A Jolly July Finish!

 I finished this last night and blinged up the snowflakes and Rudolph's nose with HotFix 'jewels'.

I have one more ornament I'd like to stitch but will probably not finish it 'til August - which starts tomorrow!

Tomatoes have started ripening in the garden. Skip started several varieties from seed in a makeshift 'greenhouse' on the south side of our brick home in mid-April. He ran a heated cable 3" beneath the surface of the soil and leaned an old storm window against the house to warm the top of the soil. By the end of May, the seedlings were ready to be planted. They had a real headstart on our normal growing season. He also picked some early maturing species. We will have tons of tomatoes which I will cut up and roast, with onion and basil, then puree and put in freezer bags and freeze for use all winter. Priscilla and Chelsea - the Real Housewives of Cross Stitch - call this 'yard sauce'. I tried it for the first time last year to great success.

On Friday night, Skip grilled steak and sweet potatoes and I contributed a caprese salad with tomatoes and basil from the garden, 

I saw a recipe for balsamic glaze with I fully intend to make. The simmering of the balsamic vinegar thickens the mixture and with the addition of a sweetener makes it a delicious addition to dishes such as inslata caprese.

Another Clutch and Some Finishes!

I made another clutch from some fabric I held back from a project bag I made a couple of weeks ago.

I love that I have a selection of snap colours to choose from.

Outside

Inside (ort catcher and felt piece for needles)

Two pockets large enough to hold a Smart Phone.

And a coordinating zipper pull.

Except for the bias binding, I had everything in my stash. With this project, I ran out of buckram (stiff woven interfacing) so replenished my stock at the fabric store after going for breakfast on Tuesday morning.

I have also finished the piece I have been stitching for Teresa Kogut. I'll get it in the mail to her at the end of this week. I mentally had the end of July as the deadline so am pleased I met that goal. Can you believe the beginning of August is on Sunday!?

I finished the last little bit on the Strawberry Thief. 

It was a very fun stitch. I haven't finalized my plans for FFOing it. Possibly a pillow or a framed piece. 

I also finished the Starburst Flag of Canada. I still need to check that I did all the individual cross stitches but here it is:

I took this photo to show the differences between Blanc and B5200. The differences are so hard to see unless under natural light. 

I did enjoy doing all the starbursts and stars. 

With those out of the way, I started another piece for Christmas in July. It's Holy Night by Barbara Ana Designs from the Christmas/Winter 2019 issue of Punch Needle and Primitive Stitcher Magazine.

I substituted a different olive green using Cody Hoover's substitution tool. I will also be substituting ecru for DMC 712 cream. I'm sure I have 712 in one of my UFO project bags but ecru will work well. I'm also thinking of using my HotFix tool for some of the snowflakes.

I do a lot of stitching in hand or rolling up excess fabric and clamping it into my QSnaps. To get the creases out, I place the piece face down on a terry cloth towel, spray the back with Best Press, and iron with a hot setting. I have never had a problem with dyes running because I don't saturate the fabric but some people discourage using a spray or steam at all with hand-dyed threads. 

One trick I learned from Vonna Pfeiffer is to use an atomizing sprayer for the Best Press, The droplets are much smaller that way. I purchased mine on Amazon. There are many to choose from like this. Barb told me another tip - to use a 50/50 mixture of Best Press and water. It will certainly make the Best Press go farther. 

I really like how the creases visibly soften with just spraying Best Press on them. Then with ironing, they press right out. Highly recommend. Your local quilting shop will carry it as does Amazon.

A Fun Weekend of Sewing

Inspired by my first Cross Stitch Clutch, I made a second one on the weekend. This time I put the zipper going the right way.

I made so many mistakes that I had to pick out and redo. But it all came together in the end.

Instead of bias tape, I made the binding from the width of fabric. The WOF has a bit of stretch - good for going around corners. I even had to re-cut and re-sew the binding because of a big mistake but it turned out well.

A while back I bought a pack of snaps in about 20 different colours. Now I can easily find a coordinating colour for projects like this. I even had the perfect colour of felt for the little needle holder.

Although the pattern is made with two pockets by inserting a divider, the divider could be omitted and only the one, vinyl pocket could suffice.

I also made 2 thread catcher 'tacos' with the fabric I made with selvages last week.

I used the lid of a yogurt container as the template and bound the circles with double fold bias tape. They're two different sizes because I trimmed the raw edges of one of them after sewing one side of the bias tape on. 

This was single fold that I folded double, leaving quite skinny tape. I had to sew carefully to enclose the raw edges and catch both sides of the tape.

They're quick and easy to make.

I'll make more selvage fabric and make some more.

While on my Zoom chat with my Monday morning stitching group, I stitched this week's blackwork stitchalong.

Bluebells - the centre diamond:

It was supposed to go where the Irish bells are on the centre left but I swapped spots.

I have no idea what I'll do with this piece when I'm finished. I'll either frame it or make it into a pillow. Regardless, it has been a lot of fun to stitch.

