Holiday Party and New Pattern!!!

BIG day - Saturday! Always In Stitches, my LNS, had a Holiday Party. The party included a sale on all sampler designs, and as a special treat, Carole, the shop owner, decided to display a few samplers from her collection - just the tip of the iceberg! I have seen almost all of the samplers individually that she hung, but it was a bit overwhelming and exciting to see them all together! Here's what customers were greeted by as they entered the shop.


Then a few more beauties - a Quaker from 1799, a small Shaker sampler, a large example from the Philadelphia area, and several Maryland samplers.

On the ever-welcoming table were Hannah Horsfall and Ann Kitching, both done at the Ackworth School in England, that I have reproduced. Along with the originals of HH and AK were Ann's stitched pieces of both! Very fun to see together and celebrate.

And last, but certainly not least, was a small sampler by Mary Bagley dated 1808. I loved the flowered urns, crowns, birds, and other motifs and was not alone in this. Carole has allowed me to reproduce it and my rendering is just below the original. I finished stitching it the night before (of course) and threw it in a frame that I "altered" so it could be at the shop for the party. It will be my new pattern and I expect to complete it for release in January - available at Always In Stitches (of course)!

Here's a close-up. It's stitched on 40 ct. Vintage Navy Bean by Lakeside Linens using DMC, but a conversion to NPI silks will be included in the pattern.

Okay, I better get to wrapping some Christmas presents and get stuff out in the mail. Last night I threw together my 11th block of the Block of the Month that I'm participating in. Only one more block to go! Yeah! But it's a doozey - 53 pieces in it - ugh! Do I HAVE to???

Baby Bee Skep

My DF Henrietta stitched me this piece a month or so ago. It's all over ONE (probably on 28 ct.)! It came to me in the mail with a BEE-themed card that she made - also a treasure! I framed the piece yesterday. I have long admired the little stitched bee skep that Henri has framed and on the wall in her kitchen. She was kind enough to make sure that I have my very own. I'll have to find a permanent home for it on one of my walls - one where I see it EVERY day!

Thanks again, HONEY!

Take a moment. . .

and give thanks for all the wonderful blessings you've received this year. My little GOBBLER is certainly one of the best!
Have a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Mermaid Girl

Here's a finish of mine from the end of October. It was a present for my sister for her recent birthday. She loves mermaids. Yes, Yes, I know, I should be doing one of those GORGEOUS Mirabilia mermaids for her, and actually, I do have the graphs for at least TWO of those babes. Maybe if I start in 2010 I might get one done for her next BIG birthday, which would be in 2018!!! Ya think??? Hmmmmm. . . . .

Anyway, I was so excited to get this in the mail - EARLY - that I forgot to take a picture of it. Nothing like getting something all gift wrapped and then boxed to go to the Post Office and THEN remembering you need a picture of it! UGH! So she sent me the picture after she opened it for HER day. She loved it - of course!

It is BY THE OCEAN WITH JANE AUSTEN by The Sampler Girl. A pretty quick and easy stitch. I did a few color changes - like putting some of the red/dark coral in the motif on the right, so that it would match the frame. The frame is an old Hog River frame that was made for a Christmas design, but it just happened to be a good size fit for the piece and I thought the painted gold circles looked a bit like air bubbles bubbling up from under the sea - so it worked for me. Plus, the frame color is pretty close to what I remember as the color of my sister's bedroom walls. As it turns out, the frame color is so close to her bedroom wall color she's hung the piece on her closet door which is white and provides the necessary contrast.

Am off to a rug hooking retreat at the Olde Green Cupboard. I'll be collecting the $25 gift certificate that I won at the end of August. Gee, I wonder how many days I'll have that before it's spent??? Not many to NONE! Ha-Ha!

What A Day!

Dark picture - It's made of print blocks and says QUILTS.

Last Friday morning I headed on down to West Palm Beach to the World Quilt Show Florida at the Palm Beach Convention Center. It's a new event location for Mancuso Show Management - the BIG quilt show people. Hopefully, it was well attended so they will consider it again for next year. Classes were also offered by local and nationally-known teachers. I stopped on the way south to pick up THE TRIO (AD, DM and SM), who I was honored to be joining for the day! Once we got into the convention center, we bee-lined it for the Olde Green Cupboard's booth to visit with Gloria and Jill. Gloria was busy cutting out pieces for an English Paper Piecing project, Jill had her hoop and was needle punching away, and Sue was demonstrating Locker Hooking. We all just started to drool at the quilts/quilt kits/folk art - most of which is not offered at their store. The booth was my favorite - as I expected - since lots of other shops focused on the tropical look, I guess, since it is SOUTH Florida, duh! Not really MY thing. We shopped, perused the quilts from all over the world, grabbed sandwiches for lunch, and then re-visited our favorite booths. I ran into several people that I haven't seen in 10+ years. Here's two shots of the OGC's booth.

