How Does Your Garden Grow?

I have a brown thumb, so I grow mine one stitch at a time. 😀 Here are the pieces awaiting assembly. At a quick glance, you can see the pink pieces appear to have seam allowances that are too small. If any parts are going to end up in difficulty, these are the pieces you’d predict. You’ll soon see that wasn’t the case.

    

Assembly in progress~~

The top and bottom pieces stitched together…

At this stage of assembly, the boy and I agreed it looked like a Chain Chomp from Super Mario World. You might also be able to see that in addition to interface, I lined each piece with quilt batting. I had two reasons for this. First, I came across the idea on this blog while looking for photos of other stitchers’ completed balls. That post’s pictures didn’t load for me, ironically. I was intrigued by the recommendation to use batting. I’ve never had the experience with lumpy fiberfill she mentioned, but that seemed a good reason to try it. My second reason for using the batting is that I love this project so much, I wanted to prolong the experience.  Eventually, though, it was finished…

I love it. There are a few wonky things “wrong” with it. But I love this piece so completely, I don’t even care. That’s so uncharacteristic of me. Here’s the wonkiest part~~

I’m not sure how/why that happened. That’s the white fabric, which puzzlingly, had the largest seam allowances of all of the linen colors. It’s DMC brand. It had the loosest weave and was the stiffest fabric I used. The stiffness was nice for finger pressing, but something went wrong with the stuffing. I chalk it up to the loose weave. I would ordinarily flip out over this. But Fray Check is my friend, the ball is safe and I am wabi-sabi about the whole thing. As I said, uncharacteristic. Love is blind. 😉

Happy Stitching! 🙂

Ready for Beading

I’ve finished the stitching on all six parts of my Patchwork Garden Pincushion Ball. Now I have beads to attach before assembly.

Page three, stitched on 28-ct. DMC white linen.

Page four, Raspberry Light Jobelan

Page five, Meadow Mist linen. This is my favorite color combination. J’adore.

Page six. White linen again.

I hope it’s not too fiddly to assemble.

Happy stitching! 🙂

Busy, busy stitcher bee

No bee stitching, though. 😉

On July 3, the 150th anniversary of the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg, I began stitching Primrose Needleworks’ 272 Words.

I decided I didn’t want to stitch the text in the nutmeg color of the chart. I found a color I liked at the LNS, but they didn’t have enough, and what they did have was from two different dye lots. I’ve taken a chance at another color. We’ll see where this takes me…

I’ve also been working on Patchwork Garden Pinball by Twisted Oaks. The original pattern has six pieces that spell out GARDEN. I didn’t want that, so I found and modified some motifs in books I own. Way to make those purchases pay off! I was really enjoying it. Then I started 272 Words, and then it was the SAL weekend on Facebook’s  Cross Stitch SAL group. I worked on Pieta for the FB SAL.

This was stitched on 28-ct Raspberry Light jobelan. It doesn’t show up well with a pink background. It’s pretty. You can take my word for it.

This was stitched on 28-ct. Meadow Mist linen. I’m also going to stitch two parts on white linen.

I’m really enjoying this project. I hope you’re enjoying yours. I’ll be posting a Pieta update soon.

Happy stitching! 🙂