Thursday, April 13, 2017

A New Start

I'm sure the title for this post isn't hard to figure out or comes as a surprise to those of you who read my blog.  Y es, I squirreled and decided to start another project.  I'm not giving up on any of my other projects but I just can't narrow myself down to only doing one project at a time.  Mom would do that and I drove her crazy when I'd set a project down and pick up another one.  That's ok though because she would drive me crazy watching her just work on one thing at a time.  Admittedly she finished her projects faster than I did/do but she also had more time to spend on doing it.  Her thing was crocheting.  By the time she was ready for the nursing home, she had narrowed her crochet stitches down to one of two and would be able to whip out pot holders, scarves, and afghans rather rapidly.  Good going Mom!  I'm glad that you did that even if drove me nuts watching you.

I, on the other hand, like to do embroidery and cross stitch as well as quilting.  This new start is a cross stitch one and the pattern is one of my new ones I just got.  Why this one?  The decision was easy.  I didn't have to buy everything.  I had over half of the floss colors already and with a 60% coupon for Michael's, my Aida cloth came to under $5.  Not bad right?

This is the new pattern I decided to do.


I will be stitching it on 18 count white Aida.  For those who are not cross stitchers, that means I will be doing 18 stitches per inch.   After gathering up all my floss that I could find and/or buy, I found myself only missing one metallic thread color and one color of floss.  Not bad.  I'll check at Michael's tomorrow (went to Hobby Lobby today) and Walmart for those two pieces but can work around them for now.  I am also going to start it in a different way than normal.  I am not going to start in the middle but in the upper left corner and work one page of the pattern at a time.  I will, of course, have to carefully measure or count to make sure that I won't run out of Aida cloth.  I know that I figured in 3" for border and framing.  Theoretically I should be able to just count 3" down and 3" over from left side for my starting point.  I might try to count it out also just as a double check.  No cutting down the Aida cloth until the end I think as a secondary double safeguard.  :)

Here is what my pile of colors look like after winding them all on bobbins.


 Quite colorful aren't they.  I soon had them all safely in their plastic container (which has the name of the project on the outside) and in numerical order.


Tomorrow I think I will start to whip stitch around my Aida so the fabric doesn't fray and also might possibly make a new needle minder or two.  We'll see how that goes.

But that will be tomorrow's post.  Let me leave you all with a quote that I liked.  I hope you like it as well.


I'll talk to you all tomorrow.  Have a wonderful day and night.

1 comment:

Sue Cottle said...

Squirrel! I hear you - I prefer multiple projects too, tho I really only have one on the go (the hydrangea cross stitch). My mum and grandma didn't do any sort of craft or art-work - wonder where I got it from?

I think the owl is my favourite of the ones on your wishlist! Can you forward me a copy of the last HAED newsletter? I'm really tempted to buy a couple of designs! :)

Whew! Time for a break!

I have been busy these last few days.  I even got out my sewing machine and did some 9 patch blocks so I could continue on with Fleur.  Do y...