Yesterday, Skip and I had friends over for a good visit and dinner. It was too hot outside to eat on the deck so we visited inside in air-conditioned comfort. It was the first time having people in since January of last year. We've all been double-vaccinated for at least a month and felt pretty comfortable without our masks. It felt normal!

Ontarians have done a great job getting vaccinated in such a short time! There are too many vaccine-hesitant/anti-vaxxer/whack-a-doodles out there for my liking but hopefully we'll get over 80% of us done before the vaccination rate drops off. We almost have that many with their first dose so I'm hoping they'll all get their second dose soon and we can kick COVID's butt to the curb.

Cross Stitch Wallet

On a recent FlossTube that I watched (I don't remember which one), the FlossTuber was sent a stitching wallet as a gift. I was intrigued. Barb and I discussed it and she encouraged me to deconstruct it and hinted strongly that she would like one.

With a little bit of searching, I found the pattern on Etsy. It's called a Cross Stitch Wallet by Starlight Stitching Co. 

With the purchase of the pattern, there is a link to a video tutorial. A couple of the steps were unnecessarily fiddly so when I make others, I will use my modifications.

The wallet has a zippered, vinyl window. I'm annoyed I sewed the zipper in the wrong way. Next time I'll do better.

Inside are two pockets.

A smart phone would easily fit in either of them as well as any other stitching accessories - needles, scissors, etc.

Inside is lined with batting which serves as a thread catcher and a piece of wool felt for needles or pins.

Here it is opened out on the other side.

And closed up with snaps.

Although I did pay a visit to Fabricland this morning, I had everything in my stash to make this.

One fat quarter would do the trick, plus a 10" zipper, two sets of snaps, a pack of double fold seam binding to coordinate with the outer fabric, batting (I used synthetic, fusible as I find cotton batting to be too fluffy), vinyl, and thread (coordinating colour plus some white).

When I make this again, I'll put the zipper in so it opens from left to right, and do the strips that attach to the zipper and vinyl differently. I'll also wait to the end to do the snaps on the non-pocket side. Fabric and vinyl shifting occurred during assembly which misaligned the snaps. I had to take one apart and move it to make the wallet lie flat and even.

Otherwise, it wasn't a difficult project and I will definitely make more. Maybe even tomorrow.

Skip and I tried to go for breakfast this morning at our favourite breakfast place. There were 'Help Wanted' signs in the windows and they now open at 11am. No more breakfasts there. I'm sad we didn't see our favourite server. I hope she found another job somewhere.

We then ventured to another breakfast place nearby only to find it no longer exists so we ended up at Sunset Grill. I found 3 eggs AND home fries AND 4 pieces of bacon AND Texas toast too much to eat. We'll have to find a place with smaller portions. I didn't really like their coffee either.

It was nice to eat out for breakfast for the first time since March of last year when we were in Texas. It's something Skip and I like to do every week or so. I felt comfortable dining indoors for the first time since then. The servers all wore masks as did we any time we weren't seated at our table. Every other table was vacant so there were more than 2m between tables. I do look forward to dining at an outdoor patio some day that it isn't blisteringly hot.

Mexican Food on my Mind

 I've been wanting to make a tortilla warmer for quite a while - since starting to make my own corn tortillas, in fact. 

We can even get the corn flour in our Canadian grocery stores! It's usually on the bottom shelf under the other Mexican food items.

I also unearthed the tortilla press we brought back from when we lived in Mexico in the mid-60s like this one Amazon sells:

A batch of dough usually makes 15 - 20 tortillas so I freeze what we don't use in that first meal. I've been warming them in the microwave in a tea towel, which works well. But I wanted to make a dedicated tortilla warmer because I had all the materials - cotton batting, cotton thread, and cotton fabrics. It's important to use all cotton materials because synthetics could melt in the microwave in the reheating process.

I couldn't tell the difference between some cotton muslin and broadcloth (poly/cotton) that I had in my stash so I cut up an old (clean) sheet that still had the 100% cotton label affixed to it. 

I watched this video and got to work.

My tortilla press is 6" in diameter so I added 3.5 more inches to accommodate a stack of tortillas and so the warmer would close during reheating.

I cut two 9.5" circles each of the lining (sheet), Mexican-themed fabric, and cotton batting.

Within 10 minutes of sitting down to sew, I had a finished project!

The 600 thread count sheeting makes for a lovely interior. LOL.

If you customarily warm flour tortillas, they tend to be bigger so you would need to make your warmer proportionately bigger as well.

I've also been toying with making fabric out of the selvages I've been collecting. A couple of quilting friends are also going to be giving me their selvages.

I plan to make more thread-catching 'tacos' 

and thought selvages would look cute as the exterior fabric. I used a piece of muslin/broadcloth (whatever) as the base fabric and sewed the selvages to it on a 45º angle. Basically the finished selvage edge covers the cut edge and I stitched very close to the finished edge. Then I trimmed everything to 5" x 10". This will make 2 'tacos'.

