Merry Christmas!

It's almost here- tomorrow is Christmas Day. It's not as much fun these days without little ones to buy toys for. My guys are grown and want big-boy toys. I miss sitting on the floor and playing. I'm taking a break from doing crafty things for a few days. So I will show off some of the Christmas stitching I've done in the past.

Here is a quilted wallhanging I made many years ago. Since I had never done any quilting before, I took a class called Cookie Cutter Quilt. Of course I had to add an embellishment to each square. I think it turned out pretty good for my first try.

Here is a cross stitched piece called Merry Christmas A to Z by Deborah Lambein. I started it in 1999 and finally finished it in 2000. This created a problem since 2000 did not easily fit in the space allowed for the year. I squished some of the zeros together and made it fit. This piece was the beginning of my love-hate relationship with blending filament. I love the sparkly metallic look the filament adds to an embroidered piece but I hate working with it.

Some embroidery

Last weekend I went to the Gathering of the Guilds. Once a year the local fiber arts guilds get together to show off their work, sell stash and try to get new members. There's embroidery, quilting, knitting, crochet, tatting, weaving, rug hooking, lace making, sewing, basket weaving, and straw weaving. I belong to EGA (Embroidery Guild of America) and ANG (American Needlepoint Guild) so I spent a lot of time running back and forth between the two tables.

I tried to take pictures of some of my embroidery. It's hard to take good pics since I have glass on the pieces made out of dark fabric or have beads. Here are two of my favorite. I'll show off more in the future.


This is Marissa's Weathervanes designed by Peg Dunayer. It was an ANG correspondence course. I loved the look of the white and metallic threads on the black fabric. This was the first piece that I substituted threads and used some of my stash. I won a blue ribbon at the York Fair with this piece.







This is a large cross stitch sampler I made when I was in college. It has hung for the past 25 years over the fireplace in our living room. I made it on muslin which has discolored nicely after so many years and several smokey fires. It looks like a real antique.