Patiently Waiting is Completely Finished!

Hello everyone out there.  I have a new start and finish to share with you today!!

A few weeks ago (the actual date is a bit fuzzy). I started this small kit Patiently Waiting by Dimensions.  A crafty friend gave this to me before Christmas last year.  I had gotten a bit bored with a new start I have yet to share with you and this piece was calling to me.  This was a rather quick and easy project.  It was my first time stitching on plastic canvas and hopefully my last.  I didn't enjoy the rigidness of the material and the resistance I felt with each pull of the needle. 

Anyways here are some progress photos...

Here it is just before I cut it out and started to assemble it.  I had to change the French knot Holly berries slightly from the directions.  They wanted you to use all six strands to make the knots.  I thought that sounded really crazy since each hole already had 12 strands of floss running thru a very tight space, but I figured I would give it a try. It was difficult but I had finished five of the berries before I broke my needle!  So I decided to attempt them with only 3 strands and that worked well :)

Part of the reason why I chose this kit to work on was because it included everything to finish it into a banner/ornament.  I am the worst at finishing my stitching projects (my unfinished object pile is very high) but I wanted to challenge myself to completely finish something.

Here is what it is supposed to look like finished...

And here is my finish!!

I kept the felt back a little wider and decided to hand stitch the tube for a dowel or twig at the top closed.  The stitching isnt the straightest line but I can live with it.  I decided not to cut fringe into the bottom angles and skip the white French knot stars on the lower half also.

Overall I am pleased with how this turned out and excited that I now have one Christmas present completed!  Also this is my EIGHTH finish in 7 months so far this year!

Happy Stitching!

Very late YOTA post and finish!

Hello out there!  I participated in the YOTA challenge to finish up old projects last month.  You can see the other participants progress here.  I am very late in updating (this is supposed to be done on the first Saturday of the month) but oh well...

The project I chose that was so close to completion was my Chi Omega needlepoint pillow project.  Here is where I left it off after the last time I worked on it almost one year ago!

And here is some progress.  I decided to change the color of the diamond shaped area down at the bottom because you could barely read or decipher the Greek letters.  Also I chose to do some backstitching to redo the Greek letters so you could actually see them, and I added some to the skull and cross bones and the owl in the upper red sections.  I know that you don't normally backstitch on needlepoint but I really feel that the design needed it since some of the detail was lost in the needlepoint design.

Here is more of the white background being added.  I also added my chapter down at the bottom of the design to customize it a bit.

Here is where I finished originally with only adding two rows of white beyond all of the design elements.  I started this way because I wasn't sure if I would run out of the wool like I had in other sections.

But it turns out that I had plenty more so I decided to figure out how to make the dimensions a perfect square and here is the big finish!!

I started working on this piece on June 24th and I finished it on July 11th!  Originally I had started it sometime in 2001/2002 making it my OLDEST WIP now complete :D  Now I am ordering some beautiful fabric to use as the back side of the pillow so I can really finish it up.  Looking back over my blog I thought I would finish this up almost one year ago, but it is now FINALLY finished and it is my 7th finish this year!!

6th Finish of 2014

**THIS IS THE SAME POST ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED QUITE SOME TIME AGO HOWEVER I REALIZED THAT IT IS ACTUALLY MY 6TH AND NOT 5TH FINISH SO I TRIED TO CORRECT IT USING MOBILE BLOGGER AND CHANGED THE STATUS FROM PUBLISHED TO A DRAFT FOR SOME REASON**

Hello everyone! I'm back to trying to blog more than once every few months... and I have a finish.

Here is where I left off with Dimensions "Life is Good" last time...

  I just had to do the clouds and backstitching.  I thought stitching the clouds would be the easy part but they were a little tricky. 

They were harder than necessary because if you chose the French writing the chart was confusing...

If you look closely you can see that they have superimposed the Spanish word for life, Vida over the French one, and they also did that with letters in a few other places.  This left me to use the other languages to help me guess where the stitches might go.  This kit claims to be for beginners and if I was one I would have probably been very frustrated by the error.

But after finishing the clouds the rest of the design finished up quickly and here it is!  

As I was stitching this during the past few days I kept seeing "La Vie" and then my brain turned it into the song from the musical Rent "La Vie Boheme" (The Bohemian Life).  

Anyways I started this kit on June 12th and finished it today June 24th.  I was hoping to finish it in a week but I'm happy that I finished it in less than 2 weeks!  Also this came with a black plastic hoop to act as a frame to finish this piece but I haven't quite decided how I want to finish it.

Happy Stitching all and I'll leave you with a few photos from my garden in Kathmandu!