A new start

A new start - that's right, I couldn't resist the lure of this lovely Mirabilia design any longer. For some reason, I kept thinking about it the past couple of months and having an irresistible urge to start this design. Its called Elizabeth and the Lavender Sky and its #10, so a very early design by Nora Corbett. No beads, no Kreinik or specialty fibres, just good old DMC. I'm using a 32 ct antique white linen. You know it feels really good to work on a design like this, its been a while for me since the lure of Prairie Schooler and Little House Needleworks and Blackbird Designs has had me mesmerized.

On Sunday, I hosted our stitching group for our potluck lunch and get-together. There were 5 of us, unfortunately 3 couldn't make it but Marsha's sweet 3 month old future stitcher helped to fill in the gap. The time always flies when we get together, although not a lot of stitching usually gets done, but lots of inspiration fills the room! Sorry, no pictures, I didn't think of it until too late.

And I have been knitting a little more on my sock which has been a long time in taking the shape of a sock! I'm ready to start the toe decrease. And after watching Nancy give us a demo on Sunday with her new spinning wheel, I signed up for Ravelry. So may be there will be a little more knitting in my future!

And a RR makes its way home

What a great mail week! Look what found its way to my door, after making its way across Canada, the U.S. and Australia. My neighbourhood RR is finished!!




I love the houses that everyone chose for their areas and all the little extra's make it so fun to look at. I think I'll add a border around the neighbourhood and stitch in all the names of each person beside their home. Huge huge thanks to (starting at the top going left to right) Glenna, Carol, Nicole, Deb, (centre house is mine) Bine, Carissa, Karen and Leslie!

And now just a peek at some sewing/quilting I've been working on ~

A stocking ornament

I finished up my first Christmas ornament of the year. I stitched the Blackbird Design stocking from the 2008 JCS Ornament issue. It stitched up so quickly that I went back through some older issues and found the candy cane design that I remembered seeing before, also by Blackbird Designs. The small square of fabric showing is what I used for the backing fabric.

But I'm not too thrilled with my finishing. I ironed the fusible interfacing to the back of each piece and then whipstitched both together but I found a lot of little threads kept slipping out. Any ideas on how to put these together without a smoother finished edge? Did I cut the margins too small? I really need some finishing classes!