Another Update

Life has been absolutely crazy around my household, but there is an end in sight! After a lot of thought and prayer and discussion, my husband and I decided that it is time for me to quit my job and stay at home with our kids. It's a huge decision and will be a huge change for us, but one that I think it sorely needed! I know that my stitching habit, among many other things, have suffered greatly for this job, and I am looking forward to being the wife and mom I've always wanted to be at the start of the new year! One of my resolutions will be to pick up stitching again and try to get at least 30-60 minutes of stitching in a day. Wish me luck!

In the meantime, when I have been able to stitch, I've continued to work on My Witch's Brew because I'm so close to finishing it. Here are the latest progress pics:

Not much left to do! I don't think I will finish this before the end of the year, but it will likely be my first 2014 finish.

I hope you all have a safe and happy holiday!

Until next time!
~ Katy

Look...a stitching update!

Oh my goodness, I've picked up a needle again and oh my goodness, how I've missed it!

It's not much, but it's something. And something starts the ball rolling to grow into something more and more and more...

I picked up My Witch's Brew a few times over the last few days. I figured it was a good time of year to be working on something with a Halloween theme!

Here was what it looked like when I last worked on it back in March (!!)

And here are a couple of days worth of updates!

Really it's only the border left that I have to do at this point and then this piece will be done! Maybe getting a piece done will help ensure my renewed time with a needle will stick around!

As an aside, I have updated all of my fabric stash pages (there are a LOT of fabrics! so pretty!), so feel free to take a look to see some great selections by great companies if you are ever looking for beautiful fabrics to work on!

Until next time (and hopefully a lot sooner next time!)
~ Katy

Dusting Off This Thing

Anyone miss me?

I'm back!

After taking a few months break during which time I've been dealing with craziness with school, summer, Girl Scouts, work stress, home life, etc., I've decided that it's time to come back!

Stitching is a stress reliever for me, and goodness knows with the stresses I have to deal with lately, my blood pressure could use some relaxation!

I've updated my fabric stash link and I'm still deciding how I'm going to start my rotation again. I think I'd like to finish something sooner rather than later, so I will likely look through my WIP's and pick up the one closest to being done and finish it. Get back into the stitching routine a bit before determining the rotation schedule again...

I've missed you all! Can't wait to start sharing again!

Until next time,
Katy

This weekend...

I'm going to try to pick up a needle again...

Wish me luck...

~Katy

Missing...

One stitching bug...if found, please return...Thank you!

~Katy

Easter Treasure Blog Hop

Happy and Holy Good Friday to you! This year, I'm participating in the Easter Treasure Blog Hop hosted by Jo at Serendipitous Stitching! If you've found my blog from the hop, welcome, I hope you enjoy it here! My letter for the blog hop is.....................

F

And here is my picture! Not Easter themed, but definitely spring themed! I stitched this as a gift to my sister for being my maid of honor in my wedding almost 1 years ago!

 I hope you have a wonderful Easter holiday! To continue on the blog hop, head on over to visit Cheryl at Today I Found...

Until next time!
~Katy

WIPocalypse - March Edition

It's time for another WIPocalypse update! I feel both good about my progress this month and at the same time disappointed I haven't done more!

The theme for this month is:

March 27 – Themes: Designer – Chatelaine, Style – Springtime, Colors – Green and Yellow

I currently don't have any Chatelaine pieces in my WIPocalypse rotation, but I used this as the perfect excuse to add my first Chatelaine to my stash - Alhambra Garden!

Alhambra Garden

Isn't it just beautiful! I will need to find the perfect hand dyed fabric to stitch it on, but I think this piece is just gorgeous! So thrilled to have it in my collection!

The other two themes this month I definitely have made progress with, as every single one of my WIPocalypse pieces were touched this month, some more than once!

Italian Vista - This covers both the Springtime theme with it being so full of life as well as the Green and Yellow theme. Here it was at the start of the year:

And here is the progress up to this point:

 

Next is European Bistro, which also has the month's theme colors! Here it was at the start of the year:

 

And now:

Flames of Desire - There is definitely a lot of yellow in this piece! Here it was at the start of the year:

 And here it is now:

Christmas Countdown - Doesn't fit the subject theme, but definitely the colors as I worked a lot on yellow and green borders! Here it was at the start of the year:

And now:

My Witch's Brew - This one is a stretch for the theme...but there is green smoke in the cauldron, and yellow helps to make the orange colors throughout when you mix with red...yeah...that's it!! At the start of the year:

And now:

And finally, Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love definitely falls into the spring time theme with all of the flowers in it, and there is a lot of yellows and greens in the piece as well! Before:

 

And now:

Not bad, not bad at all!

Until next time!

~Katy

Stitchy Fairies!

Today I feel like I'm surrounded by stitchy fairies! Tonight, I worked on Fall Fairy from my CJC choices this year. I went from this:

To this:

I love the colors on this piece!

I also got visited by the stitchy fairy in the mail and had not one, not two, but THREE packages of wonderful stitchy goodies! I got my fabric of the month from Silkweaver's, my fabric of the month and some sale orders from Under the Sea Fabrics, and wonderful threads from Mo's Sale on Facebook! I'm a pretty happy girl!

