Erica's Stitches

Another friend has a new kitchen so I had an excuse to make some more practice potholders. The kitchen is far away and the information I got is black appliances and a copper backsplash.  I didn't want to make potholders that looked like Halloween so I asked if turquoise was OK.  I planned on a few small patches but the turquoise took over. I'm now making the potholders 7 inches square.  The insulated batting is 22 inch wide and this uses the most of it.  I like fabric scraps, but there's not as much you can do with insulated batting scraps. This limits the patterns that can be used.  I found this pattern in a book and, after 2 blocks, I really like it.  I pulled out all my black, blackish, orange, coppery and peachy fabric.  I was really tempted to keep making more of these blocks with the same color scheme.  I resisted.  I have a feeling that if would have kept on going I would end up with 4 blocks that wou...

Here are some scraps from 2 different fabric projects I have going on.  They almost made it into the trash but they looked so good together.  I think they are going to be turned into a potholder. They need a tan background and I don't have any tan fabric.  White didn't work.  My lights were all too yellow or too blue.  I haven't made it to the fabric store. So, yesterday I made a batch of strong tea and dyed some muslin.  It's the perfect background color. These scraps are from a different project.  An unfortunate math error resulted in blocks being an inch too big and I had to trim.  These scraps are also to interesting to toss. I'm thinking of a modern looking potholder or smaller wall hanging, depending on how they sew up. These don't look as good on the dyed muslin.  But, white may work. Stay tuned to see if I actually turn them into something.

Ah, the joys of an assortment of bulbs.  As soon as one color tulip fades away, another starts blooming. Right now these red and yellow tulips are blooming and also some lemon yellow ones are just beginning to flower. For the Spring Garden SAL I've started stitching.  After doing the center motif about 3 times and not liking the result, I switched fabric.  The linen I originally chose isn't suited for blackwork. This fabric is more even and tightly woven and the stitches don't disappear.  I also changed the colors a bit.  I swapped out the bright red for a more subdued color (which coincidentally are about the same shade as the tulips now blooming).  I've also made a few tweaks to the pattern as I go along. I'm notorious for not liking hearts (sorry) and there are 2 hearts coming up.  I haven't decided if I'll stitch them or not.  The instructions include graph paper so I have a feeling I'll be doing some dood...

I've been dyeing things blue.  A t-shirt that I don't like (after all, I can't make it worse) and some T-shirt yarn  that I cut out over a year ago.  I've learned one thing.  It's easier to dye the shirts and then cut the yarn.  The yarn looks much nicer now, but it was a horrible tangled mess for a while. Since I had plenty of dye I also decided to dye some threads.  To make it easy, I left the thread on the card (no tangles).  When I took the thread off the card I love the way the card took the dye. The dye seeped underneath the threads leaving behind a wonderful pattern.  I'm looking forward to making blue things.

Last year, my birthday present to myself was some wildflower tulips from here .  It was a very dry winter and tough spring, alternating between above average temperatures and below average temperatures.  There would be a few days of warm and sunny weather followed by blizzard conditions for a few days.  This cycle continued for over a month.  I was afraid the bulbs would die. But, the tulips survived to bloom.  First where some bright magenta ones that defied photography.  Now there are yellow and white ones blooming. Tulips are on my mind.  So, as I was finishing up my last project a SAL invitation involving tulips arrived that I couldn't resist.  If you'd like to join it's not too late. All the supplies from the last project are put away so I've been picking out my supplies for the SAL.  With visions of spring colors I started going through my scraps for some suitable bookmark shaped fabric.  The best I coul...

I've finished my second First Step . The first one was in bright yellow, orange, violet and blue.   I like these colors much better.  I'm more comfortable with them and they are more soothing. The second time around I didn't need to look at the directions as much so it seemed to go faster (except for all the delays).  On the light round I only ran out of 3811.  You use a lot of floss in the light round.  I finally picked some up yesterday and finished the last two squares yesterday evening. This time around my 3 different values were more further apart from each other and the light band looks a lot lighter than I thought it would.  Even the pale colors show the textures of the stitches. My next step is to decide how to finish the two squares.  I with I could go down to the store and buy a square frame right off the shelf.  The square is 4 5/8 inches so it's going to be hard to find anything pre-made. So, I'm als...

It seems like I haven't had time to do much stitching and I haven't finished anything recently. Well, here's something small. I got to go through a yarn box from a friend of a friends mother.  The yarn wasn't very exciting but I found a kit to make a suede scissors case.  It was old enough that the instructions were done with a typewriter.  There was no date and the only name was Sandesigns.  Someone had started the butterfly but I ripped it out and started over since the stitches were not done with an even tension. Looks like a quick project, doesn't it?  It took me over 3 weeks.  But that's working a little bit every few days (or once a week). Luckily the finishing was quick and easy:  Just some glue.  Now, lets see if I can get something else done!