Slow Sunday Stitching - December 7 AND 2025 Rotation #7, Slot #3 (Not Counted Thread) Changeover

Let's get the leftover stuff from last week out of the way first.

The November section of the Daily Temperature Log was done in "Norwich Stitch".   This is a specialty stitch that I'd never come across before.  

 It builds up from a 6 x 6 cross in layers to make a sort of basket weave effect.   Very interesting texture and easy to do.   Plus the stitches were arranged in a regular grid last month, which made it an easy to memorize and execute section.

And the entire thing prior to starting the December section - which is large Octagonal Eyelets.  You'll see that section (and a finish) on New Years Day!

I did post the Mead Dragon last Sunday when I finished working on it, but here it is again with a link to the stats post for November.  She's coming along.  Currently (after another week of work) at just over 85%.

In addition to the daily stitch on the Temp Log and at least 100 stitches on the Mead Dragon, I have been working away at the vintage needlepoint from Germany.  I got the materials to extend the sky and figured out places and a technique of 'speckling' the two colors to keep from having a harsh line between them.   You can see that the new yarn is just slightly brighter blue, but within the variation of a summer sky.   And since there's no harsh edges, it looks acceptably deliberate.

Working ten hours got me halfway across the sky and clouds that take up approximately the top quarter of the piece.   When this comes up again in the rotation, I'll be working on the cloud areas on the left side and the sky areas around them. 

And the back so you can see the progress: I've been working this piece in hand because I don't have appropriately sized stretcher bars, but I am not loving it.  It's hard on the hands and I can't use my floor stand to stitch two handed.  

also fixed the place where I'd carried a thread across the tower by mistake

Plans for the rest of December until I restart the rotation on New Year's Eve.

• Finish December section of the Daily Temperature Log.   Measure it for a frame.
• Continue the daily progress on the Mead Dragon. (This is slot #4 on the last rotation of the year)
• Frame the Majestic Eagle crewel piece to give to my grandson for Christmas
• Make the Unicorn needlepoint into a box pillow for my granddaughter for Christmas.. (after the Christmas stocking disaster - see below - she decided to have it framed instead, so she got a 'promissory note gift', and it will be framed in the new year.)
• Get the design wall set up in my new sewing room (!!!!!)
• Piece the rest of the blocks for quilt backing "It was the 80's.  
• My son's dog got ahold of Carl's stocking - it needs a MAJOR repair (see this post).   (ETA, repairs done, but waiting for embellishments from 123Stitch.  ETA Again:  Finished and hanging up with my stocking!)   

Don't worry, the destructive canine was not Della. She only carries around plushies, socks and other fabric things and stashes them in her bedding undamaged.  I think she remembers having puppies.

Quilts Ahoy.  I'm feeling the urge to sew for the first time in years. Here's the finished top for "It was the 80s".   I haven't worked on it for five years.  But eventually everything gets their turn.

Linking up with the SSS crew where you can see some amazing quilts and needlework!  They keep me motivated.

Slow Sunday Stitching - July 27, 2025

Update on the move.  There's still some out of season clothing and decor and the shop stuff that needs to be moved.  (I need to clear out the shop area in the new basement from the tenants abandoned belongings).   But I have slept here, cooked here, showered here and done laundry here.   I think that means I'm moved!   I still feel odd when I walk in, like I'm expecting it to be my parents' furniture instead of mine LOL.   And I haven't even started decorating - there are still windows without curtains even (only the bedroom ones are up).

Needless to say, there wasn't much crafting this week.   I did get a couple of hours in on the BBD piece.  I'm now at 6.61%.  The nice thing about two over two on 28 count is that if I have good light, I don't need magnification. 

Lettering is done and I got a start on the moon and stars in the upper section.    The moon color shows a lot more variegation in the photo than in real life.   Odd, it's usually the other way around.

Late hooking up with the SSS weekly roundup.   They probably think I perished under an avalanche of boxes.   Actually, I haven't started unpacking the library yet, so it could still happen!

Slow Sunday Stitching - July 13, 2025 AND Rotation #4, Slot #3 (Modern) Changeover

This week I got a little more done on the Just Nan class "Butterflies, Blossoms and Bees" than I thought I would.  And I finished off the ten hours in the rotation with the completion of the outer third (other than the beads).  

In addition to finishing off the butterflies and the backstitch in gold on the wings and the double running antennae, I got the eight 'two-color satin stitch' flowers done.   There were also the centers and stems of a couple of beaded flowers on each side plus the tiny butterflies in the corners made up of two Smyrna Cross stitches and three tiny backstitches.   So stinkin' cute!

The kitchen appliances get here a week from tomorrow.  I can't wait.   Movers to get the beds will happen tomorrow and the couch, bookcases, etc. will happen next week - in the days after the appliance delivery.   I'm so over this whole thing.  I've been unpacking as it goes, so at some point, there will be more at the new house than at the old house and I'll hopefully feel 'moved'.   Right now, it's all up in the air.  

