Crosstitch Retreat

 I don't even know how to express my gratitude without gushing about how Wonderful the people and the experience was at the NW Stitchers Retreat!  The new friends I made and the graciousness of the friends I already knew was beyond anything Ive ever known!

There was The most gracious Host in the entire world and her daughter, that treated me like family, great food, fun gift exchanges, famous people that included me in everything! I got to meet my dearest friend in person, Hi Dee! Everyone was so sweet to come to my demonstration of how I like to finish my crosstitches! 

Fun was had by all!

Here we are with our lights and magnifiers visiting and crosstitching!

That's our gracious host Peggy there in the middle!

Here are my tablemates, Kristin, Beth, Rebecca, and their Mom Auggie!

Beth and Rebecca are the famous people! Of My Sister's Samplers and Beth has a flosstube called, Stitching in my Pajamas! They were so fun and brought their Mom Auggie too! They came stitching in their pajamas multiple times! It was unforgettable meeting them and learning about how they love reproducing samplers and their love of stitching.

We stitchers are all like that, so wanting people to just enjoy stitching like we do. It was so fun to be in the same room with so many like-minded people for 4 days!

 

Isn't this the cutest! It was my exchange gift that I received and the same lady got mine, so we really did exchange gifts!

Here is the gift that I gave.

This was a gift by our Host and is filled with all my gifts from others to be used as my working box! I love having a piece of everyone with me every time I stitch!

Thread drops to go in there too!

Here was my haul from retreat. Mary let me try her lapstand and I fell in love with it, so I ordered one of those.

I bought some patterns because I don't have enough of those, And Kristin, oh my, what a lovely lady, she gifted me the sweetest crosstitch that is a butterfly house...Houses were our theme, Thank you so much Kristin, I cannot wait to stitch it up!

Something else really special happened, Andrea went home with my crosstitch quilt and said she would love it, use it and take care of it, now arent those words of our dreams! Enjoy Andrea!

So needless to say I will be going to next years' retreat! I don't know if I can wait that long to see you all again!

Thank you so much for such a wonderful time!

Fair Fun

 We entered our talents in the fair, my Grandaughter and I, and faired quite well.

Kiwi got a Fair of the Heart, 2 first places and 4 second places! I'm so proud of her for sharing her talents at the fair for us to see!

Grammy won some too!

 It is so much family fun at your county fair, I hope you all imbibe in it and if you don't know how to enter find someone to help you, we are all glad to help and have you join us!

Crosstitch Retreat gift making

In a couple of weeks I will be going to a Crosstitch Retreat with the NW Stitchers in Missoula, MT.

Oh the fun we'll have...We make gifts and I will be hosting a trunk show and showing how I finish my crosstitches. I can't wait! 

Some of the gifts entailed Temu shopping

Whew what fun!

 

The theme of our Crosstitch retreat is houses...We stitched a smalls house design to give as a gift exchange but of course I can't show that until after the retreat.

I've been making a ton of project bags too and adding bling to the zipper pulls.

So next I will share our Family Fair Fun and then alllll of the details of the retreat.

A little more progress

 I wanted to show a little more progress on my Lori Holt Sew Scrappy Spools. It's been fun going to our cabin in the woods and sewing a little here and there in between swimming and dinners with the kids.

So Jolly July is over in the crosstitch world and boy did I come soo close to a finish!

This piece is huge so cant wait to get it fully finished.

I also have the privelege of stitching for a friend for her shop. It is a monthly

Stitch and I got Augusts done.

Wendy from From The Heart Needleart is the designer of these monthly pieces.

In my next post I will tell all about getting ready for an exciting  crosstitch retreat that I'm getting to go to thanks to a most gracious friend who is hosting it. We are sew excited!

Retired and Lovin' Life

 I'm just doing so many different things that a friend of mine asked, 'Shelly why aren't you blogging about all that you do?

So thanks to her I'm going to try my hand at it again and share with you all the things!

All of my sewing girls are grown up and living their own lives, happily, while I'm retired enjoying my grandkids and quilting and crosstitching mostly.

I am here at my summer home in the woods this weekend, building a quilt that I leave here for a project for me to do while I'm here. It's called Sew Scrappy Spools by Lori Holt. 

Each spool will have a different scrappy block in the middle of it.  This is my progress so far. Aren't they cute?

When I travel here to our summer home I do nothing but crosstitch in the car, so I'd like to show you what I stitched and my progress so far on it.

This is called Christmas Garden by Blackbird designs. Some of us crosstitchers do what's called jolly July and only stitch Christmas projects in the month of July. I am glad to be putting in a good amount of time stitching this so that I might get it done by this Christmas. There are plenty of mistakes in this but you'd never know what they are since you couldn't see them from a galloping horse....Hahahaha

I started another new book called All Things New by Laura Frantz, It has drawn me in Totally! 

I've also wasted lot's of my time here shopping on Temu, oh my was I hooked! I really love my project bags for crosstitch and their bling,

So I bought alot of charms and rings and cabochon making stuff. I hope I did the right thing! Have you ordered from them yet?

I hope you enjoyed my blog and anticipate seeing all of my projects and my progress on them, see you next time and Happy Stitching!

Crazy Quilt block all finished!

Here is my Crazy Quilt block all finished and ready to frame.  Kathy at Shawkl.com was so gracious to teach us how to create this art and I had a blast!
I love how the beads in the sequins showed up in color....The three different roses are my favorite....I'm sorry about the date stamp right in the middle of the butterfly, I really need to get rid of that.  I hope you love this eye candy and it sparks some kind of inspiration.  I'm ready for spring!

Falling Charms

So starts the quilting process!

As I was thinking about the name of the quilt, Falling Charms, I began to doodle and came up with this, what I thought looked like falling charms, 

Then the next thing I had to do is figure out the porportions as to how big I wanted the charms and how far apart.  SO I began mapping it out on graph paper in my Quilter's Journal.  Each square represents

1/2 in. which makes my grid 2 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches

So I drew the grid onto my quilt for me to follow

And here they are being quilted....They look totally Retro don't they?