I haven't really updated much on my Spirit of Winter but here is a quite recent one. 

Ok, slightly later than planned (by a few months), but here is the finished bag I mentioned in my last post.   I was quite pleased with it for my first attempt and it was followed by many bags,  I will try to find pictures of a few of them.

 

I have recently refound my cross stitching bug though and the bags have been abandoned for the moment.

 

 



I do have some border collie fabric that I bought lately to make some bags up for my sister who is heavily into dog training.  So I will  have to get back to the bag making at some point.

I don't know if I dare creep back in here after being absent for so long!  But here I am anyway.

I've decided to change the name of the blog as I have a new interest and that is my new sewing machine that I bought on impulse last week.  I haven't touched a sewing machine since I was about 19 so haven't got a clue what I'm doing but hey ho I'll teach myself if I can.

While looking on the Internet for ideas and fabrics etc, I've come across quite a bit of information on handbag making - this could quite possibly be my new passion!

I've got some lovely fabric to make my first bag for my daughter, it came this morning along with lots of other stuff I bought, it was like Christmas morning.  I have a book  with instructions and patterns so I will get I to that later. Its called the Bag Making Bible by Lisa Lam.  I haven't started reading it yet and have nothing to compare it with but it comes highly recommended.

I'm still waiting for interfacing and something called fusible fleece to arrive so I can't start the making yet, which is probably just as well because knowing me, I'll dive in head first without knowing what I'm doing and ruin it.

 

Anyway, this is the fabric I'm going to be using.  I'll post photos of the bag in progress when the time comes.

 

 

 

I'm thinking of using yellow speckled fabric for the lining.  As is my usual, I'm jumping in at the deepend  but I'm going to take my time and study the pattern and instructions and maybe start the bag on Friday when its my day off work.

 

Don't think I've abandoned my Cross Stitch altogether because I haven't.  I've spent a lot of time on my Spirit of Winter HAED and am pleased with my progress.  I'll post some pics of it in a while, I want to get on with reading my book!

I have decided that I officially loathe and detest doing photo conversion cross stitch:). Well ok, that's probably an overreaction but the reason I haven't posted here lately is because I decided to do a portrait of my late father in law for my sister in laws birthday. I've given myself very little time to finish it for the date which is May 2nd. I will certainly get it finished, in fact, hope to be finished this week but I have spent so much time on it that I am fed up with looking at it. It hasn't gone smoothly either, I've never been totally confident with it as I did the chart myself from my own software and it's my first attempt. I'm not totally convinced it's good enough but my family are telling me it is so I just have to trust them. Then I discovered, after spending all day on parts of his suit, that the coverage isn't good enough and I have to go over it again (I know I should have spotted it but I thought it was just because I was so close to it). Anyway, here he is, the man himself, god bless him.

I still have my mothers portrait to finish off but that doesn't need to be finished until July so I'm afraid she's going to have to wait because I'm so fed up with photos. I'm going to finish Celtic Spring after Mike Is finished, then I'll finish my mother (should only take a week)- then it's back to my HAED and no more distractions for a while! Here's hoping this will work and be published because I have to do it on my ipad as my dear son has simply looked at all the laptops in the house and broken them! I know I'm full of twist tonight aren't I? But I'm fine really:)

Framed at Last!

This is a tapestry I started about 4 years ago. I bought it from a lovely craft shop when I was visiting my brother in Falmouth. It's been finished about 6 months now but I've only just framed it today.

Ok so the sunny weather went away as was to be expected so back to stitching. I made a start on my mothers portrait and decided to do tent stitch as the count of the fabric was only small (22). And I'm very impressed with the speed, I might have to try this again. This is only 4 days work so I'm very pleased with it.

I'm determined that when I'm finished this one that I will go back to Celtic Spring and finish her off and then it's back to my Sprit of Winter which has been sorely neglected I'm afraid. Now I realise what a difference tent stitch makes to time I'm itching to do a HAED on 25ct in tent stitch - I must not start another HAED before finishing Spirit of Winter, it would be really, really wrong!

Hi everyone, I haven't posted on here for a couple of days so I thought I should pop and and say what I've been up to this past few days. Not much stitchywise I'm afraid because the weather has been so glorious. Strolling around the shops in a t-shirt in March, I don't mind that! Ive had a couple of days off work too, which makes it even nicer. I went to Durham the other day, I must say that Durham is a beautiful City, especially when the sun is shining down. Here are a couple of photos that I took, not this time but last year I think it was.

Back to work today but I got home to find that the fabric for my mother's portrait has arrived so I can make a start on that. It does mean that I have 4 projects on the go at the same time but never mind, they will all get finished eventually and this one is to a time scale so there's my excuse! It's late to be starting stitching but I do want to at least make a start tonight so I will say goodnight.

I thought I'd post an updated picture of Celtic Spring.  I decided not to paint but haven't started stitching either yet - but I have bathed my two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, they're bright and shiny and snoring away  now.  I'm going to get my stitching out now though.

