Vintage Sampler, Embroidery and Doilies

This is a vintage looking sampler that I stitched recently using mostly Nancy Turner's Victorian Motto Sampler Shoppe threads.  I have been in her Primitive Limited Edition Floss club for a while now and am thoroughly enjoying it!  The chart for the sampler is from an old Just Cross Stitch publication and I had been meaning to stitch it up ever since I first saw it. 

Here's a little embroidery from a vintage pattern made with a variety of threads.  I do like to use many different kinds of threads for embroideries, I think it makes them more interesting to look at and more fun to do.  The vintage doilies that you see surrounding these stitched pieces are ones that I found in a thrift store last summer for the incredible price of three for a dollar!  There was a very large tub of them so I ended up buying about 30 or 40 of them, lucky me!

This is me and my dear little grandson, Calvin, hasn't he grown?

Thanks for visiting, I hope you will come back next time!

Embroidered House and Flowers

Here's my latest embroidery with a house and flowery yard.  The trees make it look like springtime which is the wrong season, but I did start it during spring which wasn't that long ago for us.  It just took me a while to do.

When I post the pattern below, you will see that I made some changes as I usually do.  I decided to leave out the hammock and the person in it because I just can't do people in embroidery.  But, I didn't think it would be a problem, I would just add some more flowers.

I put in more flowers on the tree on the right because I scorched the fabric when pressing the pattern on so those spots needed to be covered up.  I used the nice fluffy Caron Watercolours for the blossoms on the two trees.  And as always, I used many different brands and types of thread on this embroidery.

I guess I got a little carried away when I put some ground cover vines down here.  I was kind of thinking of vinca vines with their little purple flowers.

Here's the pattern, it's a vintage one, so it's perfectly ok to use it since it's in the public domain.  I hope someone might enjoy embroidering it, if you do I would love to see it.

 This is our new, adorable grandson, Calvin Patrick, he came into our lives about six weeks ago and has stolen our hearts!

Thank you for visiting!

French Sampler and Farewell to Sweetpea

This wonderful sampler was a UFO that's been in my sewing room closet for a few years.  I've pulled it out more than once to work on it but for some reason I always got tired of it.  I think maybe because of the intricate border, it was a bit tedious!

Then, a few weeks ago, I made up my mind to get it done, and I'm glad I did!  The chart came from this great magazine that I bought several years ago, I don't know if it can still be found, but if you can find a copy it would be so worthwhile, it's full of lovely French sampler charts.

I bought it at Nordic Needle, but I'm pretty sure it isn't available there anymore.  Here's a few more pictures of the sampler.

The sampler was done on 25 count Lugana over two threads with the recommended DMC threads.

I started a Christmas break off from work on the 20th and I have to say that the way this vacation started out, it can only get better.  The first two days we had a power outage from the winter storm Draco, and when did they start naming winter storms?  We had never had an outage that lasted that long before and since we don't have a fireplace or a wood stove it got very cold!  

Harley and Tigger keeping warm during the power outage.

Then, after enjoying about half of a day with heat, lights and water, my husband, Tom, starting feeling very badly and I had to take him to the ER.  It turned out that he had a peptic ulcer, so he had to stay in the hospital for two days.  He was able to come home on Christmas day which was the best present I could have asked for!  His ulcer will be treated with medicine and he's feeling fine now.

Now, the sad part of this post.  Our Sweetpea, who was 19 years old, had not been enjoying her life very much for a while now,  so we decided it was time to send her on.  She was actually born here on our property in a shed when a sweet gray barn kitty from one of the local farms decided to have her litter here.  The mother, who we named Alice, eventually went back to her farm and we took most of the kittens to the farm, too.  But our daughter, Jessie, decided that she wanted the little tortoiseshell kitten, so we kept her and named her Sweetpea.  

Jessie, eventually got married and moved away and by then Sweetpea was really more my cat.  I was her favorite person and the only one who could hold her without getting a dose of her tortie attitude!

But we have 7 other cats to hold and hug and that helps enormously.  She had a long life and was very loved!

This was the last picture taken of her.

Sweetpea

April 7, 1993--November 16, 2012

Thank you for visiting once again!

Peppermint Ornament

Merry Christmas, everyone, I hope you are having a good one!  I don't have any of my own projects to show you today, but I wanted to show you a beautiful little ornament that found its way to our mailbox all the way from Spain.

It was made and sent to me by Margaret as a sweet thank you for my sending her an embroidery pattern.  It's perfectly stitched and beautifully finished and I absolutely love it!  It completely made my day finding that little unexpected package when I went out to check the mailbox, thank you, Margaret, I will treasure it always!

We had our Christmas celebration yesterday, it was the best day for everyone to get together.  Here's our daughter Jessie and her husband Joe having a bite to eat.  I wanted to show how Joe is no longer in his wheelchair all the time, he's mostly using crutches to get around.  It's been a long recovery since his accident last summer, I want to say thank you again for your good vibes and prayers, I truly believe they have helped.

I will end this post with a couple of kitty pictures:

Cricket, helping me make up the bed a few mornings ago.

Harley, doing his silly, flipping upside down flirtiness.  He's adorable and he knows it!

Thank you for the comments left on my last post.  I appreciate the compliments on my stitching and my new tattoo.   It was mentioned that it must have taken a while to get it done, it did take 3 hours; it is fairly intricate, but it was worth it, and I'm really enjoying having it.  I seem to have been bitten by the tattoo bug, I have more planned and can hardly wait to get them, I will show them to you when I do!  Thanks again for taking the time to look at my blog!

