Christmas in July!

The wonderful Kaye is hosting Christmas in July and it was a lot of fun getting things together for the exchange. It was a "no extras" exchange which I think a lot of us find hard since as a whole we tend to be so generous with each other. I stayed within the rules though and I sent my package to Jocondine. I didn't get it off as early as I wanted though, so I'm not sure if it has arrived yet . 

My exchange partner was Kay, who I don't think has a blog. She was on the ball and I received my package well ahead of time and then had to wait to open it!! 

Then today arrived and here it is:

And inside:

A beautifully stitched and finished ornament, a cool felt CHRISTMAS banner and some special chocolates! That's not to mention the special fabric they were all wrapped up in, thank you so much Kay! 

I hope you're all having a great Christmas in July today. 

Happy Stitching!

Tiffstitch

Theme-tas-Stitch July Edition

Two posts in one day, what? Turns out I should have time to get a second post up before I need to get DD up from her "nap". She will stay in her room and is usually pretty good, but she doesn't nap often any more. She's currently trying to balance a stuffed animal on her feet... so early night tonight!

Thank you Kerry for hosting Theme-tas-Stitch and I hope you had a lot of participants. I had grand plans of finishing and turns out I had to turn Just One July into Just Two July since my plans went a little awry once I realized my uncle is turning 80 at the end of this month. 

I started out with AAN's Spider Banner, and I still really want to finish this one this year, I think it's possible. Here's where it was:

 Pretty close to actual fabric colour, 32 ct gifted unknown opalescent blue/purple mottled fabric

where I ran out of WDW Cyclamen for the web

 

new thread matches fairly well, and finished the Cherry Vanilla for the over web. The spider is WDW Chesapeake Bay and the lines on the right and left are WDW Gunmetal.

ending here for now

After some internal debate and help from all of you, thank you again, I started something new for my uncle. It will look like this when complete:

and I've made it here so far:

This is 4 out of 14 total colours and I'm almost done the 4th colour. I'm stitching 2 over 2 on 28 count Tempest Lugana from Chromatic Alchemy. I hope to complete it all by the end of the month and finish it with a wooden hoop. I've never finished anything that way before, but hopefully it won't be too difficult. :)

Next month will be Animalia August. A few of us will work on dragon projects, and I just have a couple to choose from...

Tribal Dragon

Princess and the Dragon

Mini Winter Magic

Mini Autumn's Promise

Dragon Under Glass

Or a new start? ;)


Happy Stitching!

Tiffstitch

Late GG, and Still Stitching!

I hope you've all been well. I've been stitching almost every night and busy the nights I haven't been able to stitch, but finally I have a few minutes to get a post out and update you on my stitching. I've been taking a lot of photos, so I hope that makes up for 11 days since my last post. :) 

Someone keeps me busy when I'm not working :D

Thank you all for your advice on my last post regarding what to do for my uncle's birthday. Some of you had mentioned if he would appreciate it, and yes, my aunt has been a cross stitcher that uses stamped fabric for many, many years. He's well aware of the all the effort that goes into stitching and crafting. My aunt only recently discontinued when her eyesight wouldn't allow her the same enjoyment. I can't really do stamped well, and she's always amazed that I follow a pattern. We had some good chats while we were both stitching many years ago. 

Therefore, I did decide to stitch something and to be able to start immediately I found a decent pattern on Etsy. I fell in love with this one before realizing a large drawback:

After I had purchased and downloaded the pattern I realized something horrifying, there's no grid lines!! So I added some 10x10 grid lines myself. That was a marked improvement. 

Here's my floss toss:

 Stitching 2 over 2 on 28 ct Tempest by Chromatic Alchemy. Love her fabric so much! 

 One colour done!

 2 colours done, working on 3rd

3rd colour done, working on 4th

 Almost done the 4th colour

That's where I'm at as of last night. I think I can get this done by the end of the month, and I chose a fabric that I can skip stitching the sky if I have to. I also need to buy a wooden hoop as I'm going to frame it in a round hoop for a finish. 

And because this is also my late GG post, here's where AAN's spider banner is at with my gifted fabric. 

Thank you as always for hosting Jo! I wish I had your organization skills. :)

Happy Stitching!

Tiffstitch

July Update and a Quandary

Hello everyone! Wow... it's been 2 weeks since I posted, I can't believe it! It was a fairly busy holiday weekend last week, and things haven't really slowed down, plus I've been stitching so much and getting so much progress I haven't wanted to spend any time on the computer. 

What have I been stitching you ask? After all the projects I mentioned in a previous post I decided that the AAN Spider Banner was calling the loudest and have done very well. Here's where it used to be:

And now a spider appears:

And a little more:

I'm a little farther than this, but I forgot to take a photo last night, so I will try and remedy that tomorrow. I still love, love, love working on this one! The spider is stitched with WDW Chesapeake Bay and Cactus (lighter green). It's on unknown 32 count opalescent fabric that I received as a gift, stitched 2 over 2. 

Onto my quandary. I just found out my uncle is turning 80 at the end of this month. I can't quite wrap my head around that one, but it's true! So, do I ditch my Just One July and start stitching something for him? And what? He likes to fish, so I was debating about picking up this chart, it's fairly small and I should be able to finish it quickly:

Or something more like a card? Any octogenarians out there that can chime in? ;)

He also likes the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Blue Jays a lot, but I don't think there's any good charts out there for either team. 

Opinions are very welcome! 

Happy Stitching!

Tiffstitch