Well I'm still waiting for the fabric to come so that I can start the portrait of my mother. They did say it would be 3 weeks though so I'll have to be patient. The trouble is that I have these bright ideas on the spur of the moment and there's a real danger that I'll have gone off the idea by the time the fabric arrives.  Not that I'll go off the idea of stitching her but my original bright spark idea was to stitch 5 of them - one for each of us siblings (I do get carried away sometimes with these theoretical thoughts).  I suffer from the stitchy equivalent of my eyes are bigger than my belly I'm afraid

In the meantime I've got quite a bit more done on my Celtic Spring and I've been looking for frames for her. I'm undecided whether to use a mount or not but am leaning towards not at the moment. I'm thinking of a nice thick gold frame so have been pricing them online as the Lady is not a standard size.

Compared to the HAED one that I have going, the Celtic Lady one is very easy to do but for some reason I haven't really enjoyed stitching her as much as I thought I would so I don't know whether I will get all of the series of four done.  However, I do love the way she looks and they will look lovely as a set on the wall so may do them all.  The other thing to take into consideration is that if I do stitch the set of four Ladies then it might be an idea to buy all the frames at once in case I can't get the same frame again - but that's more expense of course - decisions, decisions!

I've haven't done any more on my Spirit of Winter project but she has not been forgotten!  The trouble is that I'm like a kid in a sweet shop with all the designs available.

To prove the above point, I've added to my 'stash' with a kit of a Christmas stocking to be done. (I know its only March but it takes so long to stitch them and I need 3!).  It's by Dimensions Gold and I've looked at this one for a very long time and thought I might as well buy it while it's not expensive (well relatively).

 This is it.

The idea is to do a stocking each for my 3 children - they're 18, 20 and 23 by the way but I'm sure they'll have a good laugh when they get them and hopefully will keep them for any future grandchildren should I be blessed, and if not it will be something to keep. This first one is my favourite but my son Joe will have to have a Santa Claus one as he's inherited his mothers childish delight at Christmas and I've seen a nice snowman one for my other son John.  I know my daughter loves penguins but I really love this sleigh ride one so I'm afraid this is hers - unless I manage 4 of course - but I'm getting ahead of myself again.

I have a day off work tomorrow so to stich or to paint walls?  We'll see what tomorrow brings......

Hi everyone, I'm just back from a lovely break in Cumbria with some of my family.  The weather wasn't the greatest but we had a lovely time and it was especially nice to be away from the annoyances of the internet and modern technology in general.

I did take my Celtic Lady with me and got some stitching done, she's coming along really nicely.

Well I've spent a couple of hours doing Spirit of Winter today and although it doesn't look like it, progress is beginning to be made because I've gotten out of the confetti stage I was stuck in.  Its not really worth taking a photo at the moment though, I'll take one when I get to the end of the first row of five pages.

I've decided to go for the project I was thinking about last time I posted.  I can't start it for about three weeks because I'm waiting for the threads and some hand dyed fabric to arrive.  Its going to be a stitched photograph of my late mother and its to be a birthday present for someone so mums the word!

This is what it will look like when its done, it has no background and isn't going to be large so hopefully it won't take me that long to do.

Well I've been concentrating on Celtic Spring for a few days now and she's coming along very nicely.  I'm beginning to get the urge to do a bit more on Spirit of Winter though so this may be the last update on this one for a while.  Having said that, I've got an idea for another project altogether that I'm investigating - so watch this space.

Anyway  here she is.  If my daughter wasn't away at university she would have a name by now (the Celtic Lady  not my daughter :) - she does have one).

I don't know why, but my photos on here always look wishy washy compared to how they look when not on the blog - I'll have to investigate that.

I got some more of Spring done today, in between looking at family history which is my other big love and doing housework (which isn't such a big love).

Here is how she is looking at the moment.

I did some of my Celtic Spring last night and took a pic to show everyone.   I made a mistake and put some treasure braid where there should be beads along her waist and down the bit at the back of her dress.  No big deal though, it'll only take a couple of minutes to rip it out when its time to add the beads.  Its coming along quite nicely I think.

I have to get off to work for a few hours now (nuisance isn't it?) but tonight I think I'll add a page with some of my past work.   I'm slowly working out how things work on here (I think!)

This is the progress I have made so far on my Heaven and Earth Designs project.  It's about 5 weeks work, still a long way to go and its quite slow progress.  The time consuming bits have been the fur around the hood which has lots of confetti stitches.  I'm about to finish page 2 of 25 and I think I'll do a little bit of Celtic Spring next because the fur has me really fed up.   Still love it though!

Hi,  I'm Heather and I'm from Co Durham in the North East of England.

I started cross stitching maybe 4 years ago now and it's something I really enjoy.  

I thought I'd start this blog to show people what projects I have going and what plans I have.  I'm afraid I've never blogged before and know little about it so it will be very amateurish so bear with me folks.

I recently started my first Heaven and Earth Designs project and its proving to be very time consuming but I love the design so I will persevere with it because I think it will be fabulous.  I've also got a project called Celtic Spring going so I'll give them each their own pages and keep you updated on their progress.  I'll add pages for other things too - unless I figure out better ways to do things in which case I'll basically just do what seems right.

If anyone has any questions or wants to point out mistakes or just leave comments or advice then that would be very welcome.