Erica's Stitches

My second First Step is coming along. In some ways it's going much faster.  I'm familiar with the stitches and color scheme so I don't have to refer to the directions as often. But, I've been having difficulties in the medium section.  For greens I chose the DMC 500's, which are my favorite green.  I tend to have plenty of floss and lots of spares.  I ran out of 502. I have spares of every other 500 green, but not the one I needed.  I searched drawers.  I looked for projects I kitted up to see if there was any spare 502.  There wasn't. I was busy at lunch and couldn't swing by a store.  When I was doing errands I miraculously never went by a store that floss.  Finally, after over a week, I finally managed to find a skein and I'm going again. Then, I noticed that one of the gray squares didn't look right.  It turns out I had one length of gray floss that was not 415 wrapped around my 415 bobbin.   Grrr.  I didn't notice it

The pasque flowers are finally peeking out of the ground a little late this year. The temperature barely made it out of the teens earlier this week and the wind was brutal so some of them appear a little worse off than usual. But, the important thing is that they are here signally another spring with warmer weather and flowers!

A few months ago I reached into my stash for an new project and picked out First Step by Genny Morrow . You need a light, medium and dark of four colors.  I was in the middle of a color class so I picked a tetrad of yellow, violet, blue and orange.  This, for me, is unusual - no greens!  But, the colors do illustrate many of the concepts from the color class and it was an interesting exercise. I especially enjoyed the squares that where the same stitch but with different colorways.  They all look so different. When I was about  a week into the project I was having fun and happened to be by a needlework store.  So, I bought a second canvas and picked out colors for a second.  This time colors I felt more comfortable with. By now, I'm ready for something new but am stuck working another one. Note to self:  no matter how much fun you are having, the second one won't be as fun. This time I used earth tones and my favorite colors: sea, sand, forest and moun

Last month I finally got to tour a friends new kitchen.  She loves color and painted the walls purple.  I assumed a nice muted purple but it was really bright.  I instantly thought of a fat quarter pack of purple fabrics I won as a door prize a few years ago.  Not being a great fan of purple I put them aside.  My friend didn't have any potholders to match her new kitchen so my purple fabric came to the rescue.  She likes potholders that are 7 - 8 inches square which elimitates most 9 patch designs.  So, the churn dash block has a larger center. I even made the backs purple.  My friend was delighted. While I had the purple fabric out I made some blocks for my next quilt. I made 3 blocks about 5 years ago and then stopped.  Now I'm up to 9 blocks and am not going to stop until I have a full quilt (final size is still undetermined).  These will be the only purple blocks.  The others will probably be blues, greens and reds.