December is here!!

Greetings all! Can you believe that it is December already? Christmas is right around the corner! I have alot to do to get ready for it how about you? We've only got a little shopping done. I had planned on putting up my kitchen Christmas tree today but the lights that I was going to use on it stopped working. They were working a couple of days ago when I tested them. I won't be doing the tree today. It will have to wait until tomorrow.Rats! I thought I needed a little something Christmasy for the blog. I scrounged around and found some Christmas songs that I hope you'll like while reading.If not, just turn off the sound. If you like it, turn it up! :o)

I had joined 3 Christmas ornament exchanges and thought I would share some photos on those that I have sent out that have already recieved them.

I stitched one for Leeanne for The Ties That Bind exchange. That lucky duck is going to get two with this exchange! She already had a partner and then when one dropped out, she graciously offered to be my partner so I would have one. Bless her dear heart! The one I stitched for her is Winter Frost from Patricia Ann Designs found in last year's JCS Ornament Issue. I didn't realize until after I had stitched it that I had just the perfect fabric for the back. I should have taken a picture of that. It is a light purplish blue with silver snowflakes and stars.

Here's a little closer shot.

Yesterday I posted a pic of the ornament that Sadie stitched for me. Here is the one that I stitched for her. I stitched Let It Snow from CCN found in that same issue. I modified the pattern to make it into a stocking ornament. I will have to stitch me one too but it will wait until next year.

A wee bit closer peek.

So what are the rest of you working on? Are you making ornaments, pillows, gift boxes, or other things? I'd love to hear from you . Hope you all are having fun with all that the season brings. Well ,with the exception of traffic and searching for a parking space! That's never fun! LOL!

'til next time,

happy stitching,

Sharlotte

A little Christmas decorating & some mail arrives

Hello everybody! First off I must apologize for not posting the handmade gift idea on Friday. I have had lots of things on my mind. We went shopping for some stuff, not Christmas shopping per sey, and the city was so crazy! I have forgot about the Friday posts I guess with the guys being gone and all. I promise I will post this Friday!

I hope those of you that celebrate Thanksgiving, that you had a wonderful one. Ours was slow and easy. We decided to stay home and have our own this year and it was very relaxed. The only things I had to do was make a pecan pie the night before and stuffing the day of. Hubby took care of everything else! Here is the wonderful bird he cooked.

It was a 23lb. turkey and we have lots leftover up in the freezer for other nights.

I also got some wonderful mail. I received this beautiful ornament from the lovely Sadie http://stitchingupastorm.blogspot.com/ It is LHN's Holly & Berries and is so so pretty! She added a very pretty cording with gold and deep red around the edge and she chose the perfect fabric for the back that had cardinals on it. Thank you so so much for the beautiful ornament and for all the hard work! I'll treasure it always my friend!

I dabbled with some ornament making this weekend. I will be making a few others for the little tree in the kitchen. So far I have a cookie and a little s'more man done. Here was the outcome.

Up on the Housetop.... that was the song that was going through my head when I went outside to check on the guys to see how the outside lights were coming along. I brought them out some hot chocolate. It was quite nippy outside while they were putting up the lights. It had started to rain before they got them all up so the rest of the lights will wait 'til later this week when they have a chance.

....and here's the tree. Still have room for ornaments from a couple of other exchanges and the tree will be all set. I just can't get a good closeup shot of the whole shabang so maybe I will take closeups of sections later. We even have a few presents under there already! There're kind of tucked away in the back.

I had wanted to make a tree skirt this year but we couldn't stand to fight the crowds at Jo-Ann's the other day. Hubby thought that a fabric store wouldn't be busy on the day after Thanksgiving! I told him that he must not know women very well and he said that no he didn't . We got there and it was almost wall to wall shoppers. There was a lady there that was practically crying because they wouldn't give her a certain percent off of something she wanted just because she had driven a hundred miles (so she said and no one believed her) to get there. I'll tell ya , the nutcases really come out this time of year don't they?

Well, that's it in a nutshell! Thank you all for all of your nice comments on American Star. Now I just need to figure out a way to finish it.

