Saturday Sampler

Thank you so much for your comments on my last post about the 1923 Needlecraft magazines. I absolutely love reading old magazines/books and I'm so glad you enjoyed some of the ads and text as much as I did.

Our Saturday Morning Sampler Club started this past Saturday at my favourite quilt shop. I signed up thinking this was a 6 month club but its another 12 month one! Hopefully I can manage to get to more of the sessions this time around, I ended up missing so many last year (twice I was in the hospital!) that I gave up on it and still have a box full of pretty little fabrics and a few blocks and nothing else. I need to hunt online for some 4 1/2" blocks and 10 1/2" block patterns to try to finish this one.

I picked our 1/2 m cuts of 6 fabrics for this year's club and hard as it was, I managed to get some 'blues' in there this time. I realized everything I pick out is green/gold/red and I'm really trying to get away from having always picking out those colours.

And I worked hard on our Christmas SAL this past weekend, working on a Prairie Schooler Santa on 20 ct khaki lugana. I didn't get him anywhere near finished, as so many of the blogging ladies managed to finish theirs, I was disappointed. He's been tucked away until the last weekend in February for the next SAL.

Last night while watching Prison Break and 24 (love those shows!) I did get started on my next block for Houses of Hawk Run Hollow. This is actually the first block in the piece. Of course it stitched up wonderfully with the use of my wonderful magnifier. Why on earth didn't I start using this sooner?

Be Happy and more alphabets

I finished Shepherd's Bush Be Happy freebie really quickly. This was my first time working with 10 ct Heatherfield fabric and it seemed really odd to be making such huge stitches. But it was really a nice break from the 40 ct fabric that I'm using for the Carriage House Samplings Alphabet. The 3 buttons are from a Dress it Up package and I think they work well in this piece.


And I added 'C' and 'D' to the alphabet. I was struggling though with D last night and finally hubby pulled out a light magnifier for me to use. I tried this a year ago, the first time I tried 40 ct fabric and hated it. I found I could stitch much easier without it. But I'm now a year older and obviously my eyes are even that much older, so once I got myself in a comfy position and found the best way to manoeuvre the magnifier, I finished up D without any more trouble.

It looks like this magnifier is going to find a steady home next to my stitching chair ~ especially with the new Neighbourhood RR on high linen counts.

Carol (Garden of Stitches) has organized 2 groups for new neighbourhood RR's and done an amazing job with arranging 18 stitchers into groups. She is creating a new blog for us and I'll put in a link as soon as its started.

And this is the first weekend of the Christmas Ornament Stitch-Along. I think I'll work on a Prairie Schooler Santa that I have been wanting to do, I have my pattern and fabric waiting for me! Click on the link if you want to join us, or see what everyone is working on.