What am I going to be working on while things are all over the place?  Well, I'm going to keep working on my two daily pieces.   And I'll set up and start my "Christmas in July" piece.  It's Blackbird Designs "And to all a Good Night" Loose Feathers #11.   This one is out of print and not yet included in one of the books.   A lot of people have it as a 'unicorn' chart.  It will be a framed piece or possibly a wall quilt, so I'm using the kit materials.

SSS crew link up for this week is here.  

Slow Sunday Stitching - June 29, 2025

I have not mentioned it yet, but I am moving soon.  The rest of June and most of July will be a bit weird and busy.   The renovation on my parent's house will be to the point where I can move in.  There will still be things to do, of course, and I have not yet booked the movers.  But VERY soon - maybe as soon as after the 4th of July holiday!  

I have had the living room, dining room (those two are the green second from the left on the bottom row) and kitchen (the tan right above the green) repainted, and some minor updates done on the main bathroom.   Plus got some of the floors redone on the first floor (see behind the paint sample brochure - century-old hardwoods and so pretty).  The big renovation is to get the laundry moved up to the main floor mud room from the basement.

I've been thinking about this move since before COVID but ended up renting the big house out at the urging of my daughter in law.  That was mostly because I was still working full time and didn't have the band width for a move, but I've discovered that I'm not happy being a landlord.   When my current renters had a family emergency that caused them to break their lease early, I took advantage to finally move in myself.  I'll get my little house updated over the next year or two and get it sold.   I discussed which one to sell with my son, my grandson and my sister and we decided to keep the 'family house'.   

It will be nice to eventually have a dedicated sewing space, though it will be rough finished for a while.  There was a flood in the second-floor bathroom above and both rooms are currently just untaped drywall.  I can live with that - one of those walls will be covered with peg board and have a big cutting table covering most of the space and there will be a design wall covering another.  Getting the upstairs bathroom done is priority, even over getting the little house ready for sale. 

In addition to getting all my books packed up, the main focus this week was the surface embroidery on the Floral Tote.   I am almost at the ten-hour point.   I'm hoping to have a changeover post later today or first thing tomorrow.    I think I can probably finish that bottom section of three flowers, which will leave the main central flowers for next round.  

I've also been keeping up with both the daily temperature log and the #WIPintoshape challenge piece (which is my Mead Dragon).   I'll take end of month photos this week and share next Sunday.  

The next focus project will be the Just Nan "Butterflies, Blossoms and Bees", which will finish this rotation.   But needlework may be scarce and scattered for the next couple of weeks after the Independence Day holiday.   I'm going to focus on the daily goals only, plus finishing.   And I do have a planned start for "Christmas in July".

I'll keep reporting in, if only to prove I haven't been lost under an avalanche of packing boxes LOL.  Checking in with the SSS crew (this week's round up).

Slow Sunday Stitching - July 9, 2023

For the last several months, ever since I got the dining room table situation fixed, I have been waffling about how I am going to sew now.   I do not have a dedicated sewing room or even a sewing space.   I always set up my machine on the dining room table and the old table top was so scratched and marred that I didn't care if there was another scratch added by a random pin or dropped pair of scissors.   When the leg support on the table collapsed, the only other possible space was my work from home desk.  And with the laptop stand, large monitor, files etc, there was barely enough space for my sewing machine.  Plus I didn't want to ruin the finish on my desk.   Then the NEW dining room table top is also lovely and I do not want to ruin it either.  What to do???   So I haven't had my sewing machine out since.

Well, I was getting ready to take my order of furnace filters down to the basement, and it struck me - here's a huge horizontal space that needs to be protected and here's a huge expanse of very nice cardboard that is only going into the garden as mulch or into the recycling.   It's a match made for each other!

So here's my sewing set up.  One of the drop leaves is up and the cardboard is just about a quarter of an inch over the edge.  The weight of my machine is enough so that the cardboard doesn't move around and there's just a tiny triangle of space that isn't covered on the near side of the table.  (I think I'm going to put masking tape on both sides to fix that.)  My built in buffet in the back is counter height and just fits an 18 x 24 cutting mat perfectly.   And the ironing board is usually just where I'm standing, but I moved it out of the way temporarily.   I have one of those three tiered craft carts that you can find anywhere that are dupes of the IKEA Rashult for all my tools.    

The quilting bug has bit again and "It was the 80s" is now 2/3s of the way assembled.  I rebooted it back in December of 2017, which is a bit embarrassing because at that time I thought it would be a six month project LOL.  I got distracted by a couple of other quilts, including Lucy Boston, and I just do not sew all that much these days. Hoping for more time once I retire.  And now that I've figured out the set up, hopefully I'll do better.   

It takes me about five minutes to set up once everything is pulled out of the hall closet and about 15 to tear down, including sweeping the floor and putting away all the fabrics used.   I have another old cart that my mom had in her pantry that holds the thread box, the pattern and fabric for the current project, the cutting mat and the case for the machine.  Adding the carts to the mix has made it so that I can corral the tools and materials in a way that is both efficient and easy to work with.   I'm still tweaking the tool set up, but I can find everything. 

