A Work in Progress

I'm making some progress on the Scottish Band Sampler (Scarlett Letter).  The Hungarian flame stitch eats up a lot of thread and a lot of time.  I'm liking the secondary pattern that is emerging.  I'm hoping to finish this one entirely before I go to my sampler guild's retreat next weekend, but I would settle for a finish of the eyelets and flame stitch.  Speaking of the sampler guilder, one of its members who shall remain nameless (she knows who she is) committed a tremendous act of enabling.  She brought in a needlepoint piece she had obtained through the Shining Needle Society, a Yahoo group.  Of course, I had to check it out and now I, too, am taking a class through the society.  Here's my progress on Inchies, a wonderful design by Kathy Rees of Needle Delights Originals.  I have self-imposed a limit of one "inchie" a day because these are like potato chips--you can't stitch just one!  And if you are interested in needlepoint, do...

Two friends came over on Thursday for a day of sewing.  I've learned to select projects that don't involve too much concentration when we get together so I worked on a few different things. First, I made a few of these blocks.  I picked up the flannel prints in the center at a guild meeting to make into a charity quilt.  I've looked at the assortment and played around with a couple of different ways to make a block and finally came up with this to put into a rail fence pattern.     Then, I put together 23 half-square triangles that will go into a quilt for my son who is at Louisiana State University.  Although the colors in this picture look a little different, the HSTs are purple and gold.       I ended our time together by making flying geese units to put in the border of my Designer Mystery Block of the Month from 2009 (or was it 2010?).  I blogged about some of the blocks here  and  here .  Now...

Progress continues on the Scottish Band Sampler (Scarlett Letter).  I had set a goal of finishing this by the end of August-ha!  As predicted in the instructions, the flame stitch is "quite challenging."  For me, it was not the actual execution of the stitch, but the placement.  What I have done follows the chart, but doesn't look like the picture of the finished piece.  After frogging and restitching twice, I'm going with what I have now.  I'm sure it will be OK and as long as I don't display the picture from the chart next to my completed sampler, no one will be the wiser.  Since I last posted, we  made a trip to retrieve our daughter from her summer internship on the coast of Maine.  She stayed with her boyfriend's family who very graciously showed us around the area during the weekend we were there, and treated us to a fabulous meal of lobster.   Our daughter was home for three days and then we packed up ...