Serendipitous Jo's Fifth Frolic of the Year

It was a Five Friday month so according to my rotation that gave me a free choice.  I decided to crack on with my letter C from Nora Corbett.  I am stitching three letters for my Godmother's grand-daughters and really want to finish them by April when I hope to visit them.

Here is my progress so far on C:

Stitched on 32 count Oceanic Fantasia by Crafty Kitten

I chose this fabric because it means I won't have to stitch all the charted background!  It also looks good for the letter S which will be for C's sister.

Sampler 4 Saisons Progress

Good evening everyone! Here is my progress on my sampler so far. I stitched on it last Friday and since I was busy yesterday, I stitched on it today as my frolicking 'Friday'.

Maybe (fingers crossed) I can finish this block by the end of February and then move on to the tree in the middle.

I hope everyone has a great weekend :)

Rachel

Flashinscissors 1st Friday Frolics

Hello Friday Frolicers,

I'm Barbara from The Flashing Scissors.

Thank you for letting me join you for Friday Kitten Stitching Frolics!

On my own blog I have been talking about my Cocoa Sampler (and a few other cross stitch projects) which I started years ago, and, with the encouragement I received from some of our online friends, I was enthused to pick it up again and continue. And then I thought if I were able to join you ladies here on Friday Kitten Frolics perhaps I could speed up my finishing rate!

So on Friday I decided to delve into the dreaded cupboard for something different, and found "Tatty Teddy" which I had stitched, and put away without finishing him because I hate backstitch! Anyone who has ever stitched a "Tatty Teddy"(TT) will know .... there are an awful lot of backstitches!

I remember stitching TT quite quickly back in 2004, despite struggling to find the right cottons from my stash as the pattern called for Anchor threads and in those days I mostly had DMC.

The pattern appeared in the magazine Cross Stitcher, with a competition for the first reader to send a photo of themselves with their stitched TT to win a prize, which gave me the incentive to start stitching!

TT and his pattern as I found him
 in the dreaded cupboard.

When TT came out of the cupboard he was looking a little grubby (there was a horrid tea or coffee stain to his left!) so first of all he had a little bath!

Then, before I could start stitching, my embroidery frame needed binding!

I had started the fur backstitch in the wrong colour
 - it was much too light.

After which I found another reason he had been pushed to the back of the dreaded cupboard!  At that time I  didn't have the colour the pattern called for, for the backstitch.... but I searched through my stash of threads and lo and behold I have it now!

The backstitch is in red on the pattern.

Here's Tatty Teddy, clean, ironed and ready for stitching!

Ready to stitch.

And I had to make a little start on him at least!

You might just be able to see a few sticky out
stitches above the top blue flower and above Teddy's head!

That's all I was able to do last night!

Now that Tatty Teddy is ready to play I hope to be able to stitch a lot more next Friday night.

Thank you for visiting today, and I'm off to see what everyone else has stitched!

Hugs!

Barbara xx

I started a little stitching

I have had so much on this month with a new granddaughter born this week and my grandsons 5th birthday and both getting a quilt made for them. L also crocheted a baby shawl and did some baby knitting. Enough of that now. I did get started on a little Carol singer though.

Not sure what I will finish it off as. That is always my hardest decision...

Anyway, here it is

Snowglobe Friday:)

Hi Everyone!

For today's Frolicing I picked up lovely Festive Flurry (designed by Emma Congdon from Cross Stitcher issue 298).

This is where I started today...

 

...and here's where I am right now:

This is such an enjoyable project with lots of bright colours:)

Just to let you all know; my furbaby is thankfully back to his happy, crazy, lovable self:)
Such a relief!

Hope you've all found time for some nice frolicing today!

Annie

this week's progress

Hi eveeryone,

I managed to get some more stitches in on Moon Garden:

before:

and after:

the color in the photos is still off, but we're getting closer to the finish!

lynda

Serendipitous Jo's Fourth Frolic of the Year

OK, so it's not the most exciting title of the week but it is what it is!

I have a new rotation this year, I start a small project each Friday and stitch until it is complete and then continue with my main focus piece for the rest of the week.  Fourth Friday is scheduled for the Letter of the Month for the Alphabet Club hosted by Chiara.

