Taking a Break

I have been exclusively stitching on the Teresa Kogut piece since I got it a couple of weeks ago. I'm at a spot where I'm waiting to hear back from her so I thought I'd take a little break from the piece and start another that I had on my 'wish list'.

A while back I bought the entire run of The Gift of Cross Stitching - a digital Australian cross stitch magazine that came out from February 2006 to June 2012. 

Sadly, the editor stopped publishing because of all the Internet piracy. I remember having a subsciption for a year and was really bummed out when it disappeared and even back issues became unavailable. Then, via a Facebook ad I learned that all the issues were available on .pdf.

I have enjoyed going through the issues and have bookmarked several of the projects that appealed to me. 

Last night I started Willie's Quaker Square #7 with DMC 115, a variegated red thread and am stitching on 40ct Platinum linen. This is from the June 2008 Issue #27

I'm stitching 1 over 2.

I wasn't really happy with the bright red that appeared so I am selecting darker areas. I may pick out the bright red part and stitch it with a less bright section of thread.

The linen is lovely to work with. When finished the piece will be about 7.5" square. Now all I need is an 8" square frame.

Yesterday, 10 of us met outdoors again in Jeanette's front yard for a stitching day. It was coolish so we all knew to bundle up. Pictured are Siobhain, Barbara, Marilyn and me. Carol, Sue, Barb, Jeanette, Jenn, Alda and Yvonne, although not pictured, were also in attendance. 

It was quite cool in the shade so we moved over to a sunny area and after a while we started peeling off layers of clothing. Jeanette even had microwave hand warmers for us if we felt we needed them. It's going to be such a bummer when the weather makes it too uncomfortable to visit outdoors. Until then, we are going to try to get together as often as we can. We also visit twice a week online on Facebook Messenger but visiting in person, albeit from 2+metres away, is much better. 

Sue recently bought a 12' longarm quilting machine and was interested on learning and practicing her skills on it. I remembered I've had a quilt top and back all ready to be quilted and sitting in a cupboard for almost 3 decades. I dropped it off at her place the last time we met at Jeanette's (they live in the same town), suggested a few patterns for the centre part, and invited her to try whatever she liked on the two borders. 

She had it ready to return to me yesterday. Her great machine quilting isn't really visible but it's done. All I need to do is trim off the batting, trim the backing to the right distance and fold it over and hand sew it as binding around the edge. This would probably fit a queen size bed.

I have no idea if I'll use it as it doesn't match anything in the house but I'm glad to have it so close to being finished.

In that same cupboard, I have another bunch of maple leaf quilt blocks that I pieced at least 10 years ago, before I purchased my Bernina machine. It was a kit I purchased from Connecting Threads. I recall that I just need to applique the stems of the leaves on the blocks, sew the blocks together, and find a backing fabric.