Welcome 2024

Happy New Year!

So exciting to get a fresh start once a year. 

Though I have spent the past week trying to plan projects for 2024, I've been horribly overwhelmed! But in looking through my projects I realized I'd like better documentation of my work. This blog is a great place to do that since I annually get a book made from the blog. And I refer to those books very often. 

So here is my first resolution: more blogging with details. 

I snuck in a couple of finishes the last week of 2023. 

My oldest granddaughter, Kate, who is turning 4 in a week, asked me to add butterfly patches to a denim dress. She requested multiple colors of butterflies. 

It was such a fun and pretty quick project to tackle. I found a rainbow colored batik and cut all my butterflies from that fat quarter from my stash. I used the fusible applique method with Steam-A-Seam Lite 2. 

I stitched around the outer edge with a tight zigzag stitch instead of a full satin stitch.

It was one of her gifts on Christmas morning. 

My second finish was a rather quick project from beginning to end. Amazing for me!

I started the cross stitch about a week before Christmas. It was so fun to have tiny little sections to finish every night. It is Big-Hearted Tiny Town from Heart in Hand Designs. 

I used the DMC flosses listed on the pattern. My fabric was a hand-dyed fabric from 123 Stitch, a 16-count Aida, called Opal. Kind of a pink tinged taupe. 

The amazing part is I didn't just stick the stitched piece in a box hoping the finishing fairy would take care of it by Valentine's Day. I got myself in gear and finished it. 

I watched two YouTube videos on Drum Pincushion finishes. One from Vonna Pfeiffer and one from Helen D. I did my own version that was kind of a cross between their techniques.

I was trying to get two squares between the ends of the design. Three squares look perfect! 

I did add interfacing, Pellon SF101 ShapeFlex which is the interfacing By Annie bag patterns use so I had lots of it in my stash. I think it was perfect. I cut the interfacing to be the height and width of the finished size so I would have a nice sharp edge on the top and bottom.

Vonna presses her seam to one side...hard to get a nice even finish on the top and bottom edge if one side has more bulk in the seam so I pressed it open and ran a tiny bead of Aleene's glue down the center of the seam to help give it strength and keep the ground walnut shells from seeping out. 

Like Vonna and Helen, I  did a layering of descending sizes of batting in the top to create the puff for some pins. Like Vonna, I stuffed the top half of the drum body with fiber fill and then added some crushed walnut shells. Then I finished stuffing with fiber fill. It took so much fiber fill for the that tiny pin cushion. I'm so thankful for YouTube videos. 

I think Vonna and Helen said it took them about an hour to make their drums. I'm sure it took me at least four hours...but it was my first one. 

My next start right before Christmas was a Bucilla kit for a Snowman Door Stopper. I made a lot of changes to this kit. 

First, I used felt to make the face features instead of satin stitching. The black eye centers, cheeks and carrot nose are felt.

I also added a felt backing piece to the blue scarf. I will add tassels to the scarf ends tonight. It has a cup of beans in a baggie at the base of the body. I wish the bottom had an actual base piece. But it will work as a display in my bookcase so I'm not going to rework that part of the design.

I have soooo many cross stitch pieces kitted up and ready to stitch...many are Mill Hill kits. 

I get into situations where I think I need to stitch a series...so I have three more kits with a blue and white winter theme waiting to be stitched. I wanted to stitch this last year with a goal of doing one a year in the series. I skipped it last year. 

I already have two completed Mill Hill kits in this series displayed in my bedroom.

My major goal for today was to get a quilt top loaded on my frame. 

I have the backing fabric loaded and prepped the batting but now I am thinking I want to pop the batting in my dryer. 

My washing machine died in October so we made a major purchase and bought an all-in-one washer dryer. I'm still surprised we did that but so far I am loving it. It has a steam dryer cycle to remove wrinkles. I'm going to try it on my batting before I load it on the frame. I'll let you know how it goes.

No critter photos...though we did have a moose hanging around our yard for a couple of days. We have soooo much snow around the house, I couldn't get a photo of him...my view was blocked.

So another tidbit to share about my life. We had at least four-feet of snow sitting on our metal roof. This year, our snow has been very heavy as opposed to last year's light and fluffy snow. We also had some ice damming...areas where the snow melts and then freezes up. It's very bad for your roof. 

So...for the first time...I hired a crew to remove the snow from our roof. It was just too scary to be only halfway through our snow season and have so much snow on the roof. We have been breaking all kinds of weather records the past couple of years. 

During the process of removing the snow, our deck got pretty covered in mounds of snow.

The crew removed it all with shovels and snow blower. Soooo Much Work. That day, the high temperature at our house was 4-degrees. I was very happy to be inside my warm house with roof that is no longer in danger of leaking due to ice dams.