This month I am stitching on G for Granny Square (not Gingham, although it does look a little ginghammy)

I'm stitching each letter on a 28count afghan which will be made into a soft book when I finally finish the alphabet.  The letters are freebies from Brooke's Books and can be found here.

Last week I was working on CCN's Poinsettia Place which I finished on the Monday and scrapbooked straightaway:

Also a tiny bit of stitching....

Like Annie in the previous post, I had high hopes for getting lots stitched last night for FF but DS2 came home from a month travelling around Vietnam and Cambodia so we all went out for a pasta dinner, so less time for stitching than I had planned!


So, this week I randomly chose from my pile of WIPs:

"Singin' in the Spring"

Country Cottage Needleworks

28ct blue linen

Floss: Suggested DMC colours

Before photo:

After photo:

The first photo is truer to the fabbie colour.

So, I will work on this some more over the weekend but I do have some other great projects on the go, so we shall see how much progress I can make - it would be great to have another FF finish so soon, though.

I hope that you all had fun Friday Frolicking, 

hugs, Kaye

A tiny bit of stitching...

Hi Everyone!

My plan was to get a lot of stitching done tonight in true Friday Frolics fashion, but unfortunately my youngest furbaby...

 

  ...felt a bit poorly and had me quite worried for a while, so of course I couldn't really focus much on my stitching. He finally fell asleep and seems to feel a bit better now as we are about to get ready for bed. Fingers crossed!
So, I only managed to finish this little house chart from Cross Stitcher issue 297...

Design: Maria Diaz

...as well as make a start on another little house in the same series.

I used threads from my stash and I added beeds just because it's fun lol.
Right now I'm enjoying doing smalls and finish quickly:)

Annie

A Friday Frolics Finish.....

... my first FF finish, I think.

You may remember that on my last post on this SAL blog, I had picked up this UFO ....

Proverbi 3 by Paola Gattiblu

Well, I worked on this piece for the rest of the weekend and into the week and now I have a finish!  Yay, yay and yay!

I am so thrilled with this piece.  The kitty cat is meant to be black but, of course, I had to stitch Furio!  There is a companion piece, onto which I will stitch Milo, naturally.

Oooh, tomorrow night is Frolics again, I wonder what I will randomly choose this week?

hugs, Kaye

a little more progress

I continued working on Moon Garden this week. It is coming along, slowly, but surely.

A few more Fridays and I think we may see a finish!

Hope everyone had a good stitchy Friday!

hugs, lynda

Serendipitous Jo's Third Frolic of the Year

This Friday I took a train journey to visit a friend so I needed a small project with not too many colour changes.

The first photo is CCN's Poinsettia Place at the start of the day and the second photo shows how much I got done:

After

The fabric is 32 count Twilight Blue Permin linen and the top photo is the more accurate colour.

I'm using the recommended DMC but have made a few changes.  I'm using a darker green for the side wall, a brighter yellow for the windows and B5200 for the white because it pops better than Blanc.

Not too much more to do on this one and we'll have another finish. 

Saisons Progress :)

Good evening everyone! Here is my progress from last Friday and this Friday. Slow, but steady work.

I have one more motif (a little kitty) to complete on the right and I'll be finished with page one of this block. Woohoo!

Until next time >___<

Rachel

I'm back with some blackwork:)

Hi everyone,

Unfortunately it's been a while since I joined you all, but Christmas, New Year and lots of other events got in the way of my stitching in general. However, now I hope to be back on a more regular basis and I am looking forward to some weekly frolicing and sharing it all with you:)

Recently I've been going through my cross stitch magazines looking for suitable charts for this year, and I came across some cute blackwork charts in Cross Stitch Crazy issue 203. They are designed by Lesley Teare and tonight I picked one of them to work on whilst watching some skiing on the telly.

Backstitch is not my favorite kind of stitching, but I rather like to do blackwork:) Especially as you can use just about any colour you fancy:) And the project grows rather quickly too! Hopefully I'll finish this little chart over the weekend, and who knows...I might stitch this chart again in another bright colour since I quite like it:)

I'm looking forward to seeing what you've all been working on!

Annie

Last night's Friday Frolic...

