Snow Day, Cabinet of Curiosities Top Frieze, While Rosy Cheeks Sampler

Today is a snow day at our house. Not that is doesn't snow in Utah, it does. We have more than 5 major ski resorts less than an hour from my house. But today it decided to snow and snow and snow - starting early in the morning and filling all of the roads with about 10 inches of the white stuff and it is still snowing about 8 hours later. We decided that selling embroidery supplies as fun as it is, was not as important as staying safe. So I am warm and dry and stitching... Life is good.
Here is photo of the front yard just a few minutes ago.

I was able to spend some extra time working on my casket pieces. The top frieze of the casket is finished. I love all of the leaves and spangles in the bands. I did learn a few bits along the way, like making sure to put plenty of basting lines on the silk to be sure that the embroidery didn't wander into the areas where it is going to be covered later.  Oh well...The leaves are surface embroidery so they are quite flat but the rest of the casket is going to have much more dimensional embroidery Now to start the designs on the rest of the casket. The floral frieze is next. The designs are in my head so we shall see just how hard it is going to be to get them out of there.

Because I am going to be starting on the next sections of the embroidery and there are going to be many colors in each section, I needed a better way of storing my threads so I could get to them easily. This set of metal basket from JoAnn's is going to be perfect and it was on sale too. I have sorted the threads so each of the color families is in one basket and I can see all of the wonderful threads together. That will make it easier when I want a specific color but don't know which of the textures that will work best.

 While Rosy Cheeks Sampler is finished. I am in the process of editing the instructions right now and then I can send the pattern out. It has taken so much longer than I thought it ever would but since I decided to use so many specialty stitches the pattern is about 30 pages long. It can be done in just cross stitch or as many or as few of the wonderful unique stitches as you want.

While Rosy Cheeks Sampler update

Here are a couple of updates on a couple of things that I have been working on. First is Faith, Hope and Charity. If feel like my forever project but I am making some progress. I wanted to work out the dimensions of the whole sampler so I stitched the partial pages on the right of the sampler all the way to the top of the design so I could see the finished size. Now I only have whole pages left, all 27 of them.

 I am working on the While Rosy Cheeks sampler also. Here is a fun tree that is finished. I thought about doing spiral trellis for the fruit but decided that Rhodes stitches would work better.

 Here is the verse that the sampler if named for finished. Since it is over one thread I ended up using 100/3 silk for the letters. The linen is from Lakeside and the way it is finished shrinks it a bit. So now it is 42 threads per square inch instead of 40.

I have added a new pattern to my line of retail patterns. It is set of Quaker inspired pin cushions that includes instructions for finishing them. It has been stitched for a while but I finally got the the rest of the instructions written. I find it very frustrating when I purchase a pattern and they don't include the directions of how they finished it so I include them in my patterns. The pin cushions are big but have fun shapes.

Fish and Rabbits and Angels Oh My!

I have been working on a number of very different things in the past few weeks.

Here is the oval outline for the top of the trinket box finished. You can see the outline of the fish that will be in the center. She will feature lots of gold - gold thread, gold bullion and at least one bead.

I went into a knitting store to find some yarn and what did  I see. A row of the most darling sweaters. They were designed for some animals called Little Cotton Rabbits. I just had to visit the site and not only were the sweaters but dresses and animals of all kinds. Rabbits (of course) and bears and elephants and on and on.  So cute. So.... now I have the patterns for the sweaters and dresses and rabbit girl and bear boy. Plus I may have to get at least one other critter.
Here is my first rabbit in her "underdrawers" and  in her dress.

These are some little cloth angels that I made for my quilting group. They were fun to do but much more work than I thought they were going to be. Small and simple was my thought.... not quite but I love how they turned out. Several of the members of the group have been quilting once a month for maybe twenty years.  One day I will gather photos of all the quilt tops that we have created and post them to share.

While Rosy Cheeks is growing. She now has the alphabets finished. I am about a third of the way finished.

Just keeping moving along

When I am asked what I want, I tell those who ask that I need an extra couple of hours in the day that no one else knows about. That way I can go to my extra-dimensional workroom and have those few extra hours for my projects. Of course, like Alice in Wonderland, once in I might never want to come out. Since no one has let me know just how to access that space, I need to just keep working and moving along the best I can.
I finally decided that I just needed to take some time and finish the Peter Rabbit basket that I designed and stitched in 2012. It has been setting in a box just waiting until I had the time to assemble the pieces and now it is time. I will post it when it is all put together.

Here are a couple of things that I have been working on lately.

 This is the progress on Faith, Hope and Charity. I am able to get almost a page of pattern finished in the two weeks a month that I have been working on it.

 Here are the last side pieces of the trinket box from the Cabinet of Curiosities. The color is still not very good but at least you can see the design. The background silk is a rich gold not the pale creamy color that shows up in the photos. I am now working on the top of the box and changing my mind on color as I work on it.  Sometimes you just have to start and then stop and make some changes before you start again.

 This is a new sampler that I designed. It is called While Rosy Cheeks because of a sampler verse that I found on an antique sampler many years ago and liked so much that I wrote the verse down. It was finally calling to me so loudly that I put it in a design that I am working on now. I can be done in just cross stitch but I am going to add lots of other stitches for those more adventurous embroiderers out there.