Stitching

 During my Covid summer, I've been doing quite a lot of stitching. My concentration levels are pretty variable and it helps to have different projects on the go so that I can find something to do, depending on how well I feel. I have to break any activity down into lots of small stages now and that's how I approach my crafts too.

Early in the summer I made several small quilts, mostly from books by Kathleen Tracy, who is my favourite quilt designer. This first one is proudly labelled as my plague quilt as I made it when I was first ill.

Those were the days when I thought I'd only be ill for a matter of a few weeks. Such innocence.

This log cabin quilt and the next one are both from the book A Prairie Journey. I have all Kathleen's books except one (and now there's a new one coming out too) and they're really good. She combines beautiful, small quilt projects with some quilting social history, a perfect combination.

I also made a simple doll's quilt as part of a friends birthday present in June; it took me ages choosing the buttons to add to this one.

This next one is the biggest quilt I've made this year; it's very simple but the quilting seemed to take forever.

From the biggest to the smallest ... this little quilt came to light when I was having a sort out. I''d pinned it together ready for quilting and then forgot about it. 

I made this one to fit my small tea tray; quilts are great at soaking up tea stains.

The next quilts on my list are two half square triangle quilts. I made two sets of half square triangles, intending to sew them together into two quilts. Each would have exactly the same pieces but put together in different ways. So far, I've pieced this barn raising one which will be for my daughter.

I've also been doing a bit of embroidery, inspired by several books. One was this one by Lynette Anderson which I bought for the hexagon quilt on the cover. 

I only bought the book this summer and, so far, all I've made is this little coaster.

I'd like to make more of these.

I really like Gail Pan's stitchery designs which combine embroidery and patchwork. I made this bag from Patchwork Loves Embroidery for my daughter for Christmas back in 2016.

This summer I was a bit concerned that Rose (who is a very keen cross stitcher) was in danger of running out of kits during her extended lockdown so I put together a collection of little kits to keep her going for a while. And, of course, I had to make a suitable bag to put them in.

This one was from the same book as her Christmas bag. I think I might need to buy a new Gail Pan book soon.

I've been cross stitching too. Apart from the big sampler I showed you a few weeks ago, I've cross stitched a few birthday cards and, during Rose's visit, I finished this little sheep sampler.

This is a design from Jardin Privé, the fourth part in a series called 'Sheep's Story'. You can stitch all four parts together but I just chose this one; I liked the woman spinning. I had to change the backstitch on the spinning wheel though as the design had the yarn going all round the wheel. Not how a spinning wheel works!

My current cross stitch is very exciting as it's the start of a year long project that my daughter and I are doing together. We bought a set of seasonal sampler charts from Little Dove Designs and are planning to stitch each one in its proper season. We started the autumn one a few days ago ...

Rose is using 32 count linen and I'm using 16 count aida so our finished samplers will be the same size but the colours of the fabric won't be the same. I'm using DMC threads and she's using Anchor so there might be a bit of variation there too.

The idea is that we finish this sampler before December, ready to start the Winter one then. Once all four seasons are finished, we just have to order eight matching frames (!) and then we'll be able to display them in their season.

I've never done a stitchalong before and it's so exciting. We both started in the middle (obviously) but now we're working in different directions. I can't wait until our next show and tell when we can have a look at each other's progress. The colours are beautiful; I'll take some close up pictures to show you once I've done a bit more.