute plain white thread and some silver blending filament.

I only did a bit of needlework this weekend, but what I did was a nice challenge. I stitched my first hardanger block Ever. It looks a bit mangled, what I would call “Charlie Brown”. I’m going to leave it as-is, so that some day when I can stitch beautiful hardanger in my sleep, I can look back at this and feel proud of how far I’ve come.

I meant to take a picture after I’d stitched the kloster blocks, and snipped the threads, but not pulled them out, and forgot. Gah! Evening stitching …read more

This Iris applique quilt project is not one of creation, but one of repair. My mother hand stitched this quilt for me when I was little, completing it in 1980. It has been well-loved through the years, as one can see by examing the damaged areas. I began repairs on this about a year ago, with some assistance by my mom when she was in town visiting. My enthusiasm lasted about a week before I folded up the quilt and put it away.

My plan is to re-stitch all the appliques onto their blocks, whether they have …read more