My favorite quilt: Pennsylvania Palette (made by a quilter from Maine) - it was made with repro fabric of a typical 1890's PA quilt, with the tiny yellow, bubble-gum pink, and blue prints, as well as a great red paisley fabric for the borders (a repro from earlier in the 1800's). It won an award for Best Use of Color. I was drawn to it because I own a few PA quilts using those original fabrics - one of the first antique PA quilts that I bought was a bar quilt with bubble-gum pink and yellow bars. Think I have a Lone Star quilt from PA using the pink, yellow, and blue, too!

It was a fun day (helping out the economy a bit) and as always, lots of laughs with these three women. After leaving the convention center, there was a question as to whether someone left their cell phone at a booth or somewhere else in the center. As I was trying to concentrate on getting onto I-95 going north, AD (in the front passenger seat) was calling SM's cell phone. SM was in the back seat of the car. We all heard her phone ringing, so that was good, but SM could not find it in her purse!!! It took DM to fish it out of the purse. As if I hadn't understood before, it was clear to me then why these three are ALWAYS together!!! Ha-Ha! Even though I was somewhat doubled over the car's steering wheel laughing, we made it up I-95 and back to AD's house safely.

I was thrilled to be able to get to tour Ann's house, which I've heard so much about. She loves primitives and her house is chock full of early items - yellow-ware bowls, tin and pewter pieces, redware plates, wonderful old pine and oak furniture, and quilts, in addition to her samplers and other stitched pieces.

In Ann's sewing room I spied her first block of the Settler's Pride quilt done in hand-dyed wool. It's beyond YUMMY!!! The whole quilt can be seen on Homestead Hearth's website or Country Thread's website.

Three Pumpkins

Here is a picture of the three Bittersweet Pumpkins that I mentioned in my previous post. One is going to have a white background with a hint of green in it, one will have a black background, and the other has a dark greeny-brown/black background. All are being hooked in different cuts - #4, #6, and #8 (my favorite cut!). It's a great pattern. Maybe I'll have to put it on my list for next year.

Halloween Hooking!!!

Welcome to the 3rd Annual Halloween Hooking Weekend - a private workshop at the exclusive Azalea House Inn on the banks of the beautiful St. Johns River in Palatka, FL. We arrived on Friday morning to be greeted by a fully decorated Inn. Jill loves Halloween and has two trees full of ornies and lots of fun friends on mantles. The stair risers that rug guild members hooked several years ago for the Inn were up and are always fun to see!

My project for the weekend was Give Ye Thanks, a Lori Brechlin design of Notforgotten Farm available thru Spruce Ridge Studios. Three friends were working on the same design - Lori's Bittersweet Pumpkin, Jill was hooking on Pumpkin Thyme, which she started earlier in the year, and Melody was busy on Peace and Plenty. Can you tell that we LOVE Lori's designs adapted by Spruce Ridge for rug hooking???

Our teacher this year was Dianne Kelly, who was so instructive and as always - FUN! We had many laughs. The night before I left, I just got the urge to dye up a few pieces of wool, and luckily my husband was busy at work. So I had the kitchen to myself for 4 hours. WEEEEE!!! Wet wool everywhere! Dianne liked several of the pieces that resulted, so I used 2 of them for my log cabin. The pictures look a bit dark, but the cabin is a mottled pumpkin-y color, with lighter highlights hooked in.

Black lettering and brown trees. One little acorn, so far.

The background is going to be an off-white plaid with the hills being a puce-y green plaid. I'll be sure to post some progress pictures.

Decorated trees! One with a painted box as a base, and one with Jill's UNREAL hooked tree skirt (partially covered by a student's piece).

For my quilting and cross-stitching friends, here's Jill's Quaker wall, with Sarah Tatum and Sarah Moon, and a fabulous Halloweenie Quilt draped over the couch.

And the very recognizable And They Sinned, taking up a whole wall, that Jill stitched in THREE months! (Better get on it, Ann. Next summer vacation, maybe?)

It was a wonderful weekend away. Great place to hook, good friends, good food and another great time with lots of memories.

Please, check out Melody's blog entry on the weekend. She always does fabulous event reports and her entry on this past weekend is another great one! Plus, she's got a picture of the hooked stair risers.