Theme-Tas-Stitch Just one July link up

Hello friends

I can't believe it's link up time already so here is this month's Theme-Tas-Stitch link up post.

This months theme was...

Just one July -

Pick a focus piece for the month and see how much progress you can make - show us before and after pictures if you can.

Well its been Just One gift after another for this month. I was really hoping I would be able to finish my Anchor Sampler because let's face it - it's been hanging around for too long now and I have less than 1000 stitches to go. that will be coming out today
Here is where i left it last time...

And after one evening of stitching

The right flowerpot is done and the second butterfly. That just leaves 726 stitches for the bottom border and 22 French knots in the trellis and snail feelers. I'm aiming for a finish this weekend! 

I did get 5 cards made too for teachers at DD's school. I started them in Maynia...

And here are the finished cards...

I had a biscornu exchange too with Mini, but I'll save that for another post.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you've all been up to. Here's the linky.
The theme for next month is...

Animalia August -

Give some love to those projects with our furry or feathered friends.

Tiff has had the idea of doing Dragons so there are a few of us going in that direction. I'm also hoping to do a bit on my Mill Hill Squirrelly kit too.

Good luck to all the mums embarking on the summer holidays!

Happy stitching

Kerry

Wedding makes and holibobs

Hi Everyone,
Thank you for all the lovely comments on the spring swap.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a beautiful wedding of some dear friends. I made a penguin card as the bride is rather fond of them.

I also stitched a lucky horseshoe from a DMC blackwork occasions chartbook.

I thought I'd share the beautiful table flowers and the awesome cake. The groom loves his retro cars and has an Allegro like the one on the cake!

On to our holiday. We had a week at Butlins, Minehead at an event called Spring Harvest. We had glorious weather and the beach at Minehead is lovely.

The kids had a fab week, there was so much to do for the kids and it was great to spend time not worrying about the mundane and just be together.

So just a quick post here, I've got some Easter goodies to show you and I've been working on my quilt too.

Thanks for reading. x

Engaging in Fathers Day!

Hi Everyone,
I really am blessed to say that I have a job I love and work with great people. When one of them got engaged at the weekend I knew I wanted to make a special card. When I brought some fabric at the weekend you may recall it had a sweet little dove section on it. You can see it below bottom middle.

I put some wadding behind it and stitched round the gold outlines using a machining gold thread which I doubled. It was one I grabbed in Tesco of all places for another project that is half done and I'd not used any so I had no idea how suitable it would be but it was a dream to stitch with. I also satin stitched the little heart in the middle in pink and went round the darker pink hearts in good old DMC. I also added their initials.

I mounted it in a square card and added a little peel off at the bottom, I decided that I didn't want to go overboard and I wanted to let the stitching speak for itself.

It's often a gamble when you give a  handmade card or gift to someone you've not given to before as to whether they will like it, but I'm pleased to say they both seemed to like it.

Right on to Fathers Day.

This was something that had been in my WIP basket since March and I decided that it was time it got finished for fathers day. Hubby is a big gamer so when I made the 'read on' one for Laura, hubby asked if I could do a Game On version. It was easy enough to get the word game in instead of read and I used the little space invader from an issue of Cross Stitcher.

As you can see it's still unfinished as I the hangers I wanted for it were out of stock, so if anyone knows a good inexpensive supplier of the little hangers for stitching/quilting/embroidery then please let me know.

So on with the next project! I've been putting in a few stitches here and there on the Game of Thrones chart but my ME has rather gotten the better of me and I've not been stitching anywhere near what I'd like to be. It'll be a lovely gift whenever it gets finished and I know Hubby will like it.

Kerry.

Valentines

Hi everyone,

Here is the swap I did with McKenna. She sent me this lovely card and as you may remember I won McKenna's January giveaway too so Mr Octopus arrived too!

This is the card I made for McKenna, The design was from an ancient WOXS and stitched in some of my favourite Anchor varigated threads. I remembered I had the card blanks in with all my old card making stuff and I'm really pleased how well they work together.

For Valentines day for Hubby, I stitched this card, using the same pattern, but with a different card blank and stuck to one colour. I used Anchor Vari number 1344 - Iris and then got out some pastel sharpies and coloured in the hearts.

Hubby is rather keen on dragons, so I got him this very sweet sleepy dragon from Steph's Folksy store.

Mr Octopus soon moved into the Ami basket and here he is with his new friends.

Now the other Ami basket were not impressed that they weren't going to feature so to keep the peace here they are. The owls can be troublesome, they know their rights!