'til next time,

happy stitching,

Sharlotte

American Star

Hello everyone! Just a quick post to show my finish of American Star from Blackbird Designs. I had most of the stitching of it done for quite some time. I just needed to fill in the background. I finally got around to finishing that part over the last couple of days. I think I will finish this into a stitching box of some sort. For lack of space, I store my stitching and other crafting supplies in the family/game room. Because of that I try to disguise my storage containers with stuff that will fit the room nicely without looking to hodge- podge. I say "try", I'm not quite there yet. It's a small room that is actually an exta bedroom with two entrances. There is no bed in there, just family stuff. The things that stick out like a sore thumb in there are my stackable drawer units. I have no place to put them. I'd take a picture for all of you crafty people so I could get ideas on how to disguise those, but it's such a hideous mess right now, I'd be too embarassed! The projects that I will be focusing on between now and Christmas is getting my winter stitching done and finishing up Alex's quilt.It's a not a Christmas present so no need to worry about him visiting my blog. I may get around to making a tree skirt too that I have wanted to make for some time now. Here's hoping this is the year! I won't be doing quite as much stitching for a while other than that. I need to give my eyes a break, the eye doctor informed me yesterday that the iritis has reared it's ugly head again. I'm not a bit surprised, it's been a real bugger to deal with.

Anyway, here is the American Star.

'til next time,

Happy Stitching,

Sharlotte

Some finishes to share

Greetings all! Well the guys are back from the deer hunting trip so that means I get to use the camera again! Yeah!! For all of those who are wondering, nope ,no deer :( . There is still the muzzle loading season and the atlerless season, so hopefully then. While they were gone I did a lot of decluttering and also I got a lot of stitching done. Since I was excited that I got to have the camera ,I thought I would take some pictures of the things I've stitched. I worked a bit on Alex's flannel quilt too ,but I'll save a picture of it for when I get it done.

First , here is the Be Ye Thankful that I won from Jolene all finished. I decided to finish it in slip on style for a pillow . That way I can stitch other things for other seasons and be able to keep using the same pillow base. The cases will store a lot easier than a ton of pillows.

Here is a little closer look. The camera isn't taking very clear pictures, I think it is getting old.

Jolene is just full of surprises! I went to check my mail the other day and low and behold I find a package from her! Inside was a Pine Mountain Designs pillow sham that I have been wanting for a long time. Even though Halloween had already passed , I couldn't resist stitching it up. These things go so fast, it only took me the part of a couple of days to do. I love the way it turned out! Thanks dear one! I had so much fun with it!

Next is my version of I Love Snow from Bent Creek. The pattern was gifted to me from Dee http://tangledupinsticksandstring.blogspot.com/ She is my Monday great blog shout out today. If you like knitting as well as stitching , you will love her blog. I've enivous of her Catherine socks. I really like Dee's color choices for the nose and cheek better than the pattern colors that I used. I'm thinking about taking those out before getting him into finished form. Thank you so much for the pattern Dee. I loved stitching this little guy!






I also got the Rose Sampler from Little House Needleworks done. I stitched it on some wonderful pink linen from Silkweavers that I recieved from my beCAUSE It's Pink partner. Thanks again Caroline! This was the perfect linen for this. I will make it into a project keeper/ stitching pouch. I have the perfect fabric for it, just got to get it into finished form.

Hope you all had a great weekend! Thanks everyone for commenting on the quilt. I really appreciate it.

'til next time,

Sharlotte

Just a quick 'Hi'

Hello everybody! This is just a quick little post so that you all don't forget who I am! Below is a picture that I have had on the computer for a while but don't think I've ever shared on the blog. It is a quilt I made a few years back called 'For All Those Scrappy Times'. It was a McCall's Quilting pattern and though it was a simple pattern to do, it turned into a nightmare! I spent a few years collecting fabrics for it,no big deal there. Then when I had together all the fabrics I wanted to use , I followed the cutting instructions and cut my fabric. Well , they made a cutting 'error' and that caused a huge waste of fabric. Well , no so much a waste as I could use that fabric at some point for another quilt, just not the one I wanted to use it on. I contacted them, let them know my problem, and they stated that in the following issue they had made a 'correction'. Well a lot of good that did me. I mean who buys every single issue of a particular quilting magazine? I for sure don't! They appologized and said that all they could do was send me a free issue and took my name and address. Well , they didn't even do that. I contacted them several weeks later and asked them where my magazine was and no response whatsoever. I still have never bought another one of their magazines. Call me petty ,but I was really upset about it. Since I had had the fabrics for awhile , by the time I went to purchase fabric again to finish cutting the quilt, the original fabric choice was no longer available. As it turns out, the new fabric I bought I liked much better than the first . That led me to finding a new fabric designer that I just love, Sandy Gervais.