... true to the spirit of Friday Frolics, I went to my Girl's Nest (as TraderVic calls it) and I chose a WIP at random to stitch on last night and over the weekend for FF/FNSI and IHSW - talk about making it all work for you!

It is a sweet design called Proverbi 3 by Paola Gattiblu, which had been sent to me as a gift by a fellow blogger a year or two ago (unfortunately I did not keep a very good record of who sent it to me or even of when I started it, so if the lovely blogger who did reads this, please let me know, my dear).

This is my before photo:

I plan to stitch some more on this over the weekend, so watch this space for a further update on my progress.

How did you all go with your Friday Frolics?  Have a great weekend.

hugs, 

my first friday follies!

Thanks for letting me join you for Friday Follies! I decided to work on a Blackbird Designs pattern this week. It's called Moon Garden, and for some reason I had a hard time getting into it at first, but the more I stitch on it, the more I like it!

This is where I was when I started:

And this is where I am now...

I have no idea why the color in the photos is so different...the first one is much more true to color.

I'll work on this again next Friday, but may do some in between too!

Looking forward to seeing what everyone is stitching!

lynda

Serendipitous Jo's Second Frolic of the Year

OK, I'm doubling up on posts with the Christmas Ornie SAL Blog so please excuse me!

Firday will be the start of the rotation for me each week.  The second Friday is designated Christmas Ornie Friday.  I have decided to stitch the Christmas Cubes by Primitive Hare as my Christmas project this year.  I looked at the themes which Kaye had chosen for this year and all but two are covered by the Cubes.  Perfect!  It does mean that I will stitch the letters out of order but I can cope with that.

Here is Cube One - C:

I'm stitching them on a lovely 35 count linen called Country Mocha by Willow Fabrics using the recommended DMC.  I have changed the white to B5200 rather than Blanc because it will pop more against the neutral fabric.  I also changed the words to 814 instead of Black because it's Christmas. not Hallowe'en!

Yay! Time to start frolicking for 2016....

.... hello fellow frolickers, well, I am back from my overseas adventure (which you can start reading all about on my personal blog, Kitten Stitching, when I get around to posting - see sidebar) and so excited to be back in time for a Friday Frolic.

Last night I randomly chose "Troubled Waters" part of the Bad Neighbourhood series by Ink Circles as my FF piece. The last time I stitched on this was 11 December, 2013!  Oh, my goodness!

So, this is my before pic:

... and this is my progress after last night.

So getting there!

I hope that you all had fun frolicking, too.

hugs, Kaye

My first little finish

I was absent for quite a while but want to join you more often this year. And definitely pull out some of these oldies on Friday night and stitch on them.

This is not on oldie but my fist little project that I started on the first and sewed on the little buttons yesterday.

Big Blizzard Sampler by Heart in Hand

I have had this little semi-kit in my stash for many years, it came with the fabric and the little buttons.  And it was fun to stitch.

I hope you started the New Year with a new project as well.

Happy stitching,

Brigitte

Sampler 4 Saisons Progress

Good evening everyone! I hope you are having a Happy New Year. Here is my progress on the Sampler 4 Saisons pattern these last two weeks. From now on I'll be working on it exclusively on Fridays. I have been stitching on it continuously since I pulled it out in order to see how far I could stitch before the end of the year.

I was able to stitch quite a lot during that time. Today I only stitched the lower left triangular ladder motif and backstitched the tomato.

Wishing everyone a wonderful year of stitching!!!

Rachel

Serendipitous Jo's First Friday Frolic of the Year

I've been stitching every Friday but haven't posted my frolicing for the whole of December.  Can't think why!  There must have been something going on in the real world.

Anyway, as is tradition in many parts of the Blogosphere I had a New Start for the New Year.  This was a gift from the Epic Mel, is part of my WIPocalypse list and is also Hallowe'en themed so that covers at least three of my SALs this year.

The design is called Counting Bats by Just Nan.  I'm using a 28 count lilac linen and the AVAS which Mel sent me.  I did change to DMC for the over one lettering because the AVAS was quite "bouncy" and wasn't lying nicely.

I twiddled around with some of the bats in Paintbox and made a collage!

How is your New Stitching Year starting off?