And here are the two baskets on my fireplace with the beautiful roses hubby brought me for Valentines Day.

So there we have Valentines day! Thanks for reading. x

A bit of this, a bit of that!

Ok so I've been knee deep in crafting and when I haven't it's been the usual Christmas chaos so here is a quick round up of everything I've made that I can reveal.

So the pictures might not be of great quality but never-the-less. So here is what I made for my recent giveaway that Jo won.

So there was a little robin brooch and a heart brooch, a quilted mini stocking that I stuffed full of chocolate, a couple of fabric decs and a snowflake feltie. I loved making the biscornu, it had been a  while so it was a lovely change. The designs were from a cross stitcher (but don't ask me which issue). Here are a couple of close ups.

I added in a few other goodies - here is the full prize together...

I made a new wreath for my door this year. I saw the idea on Pinterest in various forms...so here is my version. I'm sooooooo pleased with it and it was cheap to do too.

Lastly I'll share a couple of Christmas cards I made. I do like the prick and stitch for quickness.

I'll be back on monday with my Online advent door so see you then!

Stitched cards

Hi Everyone,

Well this week was my blogversary and I'm planning to do 2 giveaways over the coming weeks, the first one will be to celebrate my blogversary and my100th post and the other will give a mystery prize to the person who writes my 500th comment. I'm on about 405 at the moment, so keep those comments coming!

I've got a bit of an addiction to the prick and stitch cards at the moment and I've done 5 so far. The patterns are from here and here

This is my favourite design. I've just saved the designs in a folder so I can make up a quick card if I need one.

I did this design for Mum to welcome the new puppy. Thomas had a go at doing this one too. He did all the pricking perfectly and did some of the stitching too.

This was my first attempt, I also did this in purple too, but that has already been made into a card and given away.

I like this wreath too, it's a very pretty design.

I've got about another 8 designs to try and that is just the freebies from the sites and there are some beautiful ones to buy on them. There are some beaded ones too that I'm keen to give a go.

Thanks for reading. I'm off to finish the giveaway prizes (squeals with excitement!) Have a fab weekend. xxx

deja vu?

Hi Everyone,
I hope you are well on this wet and windy Tuesday. Now that Laura has recieved her goody parcel from the Craftbubble swap I can reveal the contents...

The parcel contained brads, a funky highlighter, buttons including 2 cool Union Jack ones, sewing stitckers, glow in the dark thread, ribbon, Mouseloft kits, Christmas fabric, Lindt choc and hot choc too.

As you can see I also made a few bits for it. Laura and I did an ATC swap and you can see the Noel ATC above. The design was from an old book called 2 hour country cross stitch and stitched on cream and gold lurex aida for a bit of Christmas sparkle. I used red seed beads for the berries on it. The backing papers are from an old Dovecraft pack, but I forget which one.  The fabric heart was also embelished with red seed beads on both sides.

The Angel biscornu was a pattern I'd made up myself using an angel blackwork design from the country cross stitch book too. It was stitched on navy aida and has gold seed beads round the edges. The bottom of it was stitched on the gold lurex aida again. Sometimes I feel the simplist things work well.

I loved making the kilt pin brooch too with the miracle beads. I'm having trouble uploading the pic but Laura has some love ones on her blog, hence the title of deja vu! I'm hoping to make one for me but I'm sure time will get away from me as I have 5 felt decorations to make for custom orders, 2 Christmas stockings for my children and a biscornu to finish. That is a fair bit to do in the next 11 days.

Finally the card I made, the design is a Mouseloft one, using gold card, Dovecraft backing papers from the Christmas blues range and on an embossed card blank from Lakeland.

Thanks for stopping by. x

Bits and bobs and things I've not shown you.

Hi Folks,
It's one of those catch up kind of blogs today. It's been a buy old week and I've been asked to do 2 craft fayres at the end of November, looks like I'll be very busy making over the coming weeks. I have a few bits left over from last year so at least I have about a weeks head start, or not as I'm making for 2 this year. I brought some gorgeous Christmassy fabric yesterday so I'll be making them up hopefully over the weekend. That should give me about 30 decorations. As for the felt ones, looks like I need to make Snowmen, Christmas puds and Gingerbread Men. Watch this space for pictures.

I did make some little Sweet bags for my friend Rachel (check out her blog here). They were just little felt bags with a cross stitched patch on the front of each. The alphabet was taken from Cross stitcher 244. Rach said her boys loved them and I hope to make them for my family too as they only took a couple of evenings to do all 3.

