It appears the Alexa of weather heard me say we haven't had snow yet. Then this happened!
The cabin looks lovely... I cannot wait to photograph my Ribbon Runs Through It quilt hanging over that rail...
The woods, lovely, dark and deep, just like the poem...
And best of all, the pond, beautifully gray with a misty mountain backdrop if you look hard for it!
The "move" is well behind us now and I'm feeling very content and at home in this new place. Creativity is flowering-- well, bad metaphor for the time of year. I'll probably have to re-read this post to encourage myself in mid- February-- or May, whenever winter ends up here in the Great North.
I had hoped to get my corn husks on this week-- check! You know, I decided to let my piecing standards drop a bit to finish this more quickly. Big mistake-- I really had to coax three misshapen units together for each and ended up using more time. Luckily, I peeked ahead and the pattern is a forgiving one at this point- not too much more tricky matching. Do your best at all times for the win, quilters!
I had also hoped to finish my eight Ribbon Runs through It stars-- not quite. Five are done, but I may be able to get the last three sewn up today. They are going together very easily-- I kept up standards on this stitch, thank goodness! Then, can you believe, only one more block I skipped earlier is all that stands between me and final assembly. I'm thinking between Thanksgiving and Christmas I just put in an all sewing day to push it along. Do you think the whole thing could be together in one day? I'd love to put this in the finished column for 2022!
Of course, that hope might get derailed, because I started a NEW project-- lol. I treated myself to the Lori Holt Prairie Meadow quilt for my birthday in August. I have this memory of watching her kick off video back then, while packing up my dusty cellar! So twelve weeks have now passed, and she's finished all the blocks, and I haven't even started yet. Lori didn't have to move, obviously! Quilty desires became irresistible this week and I pulled out my Simple Shapes and tried her applique method.
You sew the fabric shape to stabilizer and then turn it right side out-- presto-- your edges are all turned. Things went well, but I can see you don't get a sharp point this way-- I'm fine with that, because this quilt is folksy, so it's almost better.
The biggest problem is I am cutting away way too much off the seam allowance to get a clean turn. In one place, the seam split open a tiny bit. So I may use a combination of both techniques-- and then Karen Kay Buckley's perfect circles! So it kind of proves there's not just one best way of doing anything.
On the creative side, I have been busy reformatting my Kris Kringle cross stitch for hand stitching. That is happening very quickly. Here's the machine embroidery version of one:
And here's the handstitched pattern:
The main difference is backstitch. No one is seriously going to want to outline that entire checkerboard border in dark brown, and you can see I've really taken out all the backstitching except for the typography. That's where I draw the line-- pun intended-- backstitch was made for typography, people! I kept a little in the windows, too.
Going through this exercise of simplification brought to mind some artistic thoughts With machine embroidery cross stitch, you are really pushing beyond the limits of hand stitch, into a new art form-- something that has really never been done before. An embroidery machine is completely willing to zoom through repetitive, detailed backstitch without complaining. I took a look at my cross stitch cottage series, and realized that any hand stitch version made of these would be completely different design. Trying to follow a back stitch chart for the trees, the tiny windows, or the snowflakes in the border is totally unrealistic for a mere human.
I'm only re-doing the Kris Kringle designs mostly to practice the cross stitch software. There's never going to be a hand chart for anything more complicated-- the goal is really new work-- maybe some sort of hybrid style. I do find it odd that a hand chart PDF prices out at easily four times what you can charge for a machine embroidery design. I think I will have enough to launch my Sugar Meadow Stitchery brand before Christmas. I did get it up on Etsy if you want to look-- nothing to buy yet though! I don't expect my machine embroidery customers will do both, but there's lots of exposure for hand cross stitch on Instagram and I may be able to attract a few new customers.
So these were some of my thoughts that came to me while working, because I don't listen to music or watch TV. Maybe I should start, and then we can all be spared my lofty, artistic musings!!
The December Birth Month mug rug comes out tomorrow-- YAY! Another set of twelve that I am really proud of. Thank you to all who stitched along, and I hope you'll continue to make those birthday gifts for years to come. I am planning new series for next year, but I'm not going to do subscriptions-- keeping on a schedule is really hard for me-- if I had known when I offered the Birth Month subscription that we would be moving, it would have never happened. I did get it done though-- only one came out at midnight on release day!
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