Stitching Progress Report

The wedding sampler is coming along very well. 
The bottom has a line of eight carnations. 
Currently, I am waiting for the bride's initials.  I hope that she agrees to use three as I think that will look better than two. 

First Stitches is also looking good. 
My revised wording fits perfectly; I may add a few beads at the beginning and ending of the line. 
Currently I am working out the band of stitching to absorb the space left from the original wording and rearrangement of one of the other bands. 
This is proving to be a little more complex than I had originally thought.  Right now my plan is to stitch a band of pulled threadwork.  I need to stitch a little sample to help me better work out the right and left side placements.  Hopefully that will work well and then I can stitch it in. 

It is finished as in completely finished

My sad little wedding sampler is no longer sad. 
It is in its frame and ready to go to its intended recipients. 

Also, I have completed and returned the model I was stitching for Just Cross Stitch.  The thread arrived and I finished the stitching that evening.  I popped it in the post and it was promptly delivered yesterday. 

There is not a lot of progress on the new wedding sampler but in my mind, every little bit is an advancement toward completion.  Now I will be able to concentrate on it and my current UFO. 

Stitching and Waiting

 No work on the UFO for this week. 
Last week I misspoke.  There were actually four different fibers stitched in the wedding sampler. 
Now this week I have finished the verse and added Algerian eyelets in the partial border.  . 
I think I need to pick out some of the previous stitching because I allowed one of the fibers to become too worn and it looks a little unattractive. 

For most of the past week, I have been stitching but I cannot disclose what it is until after Just Cross Stitch publishes it.  For the moment, I have gone as far as I can with it until some more of one of the threads arrives.  That means a little time to work on the wedding sampler. 

Prgressing Slowly but Surely

This past week I received a new design to stitch for Just Cross Stitch.  I think that I will have to set aside my UFO project.  I am not yet certain if I have to set aside the wedding sampler too. 

As you can readily see, I have a little progress to show you.  The butterfly bodies are stitched in Waterlilies Meadow.  There are still two colors of beads to go in the wings;  I will add the beads when I have completed all of the stitching.  The band below the butterflies is worked in crossed corners stitches.  I substituted Grape Melange by The thread Gatherer. 

I have a little progress to show you on the wedding sampler.  There are now two types of silk threads and they are different shades of off white. 

A Little Progress

First let's look in on the UFO. 

The little motifs at the bottom will morph into five butterflies.  For some reason, they were very difficult for me to stitch; it was hard for me to keep track of the counting.  I was extremely relieved when I finished them. 

As I was stitching the butterfly band, I made a discovery.  I had completely forgotten that I substituted Waterlilies Meadow for the light and medium blue-greens in the garland with the roses.  I also checked and I am certain that I used DMC ecru #8 and #12 pearl cotton. 

There is a little progress on the wedding sampler.  The light has made the fabric look like it is an overdye which it is not.  The color is actually a solid from the manufacturer.  The actual color is extremely pale; it may be close to what is shown in the center. 

New Projects

After the two completions last week, I needed to find one new project and one UFO to finish.

The new one was easy.  One of our nephews is going to be married in September.  I am making a wedding sampler.  His mother, my husband's sister, suggested using light peach in the sampler.
The most recent issue of Just Cross Stitch had arrived a day or two before we found out about the wedding.  I was captivated by the My Heart Wedding Sampler designed by Karen Kluba of Rosewood Manner. 

Above the picture of the sampler is some light peach linen that I found in my stash.  Does it get any better than this?

Since the threads were selected for antique white linen, I had to substitute them out.  With the help of one of the needlepoint experts at Three Kittens, it turned out to be fairly easy. 

Below is a picture of the threads on the linen.

Now for the UFO.  That was a little more difficult because there are so many from which to choose.  The one that I finally chose was not even on my radar.  It's finish is long overdue.

It is First Stitches from Just Nan.  I had finished Last Stitches but First Stitches was languishing. 

First of all, I changed the wording from My Last Stitches of the 20th Century to Last Stitches of 1999.  That necessitated changing the wording of First Stitches from My First Stitches of the 21st Century to First Stitches of 2000.  The original wording is not correct because 2000 is really the last year of the 20th Century.  My wording is correct. 

With that change of wording, I ended up with a shorter sampler for Last Stitches.  I added a band to take up the space and ended up changing out a couple of the other bands.  I also substituted Meadow Waterlilies by Caron Collection for some of the green and Parfait Waterelilies by Caron Collection for some of the blue in Last Stitches.  I think that I need to show you a picture of the originally designed Last Stitches and my version. 

I have the same issue with First Stitches and had a difficult time finding suitable stitches to make up a band to absorb the additional space.  I had decided to substitute Grape Melange by Thread Gatherer for some of the purples.  I am not certain if I decided  to substitute Meadow for some of the green but I think that I will find a good place to add it.  Because I had so much trouble finding the specialty stitches, I put it all away and forgot about it.  It has now been so long that I have forgotten any previous substitutions and/or changes I might have decided upon.  It feels like I am starting over with a new project with the exception that I have stitched the top of the sampler. 

The band at the bottom of what I have stitched is not what was originally designed.  It was a bargello-ish satin stitch in dark periwinkle and reddish orchid.  My version is two rows of herringbone stitch in Grape Melange each overlaid by a row of herringbone stitch in off white pearl cotton but I think it might be creme silk pearl.  I need to search out whether or not I have some silk pearl that might be correct tucked away with my other silks and separately from the silks I had selected for both designs. 

I made many substitutions in Last Stitches, the final stitches of which were done on 31 December 1999.  I began making substitutions in First Stitches, the first of which were done on 1 January 2000; I think the are more to come. 

Buttons? Maybe a Zipper?

We have been looking for Cosmo's buttons but have not been successful.  We began to think that perhaps he has a zipper.  But the search has come up empty-handed to date. 

Look for yourself to see if you can find anything.