Leaves Me Happy.

It is really all about the punctuation.    LEAVES!  Me happy!   I finished the row of Assisi including the 38 upper and lower leaves.   ( and yes, one day I will go and complete the first row I left undone....)  The leaves really weren't that terrible but did take up stitching time.  Time to roll those scroll bars forward and onto a row of blackwork.  I surely won't complete the blackwork before by October 1st when the row AFTER the blackwork is to start but no worries, I am still moving forward! I got done what I wanted before leaving for the shore.

Not much stitching expected to be done with at the shore.  My co-worker is a NON-stitcher.  I still marvel at how can that be?   Corsica River may be too much for my faint of heart travel buddy.  But my fellow stitchers, you know we don't travel without a project of some kind.

A much needed trip to the shore for both my co-worker and myself did not disappoint.    After a bit of cleaning of sheds and the attic as the first part of my vacation, I headed for five days in Cape May.  But not before I threw in the towel on cleaning ALL the closets and ALL the attic and ALL the shed and ALL the garage.   No, wasn't going to happen.  Sometimes my brain just does not understand the limits of time and my body!  And why set myself up for failure?   I narrowed my task list and managed to get closets, drawers, attic cubby sorted, cleaned, decluttered in one room and marked it as a success.  

Instead, I headed to my sewing room.   I bought this tote bag kit at a recent quilt show and decided I was going to do something for myself.   While I love my current stitching bag, it is nice to have options.   It took me three afternoons and was not without the use of a seam ripper but I am very happy with the outcome.   I did have a bit of a problem involving four broken needles trying to stitch the bottom.   I expect to see a quilter friend at a retreat in a couple of weeks and maybe she can offer a suggestion on how to better handle all those thicknesses at the bottom.

 I added a lanyard sewn into the seam for attaching scissors.....so I always have a pair of scissors with me.

 Packed and ready for stitching night

But back to my shore trip......If I was traveling with my daughters, the sewing machine would be one piece of luggage.   Not so with Deb.   Let's not push the crafting side of me on her too much.    I decided on small projects as to not overwhelm.

I took my Longaberger Apple Basket and finally did the backstitch outline.  Check!  Mark this one off the old WIP list.  I was debating about the adding the backstitch but am so glad I did.   It really makes the basket weave POP.  I am still unsure how I will finish it.   But I should get hopping since it is apple season!








I made progress on My Stitcher's Heart pincushion.  Funny story about this.  As I said, we Stitchers always take a project along.
Just so happens when we were out for a bit of sightseeing heading up the coast, Deb gets a call from work, she’s in our IT department.  They were taking the all our systems down due to some electrical work and she needed to log in and handle rerouting the phones for all our offices, activating the call service, etc.,  She had brought her laptop and mifi card along in anticipation work may need her.  I grabbed my stitching and just had at it in the parking lot of the Tuckahoe Inn under the shade of a tree.   I stitched for an hour and a half while she did her magic.

I also got my prestitch for a November class with Cathy Habermann of Hands On Designs.  Good time to start the work.  Don't ask me what it is going to be when it grows up......won't know to our finishing class in November.











And I also managed to work on my stump work project we are doing with my EGA.   This piece is from the December 2016 NeedleArts Magazine.   I have never done stump work so this is a good piece to learn on.    I completed the stem stitch for the stems and the fly stitch for the leaves.   And then I covered the beads to make the berries to be added later.    Assignment done until next month.

It was good to tie up the loose ends on one and make progress on others.  The time in Cape May was well worth it.  Great meals out, shopping, trolley tour of Victorian houses and evenings with a glass of wine and good friend were what I needed to recharge my drained batteries.

We headed to Sunset Beach last night to watch the sunset.....clouds rolled in but it didn't matter.   It was girlfriend time.  

Until next time, keep on stitching......