Attacking the Plan

I was going to do the top half of the framework and fill in some of the fun stuff before moving to the bottom half.

I was.

I didn't.

As I was merrily stitching along, I suddenly realized that I had most of the stitch pattern in my head--it's very repetitious--so it seemed wise to take advantage of that fact and keep going.

So I did.

It took hours and hours and hours.  So I am very, very, very happy to be done . . .except the whole framework is solidly stitched.

Sigh . . . this is NOT going to be a fast band to stitch.  At all.

Plan of Attack

I started the humongous big band on Martha Edlin last night:

There is a whole lot of this to do. This is barely scratching the surface.

Usually I try to do all the framework or the borders for any piece.  A, it's boring, and B, once it's in and everything meets up correctly, the other stuff fits in nicely and you have a place to start counting the other stuff. However, the side bars on this scroll frame are not quite long enough to work the bottom half of this framework.

Now, obviously I'm going to work the top half across the band before I think about the bottom half of this framework, but I'm now trying to decide if I want to fill in some of the colorful parts before I scroll down.

What do you think?  Get the framework done in an efficient manner and then play with the fun stuff? Or get some (or all) of the fun stuff for this part stitched before scrolling down to the area for the bottom half?

And yes, I could go get longer side bars . . . but . . .longer ones than the ones I'm using are not as comfortable for me to handle, so I am taking that option off the table.

I can't get no satisfaction--but I did

Last night Martha Edlin and I sat down together. At this point, I have two more floral bands, three alphabets, and a spot section to complete and she will be done.

This is better than having umpty-leven floral bands, three alphabets, and a spot section to complete. However, if you look at the sampler overall, this is a good third of the length.

That's a lot.

I'll be the first to admit the projects that call my name are the big ones. I mean, just look at all those luscious stitches to create, those intricate designs to reproduce, those incredible threads to ply. And then, either stitcher's ADD or burn-out . . . or both . . . hit.

I really don't want that to happen with Martha. For the most part I've enjoyed her, even though there are times when I look at her and wonder what I got myself into. (This is not the only thing in my life that pertains to, but this is a stitching blog. We will leave it at that.) It was obvious that I needed to have a feeling that I had something--anything--completed.

So I hit up the finishing basket to find one small thing that could be put together relatively quickly and painlessly.  In other words, no sewing machine involved.  I came up with a bunch but decided to keep it to two, especially since I do want to get some holiday stitching done on Martha.

So (drum roll please) here they are:

These are both small projects that Jackie duPlessis sells. I generally pick up a pile of them when I go to Christmas in Williamsburg just so I will have quick projects when I need to have quick projects.

The pincushion has a really pretty woven ribbon at one end, which of course I should have photographed before I sewed it on. The other piece is the top of a neat container which Jackie calls a button container. I have placed some antique buttons in it.

This is a close-up of the embroidery on the top:

It was fun to stitch--free form sprigs and French knots around the flower buttons--and, as we know, I don't do a lot of free form--so I broke out of my mold.

Now that I have two finished projects, I feel ever so much better and am ready to tackle Martha again. I should probably plan to do this more often, since I am appalled at the number of things I found in the finishing basket--especially since I found one that not only do I not remember buying, I don't remember stitching!  That's when you realize you've buried too many things in the finishing basket! Or that my absent-mindedness is worse than I thought.

Dearly Beloved is convinced that I can auto-stitch. This may be proof.

Dithering over

After several days of dithering, I settled down again to (surprise!) Martha Edlin:

And a close-up--remember, I'm stitching reversibly, so the crosses are going every which way.  I'm not sure why blogger has chosen to set this pic off-center, but after battling to add it, I'm going to leave it right where it is.



I would really love to finish Martha this year.  Of course, now that I've said that, it won't happen. It will be nice, though, to have an extra day this week-end to stitch. And that's how I plan to spend the entire day tomorrow. Martha's biggest band lies before me--once it's stitched, I can really feel as if the end of this project is drawing nigh.