The lovely Laura (check out her blog here) sent me this very cute ami when I was feeling under the weather a few weeks ago. My darling daughter can't seem to understand why she can't play with it.

I made a few cards at the beginning of the week with some of the stash from Hobbycrafts. They're quite simple 3D ones using peel offs. I'm quite pleased with them as it's been a while since I made any cards.

Well I think thats me all caught up, I hope you are all well and have enjoyed today's blog. xx

Sooooo warm

I'm loving this glorious weather, It's been very hot doing the school runs this week. I shall enjoy it before I have to trudge up the hill in the wind and the rain. I can't believe DD is in the garden in a sun dress in October - it's mad really.

I was very excited to receive my ticket to the HobbyCrafts show Thursday morning. I'm rather excited about catching up with Rachy and shopping until we drop!

Pluto finished

I've been stitching the little Disney kits that I shared with you all last week. I've not really had any motivation, coupled in with a migraine that has knocked me sideways for 3 days which means for such tiny kits they are taking an age.  My thread order came Wednesday so I've bobbinated them and I'm all set for my projects until Christmas now. I stitched a quick card for my friend Keira this week too. I met her and 2 other friends in the pub opposite school for a Birthday breakfast Thursday morning which was lovely.

Keira's Birthday card

Would you believe it's the last question so thank you for reading them all and telling me your answers to them too. Day 30: What kind of designs do you like to stitch?

I love stitching flowers, bright bold blooms are my favourites from designers such as Sheila Hudson and Maria Diaz. I have a soft spot for giraffes too and I've 2 kits of them waiting to be stitched. I'll stitch anything really that suits the recipient.

Fellow blogger Cucki is having a giveaway on her blog with some very cute bits up for grabs. Visit it here. It's a lovely blog to read and one of my favourites to visit.

Happy crafting friends. x

Thursday already

Yesterday I recieved my stitchlet exchange from Anne and had this lovely little stitchlet, card and embelishment. It was my first stitchlet swap and good fun to do. I spent alot of yesterday evening sketching out a ATC design for the swap on bubble as I only have 10 days or so to get them done. One got finished yesterday and I used the CSC design again but did a blackwork version, I kind of just did the outline of the main flower and then just let the needle take me where it did. I started the second one too and I shall continue to work on that today. I'll post a pic in my next blog when they are both made up into ATCs. I also finished a design for a coaster. I used the top of a biscornu design from the totally fab Kincavel Krosses.

All stitched and ready to be made into coaster

Laura (check out her blog here) recieved her wedding parcel I'd made for her yesterday so I can now do the big reveal for that! I stitched her a card and matching tag from Cross Stitcher issue 225 and stitched this blackwork lucky horseshoe from a DMC booklet called Blackwork Occasions. Both designs required beading and I went into town armed with the one side of the design to match the beads as I'd changed the colours to match Laura's colour scheme, not realising that the card needed beads too. anyhoo I brought beads that went very well (Mill Hill 2018) got them home to realise that the card needed beads too and would you believe they were the right colour - see the horseshoe is lucky already! I also made Laura a little parcel of heart and love themed sweets for a bit of fun. All that remains is to wish her and her Fiance all the very best for Saturday and every happiness together.

Back of Horseshoe

Front of Horseshoe

Wedding Card for Laura

Ok I think I need to catch up with some questions so here are 3 to see me up to date (I think)

Day 13: Have you ever taught anyone to stitch?I taught my mum to do tapestry's, she won't try cross stitch as much as I've offered to teach her, I'll keep persevering. I think if she ever completely falls in love with a design then that would be when she'd learn, but knowing my luck she'd get me to stitch it! I'd be happy to teach anyone who'd pick up a needle.

Day 14: What’s the worst threads or fabric that you’ve worked with and why?

I've gone of working with metallics and no amount of thread heaven will make me change my mind at the moment. I can't think of a fabric athough recently I did a round robin where my fabric was an aida band, as with many bands it was very loosely woven and impossible to do fractionals on. It gave one of my fellow robiners quite a headache.

Day 15: What was your least favorite pattern and why?I can't think of anything I've stitched where I've really disliked the pattern. I only tend to stitch things that I like the pattern for, even when doing gifts. I did start a flower fairy once from a card kit and just couldn't get into it. It didn't ever get finished and I passed it on to a penpal to do.

Thanks for reading folks and stopping by. Enjoy the rest of your day. x