Erica's Stitches

I started buttonhole stitching in July and lamented that it would take me months to finish.  We'll it has.  I always have a thread ready to go so I can pick it up and stitch at a moments notice.  The moments just didn't come that frequently. I've finished all the dresden plate fans and saved the butterflies till last.  Two are now done. The best part is the antennae - they allow a little creativity.  All four will be different so I have two more styles to come up with. Once the button stitching is complete I can move on to the next part of this 30's style quilt.  The borders will use some more vintage blocks that are really wild. I'll show them once I start working on them.

It's that time of the year again. As night comes earlier and earlier and it gets colder and colder I start thinking about making Christmas ornaments. I have no plans yet.  But I've started collecting supplies.  I've found a surprising amount of red and green threads. Deciding what to stitch is part of the fun. 

I'm back to stitching on Colorado.  I'm filling in the edges.  I finished Arizona and started Utah and New Mexico.  It's going extremely slow.  One length of thread doesn't seem to fill much canvas. There are 7 states surrounding Colorado and they will each be a different color. I still haven't come up with a good lettering to spell out "Colorful Colorado".  But, at the rate I'm going it will take months to get that far.

I have used up every charm square in the house on my latest quilt top!  At least I hope there aren't any stragglers that I missed. That includes 2 different charm packs and half a dozen leftovers including a flannel square (in one of the corners), a 30's style square and one square that just doesn't quite belong with the rest. Both charm packs were traditional prints.  One was in darker colors and a formal style.  I never found the right project to use them in and never came up with any good ideas.  The second was lighter pastels and a whimsical style.  Every time I looked at it I was able to come up with a different plan that I wanted to start right away. Instead I combined them both.  I think the two styles go together in an uncoordinated way.  Or at least they don't clash too badly. My usual tactic is to come up with a design and use all the squares I can.  Which always leaves a few orphans.  This time I tried a new plan.  A crib batting is about 45 x 60.  So,

You can never have too many bags, right?  I hope so because my bag collection keeps getting bigger. In my quest to use yarn up stash yarn, my felting wool is almost gone and I have a new yarn bag. I'll use this to hold knitting projects and use the last of the felting yarn to make pot holders or coasters. Meanwhile, I've been fusing plastic.  It turns out my first experiments with this were a year ago .  I'm surprised it took me this long to get back to it.  The bag at the top is my new lunch bag modelled after a brown paper bag.  Hopefully it will last longer and be more durable. This fused collection of bags from many stores is one side of a tote bag. The other side is my attempt at weaving and fusing.  Ok, ok, enough bags for now.  I'll get back to some serious stitching soon.