Another New Start

Garden Welcome should be a quick stitch.  I stitched 3 full letters in less than an hour.  I will finish this as a framed picture or a hanging banner for the front entrance of my home.   You can find this chart in the Cross Stitch & Needlework May 2014 issue.

May Goals & 2014 Smalls SAL April

April Review
Finish Oakley Owlet (Just Nan) - YES
Start & Finish 2 Baby projects - both will be the Handprint poem (I like to make them unique by personalizing the project) - NO (didn't start either of them yet)
- A family friend is having their 2nd baby girl (I did the first one in pink, this time I will stitch it in purple)
- my sister's friend is also having a baby but they don't want to know if it is a girl or boy (their theme is Jungle)

Finished Just Nan's Limited Edition Oranaments - Little Princess Snow & Lorelei Lamb instead of the baby projects.

May Goals

Start & Finish 2 Baby projects - both babies are due this month.

________________________________________________________

April was a very productive month for small projects.  I finished sewing 3 of my Just Nan Limited Edition ornaments together this month.

Oakley Owlet

Little Princess Snow

Lorelei Lamb 

Also in April was the Spring/Easter exchange, here is another photo of my basket.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Spring & Easter Stitching Exchange

Yesterday I participated in my second cross stitching exchange at my LNS (Stitcher's Place).  This one was an Easter & Spring exchange.  There were 4 of us that exchanged at the store.  Here is a photo of the four beautiful exchange pieces.

Heather gave Leigh the Just Nan Spring Frills humbug, Leigh gave Heather the 2 Lizzie Kate pictures, Wilma gave me the Jeanette Douglas flower (modified) and I gave Wilma the 3D Easter basket.  

I want to thank Wilma for the beautiful 3D flower and for hosting the exchange.  It was a lot of fun creating something unique, the exchanges give me a chance to challenge myself.  The next exchange will be a Halloween theme.  It should be interesting, I've never stitched anything for Halloween before.  I will start planning soon, I like being prepared.

Here are a few close ups of the basket I created.  I took the flowers from one of my books, the 2 rabbits with the heart from another book and finally the egg shape from a third book.  I did my own design on the egg.  There are purple beads for the centre of the pink border flowers.  The bottom is stitched with the same 28ct coffee evenweave as the rest of the basket.

I lined the bottom and inside with purple fabric to match the purple on the bow and on the egg.  I added green buttons to the end of the handle for decoration, and a cable tie inside the handle to make it stand up.