Brigg's Cottage Embroidery and My Tattoo

I've been working on this embroidery the last few weeks and am glad to have it done.  There is a lot of thread piled onto this piece of fabric, it's so thick on the area of the cottage that it almost won't fold over!  I used a lot of different brands of threads, including a lot of over-dyeds and thoroughly enjoyed the stitching of it!

Ok, in my last post I showed a picture of me with some  family members and you could see a little bit of my tattoo.  I promised to post a better picture of it, so was able to get hubby to take a good picture.  But first, I want you to see the old one that's underneath the new one, because I think the tattoo artist did such a good job of hiding it.  I never really liked the old tattoo and you can probably agree that it wasn't all that nice.

It was supposed to be a cat but people were always asking me what it was.  A badger?  A fox?  A goblin?

Here's my new one and I really love it!  It was done by Erik at Lakeview Tattoo here in Petoskey.  I think you can agree that this one looks like a CAT!  I love the roses, too, and my favorite part of the kitty is his eyes, don't they look real?

On a less happy note, my son-in-law Joe was badly injured on his motorcycle last week and is in the hospital.  He was going 60 mph when a car pulled out of a driveway in front of him.  He has many shattered bones and will be a long time healing so any good thoughts or prayers you could send his way would be appreciated! 

Thanks so much for visiting again, I'm always so happy to have you drop in!

Project Pouch and This and That

I have lots of stitching bags already, but I thought that a large flat pouch type thing would be convenient to carry my current project with me wherever I go.  I just open the flap and everything's right there, no digging down to the bottom of a bag!

Inside there's a pocket for thread and scissors and a place for pins and needles.  I used a package of sewing theme buttons to decorate it inside and out. 

I thought the picture I embroidered for the front was very appropriate!

Now, here's a couple of family pictures:

This is my brother, my dad and me celebrating Dad's 90th birthday.  My hubby, sister-in-law, daughter and son-in-law were there, too, just not in this picture.  The cool thing about this restaurant is if you go there on your birthday you get the percentage off your meal the same as your age.  Since Dad is 90, his dinner was nearly free!  Did you notice my new tattoo?  I'll show you a better picture of it some time.  And speaking of my daughter, she had a chance to go ghost hunting in Detroit recently with some of the Ghost Hunters.  She was pretty excited about visiting this spooky looking place.

Here she is with Steve, one of the Ghost Hunters.

I really love that show, don't you?  But then I love most every show about the paranormal, maybe my daughter got that from me.  No, actually, she believed in ghostly things long before I did, I was skeptical for a long time.  How do you feel about these things?

Tigger says, Who cares, as long as I have a full dish and get plenty of naps!  Thanks for stopping by!

Thankful for....

Image courtesy VintageHolidayCrafts.com

Just a few of the many things I am so thankful for:

My husband; a dear, kind, sweet man who has been my best friend for 37 years.  Our daughter and her husband who make us so proud  and who we love having in our lives.  Our kitties who provide us with lots of love and cuddles.  Reasonably good health, especially when compared with the health traumas of the last year or so.  {Husband Tom had multiple angioplasties, quintuple bypass surgery, rip-roaring uncontrolled high blood pressure,  near kidney failure.}  He still has some problems, but is doing much better.  I'm thankful that this Queen of the Worry Warts was somehow able to get through all of this with him and hope to keep learning to deal with  the stress.  Thankful that my brother has just about completely healed from a horrific accident that occurred just 2 days after Tom's bypass.  I'm thankful for friends and family and co-workers who put up with my constant worrying.  Thankful for the fact that the above mentioned co-workers {and boss} are so much like family to me and we can all have silly fun during spare moments at work.  Thankful that my Dad is 89 years old and in excellent health and is very active.  I'm also thanful for being able to have a blog with some lovely people who actually take the time to look at my pictures and read what I have to say, it stills astounds me and seems almost unreal!  I could go on all day, but will end with saying that I thank God most of all, because without Him nothing else on this long list would be possible.  I hope every person reading this and everyone that they love is having a most wonderful Thanksgiving today!

Stash Report and Faucets

I got this stash in the mail yesterday from http://www.anitalittlestitches.com/.   Included are all the new Limited Edition Gentle Arts Sampler threads from the recent St. Charles market, two charts from LHN, plus the little holly buttons for All is Calm.  Then there are two mesh storage bags which you can never have enough of.  And see the four Valdani threads in the middle there?  After I had sent in my order for the other things, I saw that Anita had added these new colors, so I emailed her and asked her to add them to my order.  And being the sweet person that she is, she said that the Valdanis would be a free gift because I have ordered from her several times.  The fact that she is such a lovely person to do business with is just one of the reasons I keep going back to shop with her!

We got some new faucets for the bathroom sink the other day.  I love them.  I think they look just right for the bathroom in a 100 year old farm house.  And while we are in the bathroom, I'll show you one of my cross stitch pictures that's hanging in there--

It's a design by Helen Philipps and it was done with DMC and Waterlilies threads.

And last but not least, a picture of my Dad who is 89 when we were having lunch out today.

Have a wonderful Sunday evening!  And thank you again to my blog followers, both the "older" ones and the newer ones, and thanks so much for the kind and sweet comments that have been left.  They mean so much to me!