I can’t believe how quickly these little guys stitched up – considering I started them back in 2003! I just did 4 of them, taking about a week each! They are officially done now and I have to decide how to finish them into a quilt and also what on earth to work on next??? These were perfect as travel projects!
A picture of all of them finished together :
I’ve been working on the dragons exclusively now that Celtic Banner is done! Love and Trust are now done. Just 1 more to go and it will be quilt time.
Peace is the last one to do!
This past week I finally finished up a very large piece called Celtic Banner by Butternut Road. I used a ‘green’ conversion so it’s not in the original browns but was inspired by one we saw finished in this color way in a store that no longer exists. In 2006 my best friend and I both purchased this piece and selected matching Yellow fabric (32 Ct Belfast in Ray of Light). We started it when we took a vacation to Maine together on August 3, 2006. Some history can be read on this post : Celtic Banner 2011
Most of this piece was stitched when we were together over the years (mostly on trips to Maine). This year was the first since my kids were born that we picked it up again during a recent visit. We decided we should just finish it up now that we had picked it up again and a month later – it’s done!
Top half :
Bottom Half : 
It’s great to have such a large piece finished after so long. To truly finish it though it needs to be hangable – so I need to figure out how I want to finish it off. I’m sure that will be a project of its own.
No house work this weekend because we went to NYC for my xmas gift! Ryan got us a hotel and tickets to see Wicked! We left Saturday morning when Mark and Suzanne came over to watch the girls for the weekend (THANK YOU!). Poor Bella of course ended up with a nasty cold but is already doing much better this morning so we missed the worst of it (sorry Grandma!).
We drove down to Poughkeepsie and took the train into the city. I stitched on my travel project (dragons!) on the train rides which was an extra bonus. We had a hotel right on Central Park with a view of the park and we went to see Wicked! I’ve seen Wicked before but it was Ryan’s first time and he really enjoyed it plus our seats were amazing!
Sunday sleeping in was maybe the best part and then I stitched on the train ride back. Driving back from Poughkeepsie was horrible in the snow – stressful in the car with front wheel drive. I missed having all wheel drive for sure but Ryan did all the hard part and I kept my head down and stitched. I ended up finishing up my Patience dragon so I have 9 dragons ready for the dragon quilt – 3 more to go!
Some pictures – more stitching since there was no house work this weekend!
It’s been a few years since I’ve made any real time to do much stitching. I’ve quilted on and off over the last few years but I’ve decided to get back into cross stitch as well this year. I’m going to document my crafts here as well as house projects.
In January my Aunt gave me a quilt she and I had pieced back in 2011 and I had left mine at her house unfinished. I took the last week in January and put the final border on it, then hand quilted and put on the binding. Finishing up the Japanese Diamonds quilt (Japanese and homespun fabrics).
I’ve been going through boxes of cross stitch and quilts and patterns, trying to organize and find projects I have. I found this piece called the Shepherd’s Bush purse that I stitched back in 2009. It’s beaded and I always loved the soft color pallete. So today I turned it into the purse with some fabric from my stash and a little sewing then hand stitching. Cute and can go in my bin of finished stitchery now!
Hopefully soon I’ll be able to show the other piece I’m stitching – started about 2005 and hopefully to be finished soon!
The nursery is still in disarray because the closet system is not yet in so I’m waiting on final pics of that (plus I want to paint the mural). In the meantime … here are some gifts I wanted to show. First a package arrived for Alexandra from her Gramma Bozik…
And for my first Mother’s Day from Ryan…
Yesterday we had a very busy day, with my allergy shots in the morning, walking the dog since we finally had nice weather to do so, then down to Worcester to pick up our stripped doors! Finally a stop at my aunt’s quilt shop and then stitch night. Needless to say we went to bed early last night!
Today we have mother’s group (find out how much Squishy ways – that’s her new nickname), then cleaning the house!
I’m not even sure when I stitched this but I forgot to update the blog with a picture. I’m thinking this might have been a few weekends ago at this point.
I really like this piece because I can pick it up randomly and make decent progress. Until next time 🙂
What a strange weekend we had. Saturday I was feeling so much better from my cold finally so we worked on the house (knowing we had only one day this weekend since Ryan had a bunch of work work to do on sunday). First we ran to the dump to drop off the final loads from last weekend, then over to pick up our new windows from Marvin.