I'm all about the randomness of it. Some of the selvages didn't have a lot of the coloured fabric. Early on in my sewing, I would trim right close to it but now I usually cut an inch in from the selvage edge to reveal the coloured fabric as well.  Some suggest cutting 1.25" to 1.5" in from the selvage edge. 

Some selvages have the actual pattern on them, some are blank. Others have the numbered colours on them and others, the name of the fabric or designer.

I didn't obsess over the 45º thing. I just drew lines the correct angle every couple of inches or so on the base fabric and aligned the selvages before sewing them down.

Most of my selvages are not very long. I'm hoping the ones I get from my quilting friends are longer so I can make bigger yardage.

There are all kinds of cool projects I could make with this selvage fabric. Stay tuned.

Just a Bit of Backstitching

I'm almost finished the Starburst Flag of Canada project.

I picked out the white backstitching that I had done with two threads and redid them with one. I just need to stitch the corresponding part on the centre right side of the maple leaf and check for anything I've missed. Then to figure out how I will FFO this. 

I had to stitch a lot of the white areas outdoors in order to see the difference between Blanc and B5200. Indoors, it was not so easy the discern the two colours.

I'm working on the Halloween piece Teresa sent me. It is quite small - about 5.5" square-ish. She sent me a big piece of hand-dyed fabric so I started 2" in from a corner. There will be plenty of fabric left for another project. I was excited to see the sketch of it on her recent FlossTube channel.

It's 40ct, which I'm used to stitching, but for some reason I need to use my 3.0 MagniClips with my 3.0 reading glasses go easily see the threads. Now that I think of it, I will try using a 28 needle and see if it works better than a 26.

I have abandoned the Christmas in July idea until I get Teresa's model done. Once I'm done, I may borrow some days in August to do another ornament or two.

After a few days of badly needed rain, it is a gorgeous day out. Skip is happily working away in the garden. He's 98% healed from his horrendous surgery 2 months ago. With both of us being fully vaccinated and our COVID numbers so low, we are excitedly planning little excursions. Next Friday Ontario restaurants are permitted to open again so we're planning to go for breakfast at our favourite local spot - Captain George's on the NE corner of Dundas St E and Kendalwood in Whitby ON. Pre-COVID we enjoyed breakfast there about once a week - so often that Sayida, the server, knew our order. We're hoping she'll still be there but I'm not very optimistic. We do plan to go at about 9 - after the morning rush, to minimize contact with other folks.

It Only Took 3 Weeks This Time

Teresa mailed me the materials to stitch her another Hallowe'en-themed model on June 14. I tracked its route to me over 600km to the east of her home. It went to San Francisco on June 29, then to Vancouver to clear Customs. It left there on July 3 and was delivered to my community mailbox this morning - 3 1/2 weeks later. This is half the time it took for her last package to arrive. 

In it were a couple of charts that I ordered for myself:

For the Love of Nature is Teresa's new collaboration with Riley Blake fabrics. Her new line will be available in the fall. It would be cute to make a quilt with the fabrics and have the coordinating, framed cross stitch piece.

I have admired Oh My Bird since it was released and am glad to own the chart now.

The other contents of the parcel were the materials to stitch the model for her new chart. 

Like the last one I did for her, this one is also Hallowe'en-themed. There is quite a bit of filling in. However the colours are rich and the some of the filler patterns are very interesting and will be fun to stitch.

I've put all the materials in my Sugar Skulls project bag.

This has reminded me that I have some wonderful Mexican-themed fabric in my stash. I went looking for it and have discovered I have 2 yards of it!!

Won't this make some amazing tortilla warmers and project bags?  I'm so excited. 

Christmas in July

I started one of the Christmas ornaments I planned to stitch this month - 'O Christmas Tree. 

I thought I'd try stitching 1 over 1 with the threads I had on hand. and it came out really small. That's a 5' hoop. It wasn't very fun doing the Algerian eyelets on such a small scale.

I got the floss colour I was missing and started it again, two over two, and changed the shape of the tree a little bit. I also added some length to the trunk. Much better. What a difference between 1 over 1 and 2 over 2!

I just need to finish the star at the top. The pattern calls for beads but I'm going to use my HotFix tool to add some 'bling'.

I got a lot more done on my Starburst Flag of Canada. 

I didn't like the look of the backstitching across the middle with two threads so switched to one thread. It fills it in nicely. I'm trying to decide if I will pick out the white area where I did the backstitching with two threads and redo it with one. 

Then I'll need to figure out how I will FFO it.

Thanks to the colour selections of someone on the Steady Thread Blackwork SAL, I was able to stitch this week's flower - amaryllis (bottom left). I did French knots for the anthers (I remember that term from high school science class).

It isn't a very big area so I got it done quite quickly. 22 done - 19 to go. Then the fence all around.

I have not idea what I'll do with it once I've finished stitching it but it has been a very enjoyable exercise.