From Moon to Moon

I wanted, first of all, to thank you guys for the sweet comments about my Sandy Feet Welcome hanging! It means so much to me, it really does. :D

All right, here’s what I’ve been up to the last few days. I seem to be doing this series of seasonal pieces (the Halloween Witch & Friends, the Easter pouches, and Sandy Feet), and here’s my latest:

This is another blessed freebie, designed by Ann Logan. It’s called “Ramadan Mubarak.” Ramadan is the lunar month where Muslims fast from sun up to sun down. This year it’s going to be from about mid-July to mid-August (we don’t really know until the night before, when we can see the moon).

And because I only have like two months to do this, I’ve decided to cheat a little. Instead of doing all the different shades of the sky, I’ve decided to just use black 14-count Aida. It’s taken me a little while to get used to it. I’ve never stitched on black before, and it’s so hard to see the holes! Especially since I started out with very dark thread.

This is what I’ve done so far:

Not bad, right? This is about half of the structure of the mosque, the blue part before the dome. There are a couple of empty patches, I know. I thought I'd bought all the thread necessary for this, but I guess not. Oh well. I'll pick it up on my next stash run.

Cheers!

My Teddy Bear Quilt, All Finished

The great reveal! Well, first, I haven’t shown you the corners of the quilt yet. Here they are, my marching teddy bears:

Okay, now the great reveal. :D This took me about a year to do. Like I said, I started it on July 8^th, 2009 and I worked on it during little breaks whenever I was back home in Kuwait. So it took me about a year to do the whole thing. In fact, I was finishing it off and putting it all together during the 2010 World Cup (a fact that does not impress my DH, who believes that if there’s a match on, all your attention should be focused on it).

So there you go – my first quilt, and my first major cross-stitching project. Also keep in mind my earlier confession about me not knowing how to use a sewing machine – I had to make this one by hand too!

An official crazy lady,

Some More Teddy Bear Letters

Onto some more teddy bear goodness! Here’s the rest of the alphabet blocks:

M is for Mirror

N is for Nest

O is for Ouch

P is for Piano

Q is for Quilt

R is for Rainbow

S is for Sleep

T is for Television

U is for Umbrella

V is for Victrola

W is for Window

X is for Xylophone

Y is for Yarn

Z is for Zebra

Next I’ll show you guys how it all came together. Stay tuned!

Introducing My Teddy Bear Quilt

This is my Teddy Bear Quilt. I started it on July 8^th, 2009, and I know the exact date because my mother wrote it on a note and stuck it to the fridge so that I would be inspired to finish it. This was the cover project of the August 1989 issue of Just CrossStitch, and I made it just in case I decided to have kids one day (I was still unclear about the issue).

Each square consisted of a teddy bear doing something representing one of the letters of the alphabet. I did a few squares whenever I was back home on break from university. I’m not going to overwhelm you with all of them at once, so here are the first few (please excuse the quality – this was a few years ago and I was using my cell phone’s camera).

A is for Airplane

B is for Bear

C is for Couch

D is for Duck

E is for Egg

F is for Fish

G is for Guitar

H is for Hat

I is for Ice cream

J is for Juggling

K is for Kiss

L is for Leaves

More to come, so stay tuned!

Biscornu: Finally Accomplished!

It worked! I did it! The Hope biscornu turned out beautifully!

I’m so happy. I almost want to keep it for myself…

But no. I made it for my SIL, and to my SIL it will go. Still, it’s so cute, isn’t it?

So that’s two gifts down. I have one more SIL, but she lives back in Yemen with her parents. I’ve got all summer to make her something – I just need to find something she’d like. Hmm…

Thanks again to Emily from The Floss Box for the design. This lady makes the best biscornu patterns, and she’s nice enough to offer some for free on her website!

I also want to welcome my new followers, Anne and Milly. Hi! :D

Triumphant at last,

Biscornu: Let's Try This Again, Shall We?

This second gift is for my next SIL, the museum-loving one. This is another biscornu design by Emily over at The Floss Box (and HOPEfully, I can get the biscornu right this time!)

I’m pretty sure this is another Christmas design, too. Why do I seem to gravitate towards Christmas designs? It’s bizarre.

I chose some khaki Aida to stitch this on, and I decided to have a little fun with DMC 115 on this one, substituting it for the normal red floss it called for. And notice how big the margins are this time? Keeping my fingers crossed that this one comes together better than my last one did!

Hope your biscornus turn out lovely too,

Cozy Completed

Finished the little Cozy gift!

 

It’s cute, isn’t it? And it's so small - it literally fits in the palm of my hand. I really hope my SIL likes it. I haven’t known my DH’s family for very long, so it’s still hard for me to tell what they’ll like and what they won’t. What do you think?

Thanks again to Linda from LizzieKate for the freebie design, and to Katherine and Allen from Better Cross Stitch Patterns for the alphabet! I’m so grateful to people who give us their beautiful work for free.

So that’s one down. I’m already working on the second, which is going to be my latest attempt at a biscornu. Wish me luck!

Off to work,

Christmas Coziness in a Desert Summer...

So we’re coming up to our one-year anniversary, and although a lot of my attention has been focused on what presents to get my DH, I also decided to do something nice for my sisters-in-law.

This is going to be the first gift, for the eldest SIL:

It’s a sweet little freebie I found on the Lizzie Kate website, which is actually supposed to be for Christmas. But I immediately thought it would be perfect: my SIL is quite obsessed with tea and she just moved into her own apartment, so I thought it would be the cutest thing to hang in her kitchen.

I also changed the colors around because they needed to be darker if I was doing this on white Aida. This is also the first charm I’ve ever added to a piece. Yay! And I wrote a little message for her on the back:

I found this great website, Better Cross Stitch Patterns, where you can get free cross-stitching alphabets. This one is called “Holiday” (appropriate, since this was originally a Christmas design!).

I’ll be finishing this as a little hanging pillow, so stay tuned!

Humming Christmas songs in May,