Traffic Sampler update

So this is the Birth Record I'm doing for my youngest nephew. He'll be four years old in January and I'm planning on giving him this for his birthday. It hasn't been all that bad to do. I started off absolutely hating backstitching but after working on each car and sign as I go, it hasn't been all that bad. While I might not like backstitching yet I can at least tolerate it.

I'm having problems fitting his name on the missing truck. I've tried several different fonts but everything is either too big or too small. I've even tried free handing something, but it was awful. I'll figure out something soon . . . I hope.

A weekend of finishes

I was actually able to finish off a couple of projects this weekend. It feels nice to cross things off my Work-in-Progress list. The first one is a birth record for my niece. I can't really say I love the stars and the outlining but it's a cute project and it wasn't too hard to stitch up. Here's the final piece:



The other project I finished isn't actually a final finish. I got an idea to stitch up one of the Chinese Zodiac characters for each member of my family (extended members too). That's 22 projects (including one for myself). I got this idea when I saw an unfinished wooden picture frame at Michael's and I started to think about what I could put in there and how I would paint it. (I've been thinking about doing bookmarks for everyone as a Christmas gift but I don't think everyone likes to read as much as I do.) When I saw the frame I knew instantly that these Chinese zodiac characters would be just about the right size and maybe everyone will think they're as cute as I do. If I get them all done, they'll be my Christmas gifts for next year.

So I hurried up and stitched on of these and now I have to go back to the store to make sure the aperture is big enough. I'm going to add the year and the person's name to the design as well. This first one is for my dad. He's the Year of the Rabbit. Although I think I should have changed the colors to a yellow scheme instead. Maybe I'll redo it, or heaven forbid, unpick the pink and start over. I'm thinking about putting a description of the year on a sticker on the back of the frame. Here's what the first one looks like.

Crossed one more WIP off my list

I finished another WIP!!!! I'm so excited! For awhile I thought I had turned into a serial starter. Always starting projects but never finishing them. In the last month or two I've finished 2. My goal is to finish a couple more before the end of October since they're Christmas gifts. After that I think all the projects I'll be working on are for myself (with the exception of Twilight Balloon Flight for my mother; I want to finish that one by next summer at least). And since a couple of those are HAEDs so with fewer WIPs to do I'll have more time to work on those big projects.

Here's my latest finish. I think it turned out really well . . . especially with all the mistakes and ripping stitches out that I had to do on it.

Canadian Thing progress

I had a nice chance this last weekend to do nothing but stitch (almost nothing, anyway). It was wonderful. I felt like I got a lot done and I'm so close of crossing off a work in progress. I've got too many of those I need to finish. I worked on "It's a Canadian Thing" and I was able to stitch the whole head, teeth and all the wording on Sunday. I've just got backstitching to do before I can call it done. Here's the update. I think he's kind of cute.

Canadian Thing progress

So I'm back to working on my Canadian Thing project. I've redone the legs, shirt and arms. I think my stitching was neater the first time but that might be because this time the holes were bigger and there were some snagged fabric threads that I was trying to secure. Oh well. At least I fixed the error and I'm back to making progress.

Adobe House FINISHED!!!!

I've finished a project! Whoohoo!!!! I thought the backstitching would be a pain in the ass but it wasn't all that bad. I'm just glad I can cross a project off my "to do" list. Hopefully I can scratch off a couple more before the end of the year.

Curl up with a Good Book update

So I finally finished the top half of page one. With all the confetti stitches I had to do it makes me want to stand up and cheer . . . but it's only half of page one so it's not that much of an achievement. I will say it took stitching through 2 baseball games to get from the picture in my last post to this. Oh well.