Lots of news...

It's been a while since my last post, so I have lots to report. :)

It's been a while since I had a new release, that's because October arrived and I suddenly realized I had a mountain of Christmas presents to get stitched and needed to finish them all! I didn't get pictures of all of them, but here are the two I did get. First is my nephew Easton's stocking:

I already showed it off I think, but I finally got it put together - this picture is minus the trim, forgot to take pictures of that. My aunt Pam helped me put this together, I am a disaster with a sewing machine. lol

And the back of it - picked a green marbled fabric - wanted to stay pretty neutral because the front it so colourful! We also lined it so it can actually be used without catching the stitching. :)

And mom's Christmas present, which is also a model, Hootie. He's stitched on 40ct Heavenly Skies from Sassy's Fabbys with silks from The Silk Mill.

He came out beatifully. He's going in for framing hopefully this week. Thinking plain black laquered frame - he's very bright (brighter than the picture even) so I don't want to detract from that, I think black will make him pop even more. :)

Then some ornaments which I forgot to take pictures of.

And then it was back to work on models. I managed to finish stitching the rest of the birthstones before the end of the year, but only just finished all the instructions and chartpacks today so they're only now ready to print and ship.

Here's Sapphire:

Opal:

Topaz (which was my personal favourite to stitch!):

 And finally Turquoise:

As with the previous birthstones, each one is stitched in a single colour of silk with lots of beads and crystals to simulate gemstones.

And since several people have asked, yes, there is now a pack for all 12 available. Because this is such a huge chartpack (164 pages), it's available only as a PDF at 40% off the price of all 12 individually. I've also included a large 30 page chart of all 12 stitched together for anyone brave enough to attempt it!

So that catches me up on new releases!! After all that model stitching, I needed a day off, so I took one and finished up Mirabilia's Stargazer:

I stitched her on a custom dyed piece of 40ct linen from Sassy's Fabbys using my own colour conversion. Yes, they can be done on 40ct! This is actually my 4th Mira/L&L finish on 40ct fabric now and yes, I do include the beads, but I change them all to size 15/0. ;)

And that brings me to 2015. I've made a few resolutions. First, I need to starting taking time off for me. 7 days a week 12-18 hours a day is too much. I don't want to ALWAYS be model stitching - I have so many charts started or purchased that I'd like to stitch so I am officially taking weekends off from now on to work on stuff just for me. Second, I WILL finish my Silk Mill collection off this year. Yeah, I know, not a difficult one to follow, but until I finish it, I'm going to try not to be tempted by other stuff until I do. lol And finally, I WILL get the website up and running. Hubby has been working on it as he has time, but I really want to get it finished. I have over 40 designs available now and apart from social media, nowhere to showcase it all! So that's on the agenda.


So what am I working on now? Well I'm finishing up The Learning Sampler. I'm a bit behind the group since, I'm only on part 12 at the moment, but I have to finish it this month as I'm re-releasing it in print for Nashville (so I need to get motoring on it). Thankfully all the instructions and diagrams are written already so it's just the stitching. ;)


And I'm working on the new SAL, Not Quite Whitework. I'd like to at least get the bulk of it stitched before we start! It'll like start in April or May, not sure just yet, but will announce all the details long before then. :) Here's a sneak peek at it and the colours it's being stitched in. It's very little cross stitch, just the alphabet. There are two reasons I named it "not quite" whitework, first because it's not all in white, but in white and pastel colours. And second because traditionally whitework includes cutwork, this one does not. I stuck to pulled and textured stitches for it, partly because I know cutwork terrifies people and partly because I just do not know how to do diagrams for it properly. :)

I think that's about all for now... lots more to come this year, it will be another very busy year! And with that I'm off to stitch. :)