However, I'm still slogging away at the stitching for Remember Me. It is going to be beautiful when stitched, but it isn't getting any more interesting to do.  It is my "strand a day" project.

Dithering

I read a lot of blogs and it seems that many of the bloggers I read know exactly what they're going to stitch as soon as they complete a project.

There are those who work only on one project at a time, many of them huge designs that require a great deal of diligence to complete. And they complete them in an amazingly short amount of time and have planned what the next beautiful piece will be. It looks as though they have the linen ironed and on the scroll bars and the threads pulled and the chart at hand so the minute the last stitch is finished off on that project, they can pick up the new piece and start.

Then there are the people with rotation systems, who are so incredibly organized that they know which project will be stitched and in what order. It's simply a matter of setting down one project and picking up the next. And they, too, seem to know which project will be introduced into the rotation as soon as one is completed.

I don't do either of those things.

I dither.

Case in point:  I finished the Betsy Morgan casket pieces on Sunday afternoon. I had been focused because I really need to get it done. Basically I plopped my amply padded posterior in the wing chair on Friday evening and planted it there for the week-end, where it stayed until Sunday, aside from obvious biological imperatives. Dearly Beloved periodically brought food and drink, probably because he was hungry and thirsty and that was the only way he was going to be fed.

Once the piece was finished, the dithering started. There are at least umpty-leven projects within arm's reach of the wing chair. I have several Shining Needle projects to do, a couple of them not even started. I have two correspondence courses from EGA to stitch.  I have been longing to dive headlong back into the seventeenth century. I have a basket full of things that need to be finish-finished.

I must have picked up and put down four different projects before I decided to read a book.

Last night, the dithering continued. I worked a strand into the Remember Me piece.  I pulled Martha Edlin out of her pillowcase and did half a dozen stitches which I then unstitched since I did them in the wrong place.

Then I poked my head into the finishing basket. There is a piece that I abandoned awhile back because either I totally misunderstood the directions (quite likely) or because there was a step missing.  I had decided to set it aside until I could figure out how to fix the problem.  Apparently my subconscious has been working on it because I had figured out what to do, so I started to take apart what I had put together.

Unfortunately, I had done such a good job of putting it together wrong that taking it apart was going to result in a bigger mess than what I started out with.

So . . .I decided that I was going to put it back together as it was, even though it's probably wrong. It will still be usable. It just won't be perfect.

The perfectionistic first-born girl child part of me has been hogtied with heavy rope and shoved into the corner.  There is duct tape across her mouth so she can't fuss at me about this.

After that, I thought perhaps I could do the beading on an ornament so it could be put together. I finally managed to get the beading needle threaded. This took fifteen minutes of steady swearing. With the first bead, I managed to pull the beading needle off the thread.

I decided to read instead.

Am I working on anything tonight?

This book is REALLY good. I think I'll stick with it for awhile.

Dancing in the Streets!

I have finished the prestitching for the casket class with Betsy Morgan!

You will notice that there are some blank spots. Those are the areas I plan to personalize.  At the moment, I'm torn--family history?  a favorite quote about needlework? a set of fruit or flower motifs (since I'm not so much into the critters)?

The quibblers will say that I am not finished--but the stuff that has to be stitched the way it's designed is stitched. The rest is up to me.

And this is the last obligation stitching I'm planning for a very long time.

(Dearly Beloved and Baby Girl have both said, "Yeah, right." Either they have no faith in my will power or they know me too well.)

Itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny

I really do like the way cross stitch over one looks. The stitches are like tiny pearls or beads, sitting atop the linen.

And I really don't mind stitching over one, at all.

But I never seem to remember just how long it seems to take to work over one.  Especially when you think you're going to knock out a piece in an evening.

This is what I've managed to accomplish in two evenings:

This is an end panel for the Betsy Morgan casket. There is a lot more to do over one. Sigh . . .

And I'm having to take care of the ill and cranky. Dearly Beloved has a viral thing.  He is less than an exemplary patient. No more needs to be said.