The machine, by the way, is "Bee" my mother's Singer 99 from 1955.   I use that one as my 'daily driver' because it has a bigger harp than my grandmother's Featherweight and a larger bobbin, which I appreciate when doing long seams.  "Alice", the Singer 221, is still my workshop machine and my favorite overall.  I learned to sew on that machine.

Posting to the SSS crew, who are probably amused by my glacial quilting progress!  Link to current round up.

Slow Sunday Stitching - April 23, 2023

First of all, I've skipped #24HoursOfCrossStitch this weekend.  I just had too much going on.   We had a pretty severe thunderstorm come through last Wednesday (though we missed the tornadoes that hit further south) and I had a couple of limbs come down onto the porch roof.  They were small, about an inch and a half, so no real damage.   But I did have to get the tree guys to come by.  I'm FAR past being comfortable on a ladder a story up in the air!!

Also, I left it too late to get vacation day on the calendar for Friday, but I do have vacation days already scheduled for the middle of May.  I'm not planning any travel, so I'll do a stitching marathon for the start of my vacation - perfect!

That said, there was a good amount of stitching accomplished this week.  I worked on both the travel project (the perforated paper Santa with dogs ornament) and the Sugar Skull (460 plus stitches this week).  I should have enough progress to do pictures on both soon.  But the main focus project was "Majestic Eagle", my vintage crewel kit.

The chest and head of the eagle is done!  I think it came out looking pretty decent, especially considering the time gap between the upper part of the grey area and the remaining stitching.  

As I thought, I'd built up the difficulty of the project in my head and it turned out not so bad.  I found a good reference photo of an actual bald eagle in a pose very close to this one, and tried to indicate the density and direction of the feathers with long and short stitches, split stitches, and "Pueblo" stitches (a variant of the split stitch); I think it's very effective.  This section only took me to the four hour mark on this ten hour rotation slot, so I needed to decide what part of this picture to work on next.  

When I started this project, it was my first actual crewel project and I'm self-taught in this technique.  This project is on the larger side - 16 x 20 inches (41 by 51 cm) and has almost 20 colors.  (Yes, as usual, I jumped in the deep end LOL).  When I was learning embroidery from my grandmother as a young girl, she always had me work all of one color before moving on to the next, that's what I started to do here.   Sort of.

But I have found out since then that the best practice for crewel embroidery is to work motif by motif or in a picture like this one, area by area.  The general rule is 'back to front'; so things in the 'background' that will be overlapped by things closer to the viewer are done first.  The exception is if the stitches in the background might be damaged if they are worked first, one always does any fragile stitches last (i.e. the long pine needles since they would be at risk for snagging).

I have partially done 'stuff' everywhere on this piece, the only parts that are completed are the bark covered part of the branch, the feet, and (recently) the head area. So I think I'll try to get the right wing done next since it's 'behind' the larger 'forward' wing and quite a bit of it is finished already.  I've kind of painted myself into a corner in the center of the secondary flight feathers of that wing.  You want a crisp line on the edge of the feathers that are on 'top', so it will be a bit tricky to get the stitches in that section to lay correctly.   Then the rest of that back wing will need to be worked from the top 'leading edge' of the wing down to the smallest tertiary flight feathers just above the tail.  (Those are the bottom two feathers that are completely worked already.)  The 'covert' feathers at the base of the wing are either finished or out of sight behind the left wing that is raised in front.  The only other place that is problematic is the where the next to the last of the primary flight feathers overlaps the first of the secondary flight feathers (the orange one in the center) - another point where I'll have to watch carefully so I don't destroy the line of the 'front' feather that's already stitched.

Also, did I fall down an internet rabbit hole researching the names of the different types of feathers on eagles?  Did it send me on a wild goose chase into Medieval falconry?   Yes.  Yes it did.  😁

Linking up with the SSS crew (this week's roundup).

Slow Sunday Stitching - August 29, 2021

 What a week.   I was on vacation for most of it, but it was not for fun.  There were several appointments and a contractor scheduled.  

The garden is still in overdrive - almost a half gallon of cherry tomatoes today!

I have new front stairs from the public side walk to the upper side walk.  This is something that has needed to be done for several years.

Nice and straight (the bottom section to the public side walk is straighter than the photo shows. It will now drain correctly).

Before, top step tilts up, bottom step tilts down, area to sidewalk tilts toward step and collects leaves.

I did not get a lot of crafting done this week.  Just an hour or so on Dutch Beauty, but I am closing in on a page finish, just that little bit of fill in and a parrot to go on this page!

Lucy Boston alternate block #3 is getting it's outer round of black honeycombs.

 And last, but certainly not least, the navy colored thrumbs are all into balls of yarn and Round 9 of the sock yarn blanket is well underway. 

Linking up to Slow Sunday Stitching (current roundup)