Home again we decided to continue the demolition in the upstairs diningroom so we could put up the new wall for the hallway. It was very messy demo due to the insulation in the ceiling and we only did half of the ceiling (just enough to put up the new wall), since the master bathroom will not be done for a long while and i’d rather get the floor down before we demo the rest (it’s not fun cleaning demo debri from the upstairs and downstairs due to cracks in the subfloor). The demo went pretty quickly (poor Ryan had to do all of it) but I helped with bagging it all up and now we have another dump load for another weekend waiting outside (hopefully before it snows!).
With that completed I spent about an hour vacuuming up the exposed insulation and the debri. Finally we started the new wall. We left a few of the studs out so there’s a makeshift doorway to get through for now (since we’re not finishing the bathroom for a while we’ll use it as our ‘guest room’ while we work on the nursery – need to put the bed someplace!).
Finally with the wall in and secured to both the upper and lower joists it was time to remove the jacks to see if the floor had any less movement or not. It has definitely improved, it still moves (the joists included) if you jump on it so we may need to take future measures but there was definite improvement over before.
Unfortunately on Sunday, even though we knew Ryan wouldn’t be able to work on the house I still had hopes to get a few things done but I woke up with a sore throat and headache (cold really doesn’t want to go away). The sore throat was probably due to not drinking enough water on saturday because staying hydrated sunday certainly helped. So while Ryan worked I crashed on the couch with some Pride & Prejudice and stitched as well as napped.
Then the stomach bugs came to our house. Kind of. Fitz was the first to go down. Sometime after dinner he got sick (right in his bed too), and it was horrible. He continued to get sick 4 times total over the next few hours and we were on high alert for any sign he might need to rush outside. I have a nice big load of dog blankets that need to be washed (waiting to see how today goes first). Poor Fitzy. I finally took away his water (since he was just throwing it back up) and he was okay through the night.
Of course then later in the evening I got a bit of a bug (or just an IBS attack). I was up till 3am with uncontrollable shivers every 20 minutes or so. Not fun. Poor Fitz and I are quite the pair. So I decided to work from home today due to my lack of sleep and wanting to be able to keep an eye on Fitz (who is acting fine but wants to eat grass now – can’t find any! – which makes me think he’s not better yet). He is allowed a little water (although he hasn’t touched it yet) and I gave him some yogurt with peanut butter for breakfast so we’ll see how that goes. If he doesn’t get sick he’ll get rice and chicken for dinner tonight. Hopefully whatever it was has passed and he can go to his new daycare tomorrow.
I myself am feeling better, I feel like I always do after an IBS attack so that’s probably what it was (from eating too much yesterday?). I’ll take it easy with what I eat today and stay hydrated. I should be able to work most of the day (maybe a short nap at some point). And poor Fitz is stuck in the room with me so I can keep an eye on him.
That was our weekend – so much fun 🙂 I am very excited about the house progress, we can now put down hardi-backer in the master bathroom area and make it into a temporary guest room with sheets for walls and the bed moved in there. Then the nursery clean out project begins and eventually we’ll demo that room and get it going!
I think being sick means I’m in the mood to stitch finally. I continued working on the Royalty ABC banner by Jeannette Douglas, getting the first page completely done (of 4).
I’m only making minor modifications here and there. The crowns for example, while they’re all different, I didn’t like that hte one on the right had a queen stitch on top and the left one didn’t so I had them both have queen stitches and made them the same color too. I did keep the styling different but I’m not completely sold on that either. I like symmetry.
And Fitz ripped the head off of his xmas snake stuffed animal – too funny. He’s finally gotten to destroying some of his toys (including is favorite orange squeaky ball) so I bought him a tough chew squeaky ball instead and we’ll see how long the stuffed animals last. It does take a while for him to rip them (the snake has been a favorite since he got it because it has LOTS of squeakies).
Well – it wasn’t allergies – I got another cold this winter! No house progress yesterday, instead we went to the mall to get some quick shopping done. Then we snuggled in to relax for the day re-watching season 1 of Downton Abbey (since it starts up again next week!). I actually got some stitching done (that was as much as I could handle).
I decided to work from home today, I feel up to working (now anyway, we’ll see if a headache gets worse or not being on the computer all day), but I wasn’t up to the drive and I had to sleep in a bit since I got very little sleep last night (I hate sleeping sitting up but it had to be done to get any sleep at all).
As for stitching, I worked on my Royalty ABC pattern by Jeannette Douglas, a piece I did in a Celebrations class a few years ago, I haven’t touched it since the class but got 3 bands almost done (the basket is almost done).
