Sugar Meadow Stitches is Born!

      Another great week for all things stitch-y at Sugar Meadow! I wish I could understand the comings and goings of SEW-JO and make a pill for it. The world would beat a path to my door.

     Very early last week I had a finish-- 

     My Lori Holt Autumn Love Sampler bottom row is done. I am going to make it into a cute mini bench pillow using some of her Prairie Meadow fabric line to add borders. I think I'm going to do a few Photoshop studies and get your input on that before I rush that to a conclusion. One important consideration is how much room to leave around a cross stitch piece and even after professionally training as an artist I struggle with it!

    I used my freed up morning hand stitch time for the rest of the week to double up on A Ribbon Runs Through It-- I'll get back to that in a minute-- but I'm taking a hiatus from hand cross stitch for another handwork project--my almost finished Baltimore Album quilt! I started this around the turn of the century-- LOL, but, seriously-- and I have ten blocks and two borders done. When making the borders, I used up a bit too much of the fabric and needed more for the other two-- of course, nothing in my extensive stash of batiks worked. I think the fabrics are really FAKE batiks-- honestly, the quality is not great, but it's too late to change it now. I have been keeping my eye on eBay for at least five years. I'd see the patterns here and there, but never the fabric pack with it. What do you know-- someone finally posted these blocks with the ENTIRE pack of fabric for the borders-- I jumped!

    When it arrived all the way from Arizona, it was the exact same fabric from Keepsake Quilting-- I couldn't have been more pleased. I use Rosa Rojas' Appliquik method, so as soon as I restock on her paper and glue, I am off to the races on this. Hoping to finish it in six months or so? I am now HIGHLY motivated.

     I finished the new cross stitch set for Thanksgiving, and I'm really pleased with how they came out!

     Why so much self-doubt all the time? It's a real question with me. These are going to be released on my new Etsy platform, Sugar Meadow Stitches. It's not quite up yet, so don't bother looking. I'm also trying to keep it completely separate from my San Francisco Stitch Co. brand, or people will get very confused about what they are buying-- machine embroidery? a PDF chart? I do expect some of my concerned friends to eventually say-- "Did you know someone has stolen your designs and put them on Etsy?" We can only hope.

     To produce hand stitch charts these days, no one really wants to back stitch anymore (a shame), but I may introduce a little in later designs if this brand gets going. I totally smashed the learning curve with the new cross stitch program-- it's pretty exciting to see it spit the chart right out after machine embroidering it! Here is a sample-- if you want to print it out and try you have my blessing, just pick your own colors. These patterns are extremely late for Thanksgiving, and I probably won't actively advertise the Etsy Shop until quite a few things are in there.

     A Sugar Meadow logo is required and the artist-in-residence has stepped right up to the plate. It's great to have her back in residence again. :-) Those aren't spiders, they are milkweed seeds flying around and I love them! This is pretty much what my meadow looked like when I first fell in love this summer. And spiders are also appropriate-- big hairy ones. I looked it up, and none of the spiders of Maine are venomous, though. That fact doesn't save me when I run into one!

     The December Birth Month Mug rug is well underway-- another Series of 12 finished! I plan to write a blog post on the past ten years of BOM at San Francisco Stitch Co. just to get them all straight in my mind and to plan the path forward. I'm thinking of TWO series for next year-- a cross stitch and a regular embroidery. The cross stitch one is going to be bowl fillers, and the other one I'd love to be Sugar Meadow inspired? We'll see what happens!

I'm not really making it red and green. The color scheme has more to do with accenting the birthstone color-- for December, it is blue.

   So machine sewing got double duty this week, morning and night. I am working on 8 of the same filler block for A Ribbon Runs Through It and they are gorgeous!

    I chain pieced my heart out to make 8 rows of eight tiny units-- I have never done anything like this before, since I don't prefer quilts with repeated blocks. I wish I had taken a picture of all eight at once, but honestly the camera was not big enough to hold it all! This reminds me of that web piecing idea-- I guess I understand it better. This kept me organized, but I frequently had to snip things apart for more flexibility in arranging the next piece to be sewn. It gets tight.

    My self-esteem problem took a break-- through the magic of nesting seams, I am sew proud of this work! I agree there is a time for seams to be pressed open-- but it isn't often, and I can't imagine trying to piece these rows with open seams. I really impressed myself! Have you ever seen some of these top designers pieced blocks and seen some major OOPS in there?! It especially triggers my OCD when striped fabrics are crooked. I'm sure they work ten times faster than me. Or get someone else to do it!

    Here's a photo to keep myself humble-- haha! Not looking very professional here. But that's my process. This is the side table to my sewing machine right now-- behind my computer.

   A Ribbon Runs Through It got priority, but I did make progress on some corn husks, too! I don't know why I thought I could have this by Thanksgiving, but we could be poppin' corn for stringing on the Christmas Tree, right?

     The corns keep getting bigger and bigger-- but that little tip on the husk is like a teeny tiny 1/4" piece! That is why things are always taking longer than you'd planned, once started.

     So that's not even everything I got done last week-- I'm working on some Christmas presents that are secret. Don't be too impressed with that-- they are ones I am still finishing from last year!

     I've seen snow on some of the blogs I read-- none for us yet-- maybe Wednesday? I am always so excited for the first snow, but not the eighth or ninth one-- we'll see what Western Maine brings.

     Thanks for visiting and I hope you feel inspired to get out your own needle and thread--  let the new week begin!

xoxo

Carol