Category: crafty

work in progress : autumn sampler

Remember when I started this autumn sampler back in September and I thought I would complete it on time in a five-week period? Haaaa. Well, that’s okay because it’ll get done in time for next autumn. I’ve been working on it almost every day so far so I’m making good progress. The frames were a bit tedious so now that they’re done I can get to the fun part.

I still haven’t been released to drive yet (hopefully tomorrow!) so I’ve been getting kind of depressed every afternoon. I think it’s a combination of running out of pain meds, hormones, and cabin fever. It’s been very restful to laze on the couch all day, but I think I need to get up and be a little more productive to boost my mood. Starting today I’m going to try to move on to some other things on my to-do list, like writing thank-you notes, starting work on my holiday minibook, and maybe doing some housework here and there. But I’m still going to try and complete a couple squares on this sampler every day as well.

Are you working on anything crafty lately? If you’ve had a maternity leave, how did you spend it?

January 29, 2014
work in progress and cross stitch project organization

Since it takes me awhile to complete a crafty project due to my lack of spare time, most of mine are in a state of progress. I’m usually constantly working on something though, so I want to start sharing more of things in an unfinished state. Here is what I’m currently working on:

This is a Victorian flower found in an issue of Cross Stitcher magazine. I’ve been working on it for close to a year, only because it keeps getting put on hold. But I just have the bottom right part to finish now, and I don’t think it will take too much longer. Here is a close up:

I’m looking forward to getting this done and framed, and eventually hung up in our bedroom.

I also want to share with you how I am organizing my cross stitch projects now. Before this I just threw everything in a bag, and I had my floss in all different states – some new skeins, some wrapped on a bobbin. It was fine, but it got a little messy and hard to find things. For Christmas my mom gave me the DMC Stitchbow travel bag, extra binder inserts, and lots of floss holders. I’m in love with it.

Inside it has a large pocket where I store my pattern or book that I’m working from (seen on the right, above) and the threads that I’m using for the project get loaded straight onto the floss holders and into the binder inserts. It’s way less work than winding a bobbin and it keeps the thread in better shape, too.

There are also more pockets inside where I store floss that I had previously wound on bobbins, plus a small spot where I keep my scissors and the floss I’m working with at the moment. There is a felt strip attached where you can store extra needles, too.

I think this is an awesome way to store projects and I have already ordered the mini version for smaller ones. It works great for me because I try hard to only work on one thing at a time and I use almost exclusively DMC floss. I think it would still work well for other brands of floss too, or even to use a project card stored in a pocket and remove the binder inserts (which is what I plan to do when I work on this project, for example). Originally I thought I would be able to store all my floss in here, but it’s rather too small for that and it would take too much rearranging of the pockets to keep in order.

Anyway, I hope this was interesting to one or two of you! :)

January 8, 2014
project life 2013 : weeks 46 – 47

Everywhere lately I’m seeing Project Lifers post pictures of their 2014 title pages, and I wish I was at that point but I’m just not and that’s okay! Here is another spread for you of what I do have done.

This is from November 11 – 24. It includes an insert for a day in the life, and it appears I didn’t take a photo of the full spread without the insert. Oh well. :)

Really simple as usual. Mixing in cards from the seafoam and midnight core kits, photos with very little embellishing, and some extra journaling.

Here is the insert I did for day in the life. I posted these pics on Instagram so for the journaling I just included the time and my captions from that on plain white cardstock. I added a fabric tab and that’s that!

Since I am still caught up with editing and ordering photos I know it won’t be too hard to finish out this year’s album, and I am excited to start on the next. I am still finalizing what method I will use, but I don’t expect much to change unless it involves simplifying the whole thing even more. :)

It’s going to be a great week, okay? Okay!

December 30, 2013
project life 2013 : weeks 44 – 45

I’m about a month behind on Project Life right now but I’m just going to keep plugging along. My plan is to keep up with my photos and notes, work on it when I can, and then get caught up on maternity leave! I have two completed spreads to share in the next couple weeks and here’s the first one.

