Long Time Gone

I may have chosen a bad time to start blogging. There's a lot going on right now. Because I have a pile of Christmas gifts in the making and limited time for personal reasons, I have been spending every spare second working on the actual projects rather than photographing and writing about them. But I haven't disappeared entirely. I've tried to keep up with some blog reading and commenting, and my thanks to those of you who have been kind enough to comment and continue to check in.

I've just wrapped up a couple of time-intensive projects, so I'll perhaps post a little more frequently until I get swallowed whole by another one. That's the other problem: I'm doing such major, time-consuming projects and complicating them by being obsessive-compulsive and picky about them, so I am not turning out completed pieces with great frequency. There's not much to write about when I'm still stitching the same thing that I was three days ago and agonizing over which of three different fill stitches I ought to use. I think once all these gifts are finished I am going to focus on simpler, quicker things for a while.

But enough about me. On to the craft. One of the projects I recently completed was this little pillow for a grandmother who likes birdhouses. (The pattern/design is my own.)


The stitching has been done for some time, but I've just now gotten around to sewing it into a pillow. The more I look at it, the more I like this one. It's a little simpler, although still full of fill stitches, and I think the colors and style are just right.

I used mostly long and short and split stitch, with some satin thrown in, and I backed it with a little bit of a fat quarter I had on hand. This essentially cost me nothing, since it was made of supplies I already own. That's the best kind of project, don't you think?


Something I learned? Pencil marks don't always erase or wash out easily, but Tide to Go pens are the greatest product ever invented and will take out any stray marks with ease.

(The posts are not as crooked as they appear in this photo. The rounded pillow and the camera angle had something to do with that.)

Tomorrow, a little Frank Lloyd Wright stitching for you.