In clockwise order starting from the top left, the fabrics are Seaside Melody from Silkweaver's, Lilypad FOTM, Vanilla Mist, Cosmos and Carribean Tides, all from Under the Sea Fabrics. All have been added to my Fabric Stash List!

Until next time!
~Katy

A Little Progress

Because of how I do my rotation, Italian Vista was up again today for the second time this month, and I'm happy to say I actually made some progress! I went from this:

to this:

As of 3/23/13

That bottom most row of the blue stitching is actually the bottom boundary of the piece! Lots of half stitches here - when I actually am working on this for a full week's rotation next, I imagine I'll make a lot of progress on the bottom half of this piece!

I also have accumulated the vast majority of my pattern stash and made a pinterest board of the patterns in order to see them better. You can find the link here!

Until next time!
~Katy

What a Week...

This has been a very long work week...and my severe lack of stitching is a testament to how tired I've been each evening - too tired to pick up a needle! I've only worked on one piece this week, which was the Winter Flowers Ornament that I worked on this past Monday. It started out here:

And ended here:

As of 3/18/13

There are a TON of beads on this piece which I will do at the end, but I think I made some decent progress on this piece, at least! I hope to get more progress in this weekend!

I have finalized a new page to my blog that I wanted to share with you all! My Fabric Stash List contains a list of all of my hand dyed fabric in my stash that is not currently in use with other pieces. It includes the names of the maker with links, the fabric name, the size, type and count of the fabric, and a scanned image of all of my actual fabrics that I can use when I'm looking to see what to add to my stash and what to use for a new piece! Take a look, there are some beauties!

Until next time!
~Katy

Not a Lot of Hermiting or Stitching

This past weekend was International Hermit and Stitch weekend...and I was far too busy to do much of either! I did however get some stitches in on two more March Madness pieces!

First, I worked on Stitching ABC's on Saturday and went from this:

to this:

As of 3/16/13

And then on Sunday, it was back to European Bistro, which went from this:

to this:

As of 3/17/13

A little progress is better than no progress! I'm going to make a dedicated effort this week to try to get at least a few stitches in each night...we'll see how it goes!

Until next time!
~Katy

Theme-A-Licious Mid Month Report

It's time for the Theme-a-licious mid month report! This month's theme is:

March Madness

Work on something different every day...it's madness...of the funnest possible kind.

Now, I haven't been able to stitch every day this month, but every day I have stitched, I've worked on something different! To give you an idea of just how many pieces I truly have, take a look at this WIP picture I took for one of my facebook groups:

All my WIPs!

 Wow! And the amazing thing is, there are people in the group that have WAY more than I do...and to think, I used to be a one project at a time stitcher! Those days are long gone, for sure...

So far this month I have worked on the following pieces:

Mediterranean Flavors

Italian Vista

Tuscan Greeting

Flames of Desire

Angel of Compassion

Christmas Countdown

American Flag Quilt Sampler

Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love

Celtic Christmas Ornament #4

and tonight, I worked on My Witch's Brew, which started at this point:

and now looks like this:

As of 3/15/13

That's a lot of pieces so far this month, and we're only halfway through! Several of these pieces will likely be touched one more time before the month is over, as I alternate my WIPocalypse pieces with my CJC pieces. Since there are fewer for WIPocalypse, those pieces come up faster in my rotation, but I will continue to work on different pieces every day!

Until next time!
~Katy

Bad, Bad Blogger...

I've been such a bad blogger of late...not due to a lack of things to post about or a desire to post, but more a lack of energy! Of course, I'm saying that at 12:09 AM when I should be sound asleep in bed, but I'm wide awake...so time to get caught up!

I haven't been stitching every day, but I have been continuing with the March Madness theme this month (a full update on that to come on Friday, hopefully!), so I have lots of different pieces I've been working on!

Since my last update, I worked some more on the border for Christmas Countdown and went from this:

to this:

As of 3/9/13

Then I moved on to American Flag Quilt Sampler and went from this:

To this:

As of 3/12/13

Then it was on to Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love:

which grew to this:

As of 3/13/13

And then finally there is Celtic Christmas Ornament #4, which started here:

and ended here:

As of 3/14/13

Not a bad bit of stitching progress if I do say so myself! I've also discovered a new vendor on facebook who is making some really beautiful hand dyed floss for incredibly reasonable prices! I mean, look at all of these beauties!

Floss!

Really, this picture doesn't do these gorgeous threads justice! Do I have pieces for them right now? No, but I love having them for my stash! Head on over to Mo's Sale on facebook (you'll have to join a group) to see these colors and more!

I also late on posting my TUSAL this month, but here we go!

Last month:

This month:

Last month:

This month:

That's a lot of thread! I love seeing all of the colors build up bit by bit!

Whew, now that is a pretty extensive update! That's what I get for not blogging more regularly! Hopefully life will slow down a bit and I won't get this far behind again!

Until next time!
~Katy