Sorry there's not much detail in this picture. I'll probably get around to taking a better one eventually. The dark blue fabric for the hour glass block is from the Stitches on the Oregon Trail collection from Kansas Troubles, another favorite fabric designer of mine. The yellow/gold print is the fabric from Sandy Gervais but I can't for the life of me remember what that collection was. Any guesses out there?

Ok, ok, so this wasn't such a quick post after all ! Sorry!

'tll next time,

Sharlotte

MIA

Greetings everyone! I just wanted to kind of update you all . I know I haven't been posting but I really don't like to write posts without pictures. The guys are still in the woods deer hunting and as far as I know ( or they get a deer, fingers crossed) they will be there through the weekend. I have mentioned before that they took the camera with them to the woods, but I'll mention it again incase someone missed that post. Because of that , there will be no gift idea this Friday either. Hard to write a tutorial post without pictures. ; ) The guys will be in town for a while today as they had to come back for a funeral. My husband's cousin passed away from cancer but it was still somewhat of a surprise to everyone that he had passed away so soon as he was not yet at the stage that most are when they pass away from it. He was such a sweet man.

While the cats away the mice will play right? While the guys have been gone, I've been busy stitching of course. I have also been busy doing lots of cleaning and decluttering. Very hard to do when someone is around to say 'oh I was saving that'. LOL! I have also been busy planning Thanksgiving and where we will be putting the tree this year and other Christmas decorating. I won't pull a thing out until after Thanksgiving though. We never decorate for Christmas until Thanksgiving has passed.We don't like to overshadow the holiday. I do want to have a little quilted turkey banner done for Thanksgiving, but with it being only a week away, I highly ,highly doubt it. Oh well, another time perhaps.

I probably won't have another post until after I have the camera to use. Posts look so 'empty' without pictures don't they?

Thanks for all the wonderful comments on the last post. I appreciate that you take the time to read my ramblings.

'til next time,
Happy Stitching,
Sharlotte

A couple of finishes

Hello everyone! I have a couple of finishes that I wanted to share with you. This first one is of the acorn pattern that is an extra pattern on the Cross-Eyed Cricket Be Ye Thankful chart that I won from Jolene. I plan on finishing it either as a basket lid or shaker box top. Not sure which yet but Thanksgiving is right around the corner so I need to decide soon.

This next one is a freebie pattern from Primitive Traditions and Needlework Press. It was intended by the designers to be stitched with a shade of blue from Crescent Colours with the word 'persevere' at the bottom . I omitted the word and used Crescent Colours Wild Berries for the the flower and a dark olive shade from DMC for the bottom. I stitched it on 32 count lambswool linen. I was hoping that the color changes would make it look like a poinsetta and I think it pretty much does. I then made it into an ornament . The fabric in the background is what I used for the backing. I don't know if you can tell much in the picture but the backing fabric is mistle toe and has a little sparkle to it. I made a two color cording out of an olive green shade and a dark red shade from DMC, specifically 3051 and 221. I like the way it turned out. Simple but elegant at the same time.

Here's a little close up.

Not much to write about today. I got extremely busy this past week and didn't get a chance to work on the Friday homemade gift idea. I won't be able to do it tomorrow morning either as the guys will be in the deerwoods and they are taking the camera. So unless I dig up some pictures of past projects, I won't have anything to show for a post either so I may not be posting for a few days. :( Sorry about not having the time to think ahead this week and not have anything to post tomorrow like I had scheduled. I must make it up by coming up with a really good gift idea to make up for it.

Thanks to all of you for your wonderful posts. They are so appreciated!

'til next time,

Sharlotte