Above you’ll see the actual spread, encompassing the dates of October 28 to November 10. But actually there is an insert in between for the nine days of a photo a day project I made it through. :) Below is the spread with the insert.

I got really lazy about taking photos for awhile! Need to improve on that! The left side of this spread has a few shots from our local family outing, only one of Halloween (it was kind of a bummer this year with a cranky toddler) and one random photo of Meredith and me.

I threw in the overview of extra stuff on this little journaling card.

I was so low on photos, and David and I didn’t even take any together on our 5-year anniversary trip, so I decided to blow up a photo of the cottage we stayed in since that was the main part of the trip. To do this, I cropped the photo in Photoshop Elements into four 4×6 sections and had it printed through Snapfish. Then I trimmed the bottom two photos. Below that I added a summary of our trip plus one extra photo and story that happened.

This is one of those spreads that I am really not too pleased with, but still, the important thing is that it’s done! I am still thinking about how I want to approach this project in 2014. I am entertaining all ideas such as going back to weekly spreads, doing monthly spreads, disregarding dates altogether and just filling it in as things happen, not using the core kits, going to a smaller album, different page protectors, etc. In my darker moments I even think about giving up, but I know that that’s not a real option right now. These albums have become one of my favorite things. Most likely I’ll end up doing something similar to what I have been doing, but I’m waiting for inspiration to strike. :)

I’m going to take the next few days off the blog to survive Christmas and try to savor it, but I’ll be back at the end of the week and I hope you have a wonderful holiday!

December 23, 2013
completed bucilla stocking!

You guys I am super excited about this. I finally completed the stocking I was making for my niece!

Let me tell you again the reason I was making this. Everyone on my husband’s side of the family has a different one of these beautiful stockings (by Bucilla) handmade by his grandmother who the kids called Gigi. When we married into the family she even made one for us. This year we were all so sad when Gigi was diagnosed with two advanced forms of cancer and passed away within a few months. I personally really looked up to her and she is the one that gave me her sewing machine and taught me how to use it. She made Meredith many gorgeous knitted blankets, hats, sweaters, and toys. She also had an amazing life story that I never tired of hearing about.

Anyway, my niece Karley was born in March of this year and Gigi wasn’t able to make her a stocking so I volunteered to try! My mother-in-law and sister-in-law helped put a lot of the sequins on the pieces and I know they would have done more but it was kind of hard to split up the work with such a complicated project. I was also excited to figure it out by myself. As for my experience in needlepoint, I am an amateur cross-stitcher and I have only done the simplest of embroidery and felt work before. I was learning new things up until the very end with this, but I enjoyed every bit of it!

Now excuse me as I show you a ton of detail photos because I can’t stop looking at it.

Santa’s hat and face were the first pieces to go on. I’m glad they turned out as well as they did because I really had no idea what I was doing at first!

The train and the jack-in-the-box were probably the most time consuming parts of it.

The hardest part might have been simply embroidering the name on the tag! Since it’s personalized I had to trace it onto tissue paper and then stitch over the paper, tearing it away at the end. It was kind of messy and I am just so happy that I didn’t have to redo the whole thing.

Another detail shot of the stitching:

The whole project was both easier and harder than I expected. I started it back in September because I had no idea how intense it would be, and I’m really glad I did. I don’t have a ton of spare time and this is some really detailed stuff! Every single little piece has to be sequined, embroidered, cut out, stuffed, and attached by hand. So it’s a lot, and I’m really glad I didn’t develop pregnancy carpal tunnel because I don’t know if I could have done it with numb fingers. :) But also, once I mastered a few stitches and became familiar with the material, it was really just matter of doing it!

For fun I hung it up on our fireplace to see it next to the others.

From left to right is David’s, mine, Meredith’s, and Karley’s. You can see how the patterns have become way more complicated in recent years!

It is so satisfying to be finished with this project, but I can say that I am actually already looking forward to making another one for our little boy next year! For now though, I am really excited to be getting back to my true love, cross stitch, and this project that I set for myself at the beginning of the year. :)

December 18, 2013