kerrykatiecakes

It was so nice to do a bit of cross stitch again lately! I finished up these two small projects on my vacation and there is something so good about a nice bit of linen in hand and some lovely hand dyed threads. Both of these are designed by Su Mwamba of Tanglecrafts ( http://tanglecrafts.wordpress.com/ ). The top one is entitled "Kaleidoscope Thistle" and the bottom one is "Kaleidoscope Forest". Su designs the most gorgeous stitchery - check out her blog and you will see lovely freeform bargello and other treats. These two are small projects that give lovely results without a lot of investment of stitching time - I am really pleased with the way they turned out. Now I just need to decide how to finish them... paperweights? scissorfobs? pincushions? Not sure yet!

Briefly, here is an explanation of Build a Seam. Every Sunday I'm going to post a picture of the basic bare bones of a seam treatment, and we have a week to decide on and complete whatever other stitches and embellishments are needed to make it a complete - and gorgeous! - seam treatment. I am looking forward to training myself to see beyond the basic herringbone or cretan stitch I like to fall back on, and to learn to make more passes across the seam adding more stitches, beads. SRE, etc. This is all happening on the Crazy Quilting International Novice site and I am going to post it here as well in case anyone else would like to play along. If you would like to share please post a comment with a link to your blog or wherever we can find the picture. I would love to post some pictures of finished seams here. Thanks! This is the framework for week one - an intertwining row of scallops or half circles done in chain stitch. I think there is some room here to work! I hope someone else

Just a note to say I will be away on vacation for a week. Hopefully I will have lots of stitching to show for these days away, new stash and photos. I'll be back next weekend. In the meantime, I have about two hours to frantically get together threads, etc to take with me! Gotta run!

So, here is the baggie Cathy won - hope you enjoy it Cathy! So, I started with a small basic baggie and added one item for every person who commented and entered the draw. The 38 items I added are: 1, 2, 3 & 4 - are a sampling of the Fimo faces I have made (fun for cabachons); 5. - three Asian coins; 6. - a flower pot button and two vase buttons (plastic); 7. - a fan charm (cannabilized from costume jewelry); 8. - half a yard of ecru beaded braid trim I discovered in the quilting store yesterday (lol - half a yard for you and half a yard left for me!) 9. - three tie tack type pieces of jewelry (ruler, scissors and pencil), for use either as jewelry or to be cannibalized for cq! lol 10. - "Home Sweet Home" book subtitled "25 Beautiful Cross-Stitch Designs for Every Room in the House" , a Vanessa-Ann Collection along with some waste canvas. There is a method to my madness here! I love using waste canvas to stitch cross stitch motifs onto cq blocks so I figure this

Good morning! Well, I came home from the lake yesterday afternoon and the first thing I did this morning was to fill up my trusty ice cream tub with the 38 names of people who commented on the Giveaway Post. DD did the honours of pulling the name and the winner is..... (drum roll please)....... Cathy K! So, I started with the basic squishie containing a couple of oyas, two specialty threads, a few lengths of fancy yarns (they make such great seaweed couched down with feather stitch!), a silkie Jill made of a little victorian girl with a snowshovel, a couple pieces of gold embroidered taffeta and some organza ribbon for SRE like I used on the pink roses on Candy's block. I pulled the name on time but have been busy coming up with 38 other things (one for each person who commented) to put in the baggie! lol Cathy - if you can email me your address I'll send it out this week. I'll post a picture of all the goodies too so you can get a preview!

I had a delightful piece of mail yesterday - my scissor fob from Laurie arrived! Here it is - the picture is a bit dark - these are beautiful purple beads separated by pearls and the nicest flat pink bead and then a little tassel made of crystals. As you can see, it is already in its new home on my little stork scissors. Thank you, Laurie! I love it!

I posted a picture a few days ago of Candi's block I received to work on in the CQI "On the Seamy Side"Sampler Round Robin. I have now finished my work on it. This go round the stitches to be used were fly stitch and spider web roses. In the picture above is the first motif I did on Candi's block. I made three spider web roses with a shimmery organza ribbon. I placed them on a bed of fly stitch leaves done in a variegated thread. I added rose buds and a sprinkling of clear beads. This is one of the seams I did on Candi's block. I made a double scalloped line of chain stitch in variegated thread and added groups of three straight stitches with a gold bead at the end of each stitch. Lastly, I added those trust spider web roses again with a bit of fly stitch greenery, all done in silk ribbon. This seam was inspired by one I saw recently on Sharon B's In a Minute Ago blog (her link is on the right under Check This Out). It didn't end up looking much

Just wanted to share an idea that has been perculating from the CQI Novice Group. We have decided it would be fun to have something called "Build a Seam" starting the first week in October. I am going to blog this as it goes along so we can play here as well as in the group. Each Sunday I'll post the "bare bones" of a seam treatment and throughout the week we'll take that and add to it to see what each of us comes up with as an end result. For instance, the first week could be a scalloped line of chain stitch. Now, what would you add to it to make a complete seam treatment? Straight stitches and beads? Spider web roses? The idea behind this is to learn to build on a seam with different stitches to come up with interesting treatments. I think it will be interesting too to see the differences between what each person does with it! So... don't touch that dial! Stay tuned! By the way, thank you to everyone who has left comments on my Giveaway post.

I am feeling like celebrating for various reasons! Firstly, this is my 100th post on my blog and that seems worthy of a little celebration. Secondly, I can now count the days on this year's camping season on my fingers! It has been a busy summer out here at the campground and I am anticipating getting home for a rest - I am so looking forward to hot showers, a real bed, good lighting and my comfy stitching chair! So, I have decided to celebrate with a giveaway! I think these are great fun and have put my name down for several and even won once so it feels like time to be on the hosting end for a change. I have decided to give away a squishie of items for stitching, embellishing and inspiration. I can't show you a picture right now because of the twist I have come up with! I'll start out with a squishie containing some fun items like an oya or two, specialty threads and fancy yarns, a silkie and a couple other things. For every person who puts their name in the draw by leavi