March YOTA = Two Finishes!

Hello Friends!  I am actually a bit early for this months YOTA post.  You can check out what YOTA is all about and what other stitchers have been up to in this SAL here.

 

Well I continued working on Diamond Avenue by Bucilla and I actually finished it on February 7th just as the Opening Ceremony of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics was finishing up on US TV!

 

Here is the overall pic of the finished piece.  Sorry it is sideways but I can't figure out how to change it... :(

 

And here is a closer image of the last house with the backstitching completed and my initials.

 



I am so happy to have finished this project up finally and it is my 2nd finish of 2014 and it's only February!!

 

My second YOTA finish that is actually my 3rd finish of 2014 is a more recent WIP Mill Hill's Post Office.  I started this project back on September 18th as a retirement gift for my Dad who retired from the US Postal Service after over 30 years of service.  You can see earlier pictures of my progress here, and below is the blurry finished image from my phone.

 



                              

I finished this piece last Saturday February 22nd!  The beading on this piece really slowed me down until I tried out my Beadalon Tacky Bead Mat.  The ability to dump out a small amount of beads from the bag onto the mat and not worry that they would fall or get lost in the folds of my sofa was so great.  Also they were much easier to stab and get onto my needle. 

 





                              

 

I customized  this design a bit by stopping the design short of the snow and pavement in front of the building so that I would have room to add my Dad's name and the years he served with the United States Postal Service.  Also before finishing this one I had a small mix up with not reading the directions and completing all of the green curved garland with red beads.  I'm sure no one would have noticed but I thought that green garland made more sense so I went back and fixed it.  My Dad was very pleased with his gift so it made all of the long hours spent beading on it worth it. 

 

I am so happy with both of these finishes as I now have TWO less projects in my WIP pile!! 

 

 I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend and Happy Stitching!

YOTA February

 Hello Everyone!  I know its been quite some time and there have been BIG changes in my life but I haven't given up on my stitching or this blog :)

 

This is about a week late but once again I decided to join the YOTA (Year of the Acronym) SAL to help me finish up some of my WIPs in my pile.  This is hosted by Pull The Other Thread and you can see what everyone else has been up to here!  I did do some YOTA stitching in January also but the time we were supposed to post I was without Internet in my apartment in Oslo.

 

For my February YOTA project I chose Diamond Avenue by Bucilla.  I think that I originally started this project way back in maybe 2005?  And I think I worked on it pretty constantly for maybe a year or two and got it to the point of needing backstitch on two of the three houses before I abandoned it until about January 20th of this year.  This seemed a no brainer for me to choose to work on since it was sooo close to completion.

 

Here is the overall design how I had left it for so long.  (Please excuse all the poor quality images from my camera on my phone) 

 

  

 

And here is a close up of the backstitching I had finished before I gave up stitching on this piece.

 

 

Another close up of where I left off...

 

 

And...Ta Da!  This is where I was as of last Saturday February 1, 2014.

 

 

You can see that I finished all of the backstitching on the biggest rust colored house!  I know why I abandoned this project its because of the backstitching which I usually avoid as much as I can.  But for some reason working on it this time just made so much sense to me.  It was like the design was out of focus and then adding the backstitching just put it into focus! 

 

 Oh I have been working on this project from my cozy temporary home in the US.  I have been up to quite a bit of stitching and stashing that I will share too but I wanted to at least get this post out even if it was a week late.  Thank you for reading this and for all of your encouraging words.
Happy Stitching Everyone!