In April, I finished all the backstitching on my squirrel counted cross-stitch. Which means it's done! In terms of stitching that is. In terms of completely made into a framed piece on a wall or as a cover for a pillow, or however I'm going to use it, well, that's going to be a while. I haven't decided yet how I want to display it. I'm leaning toward framing this one and the fox I did winter of 22/23, and using them as seasonal decor. That's an area that is new to me, as typically I don't have much in the way of decorations (You could probably describe my decorating style as Spartan, or Amish). Most everything has a function, and looking pretty hasn't really been considered a function.
On Monday of this week, I started working on another cross-stitched Santa ornament. This one is Scotland Santa of the Celtic Santas series by Mill Hill.
Last month, I had mentioned that I was going to begin an Airplane Quilt intended for DS1. I pulled fabrics from my stash, and other than figuring how many planes of each color I needed to cut out, that's as far as I got. The pattern calls for 42 planes, I'm going to make 4 matching ones in gray/silver, 19 in various blues and 19 in assorted reds.
Rather than cutting pieces for those airplane blocks, I decided the time had come to finish a long-time UFO. Mostly because it's been taking up a large chunk of my cutting table for a couple of years and I'm getting tired of working around it. I don't want to just move it somewhere else temporarily, because for at least a year before I put it on my cutting table it was a top, batting and backing all rolled together in the upstairs bedroom I used to use as a sewing room from 2012 to 2021ish. Honestly, I think why I just let it sit so long even though I had all the necessary components to finish it, is because it's bigger than a baby quilt, bigger than a throw blanket, and I didn't know how to go about quilting it on my home sewing machine that doesn't have the most spacious throat in the world. I also didn't want to quilt it with stitch in the ditch, which is pretty much all I'd done successfully until about a yearish ago.
Finally, I just decided to bite the bullet. It would be how it would be, and if that wasn't the best quilting in the world, so be it. It was to go on one of the twin beds (in the former sewing room) we have here for the grandkids to sleep on when they spend the night, and they are hardly quilting critics. I tried my hand at echo quilting and then just did what I wanted in each separate block. Some blocks have more quilting than others, depending on how I felt the fabrics in those blocks should be accented with stitching. Most of the quilting was done on my sewing machine, but on the middle of the center block and the final corners I did quilt by hand with a backstitch, using a quilting hoop I'd picked up at Goodwill a few years ago (4 hoops, of varying sizes, in a bundle marked $10!! That was cheaper than the price of the smallest one brand new!).
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