THE BUZZ FROM THE HIVE

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

One More Finish .......

Betsy was very quick getting me a new piece of lining fabric and I was able to finish Can't See the Forest. Such a sweet piece with a drawer that opens. I stitched as called for.

box top

box bottom

right panel of box

back panel of box

left panel of box

box and scissor fob


This is probably the last of the finishing for awhile , as I have to focus on Christmas presents. Posts may be a little lean too, since I can't show these things until after they are gifted.

 Happy Thanksgiving to all and thanks for your "twisted threads" of friendship!

Stasi

Sunday, November 15, 2015

When the hubby's away, Stasi will play...............

Hubby was away for three days at his annual meeting and I had a full three days to myself. I had asked friends to join me but they couldn't, so I locked myself into my house (only venturing out for for groceries and to get mail) and finished....finished...finished. I sewed and stitched until my "pushing" finger hurt!!! I have never felt comfortable with a thimble (and usually have a callous formed on the top of "tall man"), but did break down and resort to using a leather thimble towards the end of the weekend. I feel like I accomplished quite a bit while binge watching  Reign, but also kept getting distracted by FB, Feedly, etc..

I started by finishing some projects from Jamboree (Salty Yarns) in October. Here is the second piece form A Perfect Pairing.   I din't have much to do on these, so they went pretty fast.



We were also given a sweet little accompanying piece called The Pear-fect Additon--how clever! Note the cute "pear" button! Now to see if there are "fruity" scissors and pins somewhere!

Next, I started a class piece from Betsy Morgan, but will have to show that later. I didn't have enough silk lining fabric to finish the interior, so Betsy is graciously sending me some, and I'll share that when it's complete.

Then, I tackled A Fine and Fancy Tulip Tray  by Sherri Jones of Patrick's Woods. I had taken this class in April of 2014. This is such a lovely piece, very delicate and not my normal color palette of choice. But I love it and how it all went together. It's so "girly"!!! All the stitching was complete, and we had put the pyn tower and one pocket together in class. Luckily, we had made a paper mock up of how to lace the wooden tray, which helped tremendously when assembling it. 

Note swan scrim in bottom of tray (RIP Marcy)

The top petal on the tulip pulls out and is a needlebook


A dear friend had given me some wonderful buttons and I found two pale pink flowers among them that I used on the top of the  velvet berry and on the ruler above.

In the evenings, I took a break from finishing and got a little stitching in. Here is bumble from Hands on Design/JABCO, part of their Square*ology series. 


And I started the Shepherd's Bush fold series, A Full Heart, last night as I waited for hubby to return home. I've seen different versions of this where people have changed the lettering, moved motifs around and such. We'll see where I end up!!!  BTW, I made it up until he got  home at 1:00AM, then we got caught up for an hour, so bed at 2:00. We'll see if I'll be crashing later today!!!!


All in all, a very fruitful 3 days--pun intended!!! :)

Thanks for stopping by and your "twisted threads" of friendship!

Stasi

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Another Stocking Stitched

Well, I've been working like crazy and got the adoptive grandson's stocking stitched. I do love these Shepherds Bush stockings as they stitch up pretty quickly (18 count over 2) and are a good size for filling (wish mine was this big)!!!  I did Oliver's Stocking for him and used fibers I had on hand including #5 perle cotton, Impressions and Tweedie. I substituted some stitched "gifts" with JABCO buttons that fit perfectly and added other embellishments/beads where needed. 


I did venture up to Discount Fabrics USA and found a nice backing fabric for the boy; I'm using some from my stash for the girl. I even managed to snag a couple  dupioni silks that will , hopefully, come in handy some day. The one on the left is a dark forest green plaid, and on the right, a pale blue stripe on cream.



 I had shared a sewing stand I recently bought in my last post and was asked to show a photo of it opened. Cathy B--this is for you!

For curious minds, the stand is 29 " tall (from floor to top of barrel) and the barrel measurement is 12" wide by 9" high.

Now, hopefully stitchers will understand the following and why I'm tickled--non-stitchers, not so much.  I have a tale of woe, possibly not for the weak of stomach, to share:  I had a lump (lypoma) removed from my upper left thigh 12 days ago. On day ten I was able to remove the stitches, which I did myself. (Okay stitchers, I used a pair of those inexpensive "rainbow" scissors to cut the stitches and they worked great--very fine tips!!!) All went well until today when I went to change the band-aid and saw the incision had split open about 1/2 inch. So, off to Urgent Care and two more sutures. Here's the happy part--the doctor gave me the suture scissors (note the cute purple protective tip-it's hard to see) and tweezers! The scissors are really sharp and will certainly come in handy. However,I think I'll be letting the professionals remove these stitches when the time comes. So much for my little saga--all is well now!!!




I'm on to stitching Christmas gifts, so probably won't be sharing much of that until after they are given to their respective recipients. But I might do sneak peeks--who knows!!!

Thanks for stopping by and your "twisted threads" of friendship!

Stasi