Tag Archives: work-in-progress

It’s the Week-End

Hello to you. How are you? Thank you for all the well wishes. ❤ You are wonderful and kind! It turns out I have a little infection which was causing my elevated temperature. My doctor prescribed an antiobiotic and I am feeling better. What a relief! My heart goes out to all those who are battling covid. It’s sure is scary.

Mid week I started writing a knitting pattern for a Little Darling’s striped ear flap hat. I am going to include a video link with the pattern that will help with certain steps such as picking up stitches for the ear flaps, the i-cord ties, changing colors for the stripes, making jogless stripes, etc.

Here is my first test piece from my messy notebook. I am writing the pattern and will knit another hat from that to make sure it is all correct. The stripes can be changed in height to the knitter’s liking. I have a page in the pattern with a shaped graph for coloring. 🙂

Yesterday, I started embroidering the above pink sweater coat. I started taking some video embroidering the bullion roses. I recorded how I start–motif placement and motif design. Still more to do with this.

Today I published a You Tube video showing how I embroidered the apples on Lucy’s blue mohair cardigan. I must say that embroidering this sweater was more ripping out than stitching–not so much the apples, but the blossoms. Sometimes those little embroidery fairies aren’t available to help me. (lol) This video is only about embroidering the apples. Future videos will show embroidering other motifs.

So, that’s been my week work-wise since Wednesday or so.

wiMy husband had a birthday this week. My daughter and I managed to find some gifts to order for hime online… and they arrived in time. Always a plus! We baked him a pumpkin cheesecake with a pecan crust–very yummy. We also did our first carry out meal since forever. I don’t even think I’ve eaten out before this this year–no lie!

Sending you happy wishes for a great weekend. ❤ What are you up to… or making? Please share if you’d like to.

News and WIP

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Happy New Week to you! Do you remember that song “Rainy Days and Mondays” by the Carpenters? Yep, that’s us today here in northern Illinois. I am not expecting much sun and warmth this week…

Anyway… in progress over here is a second apple themed dress. I made the bodice last week and recorded the process. Does it sound interesting to come along with me as I make a bodice for a Little Darlings dress? If its something you’d like to see I will edit it into a viewable piece.

Below is a little video clip of the bodice all sewn and being pressed. Even though there will be audio in a full movie, it has been removed here. The regular steam on my iron stopped working, so all you’d hear are the burst of steam. I can make that quieter during editing.

Pressing the bodice’s side seams

This morning I wove in all the ends and sewed up the sleeves on the cardigan. I think Alice likes it so far.

I’ve been practicing again using the iMovie application. On the last day of summer I walked the path around the lake at one of our forest preserves. A couple of trees had started changing, the late summer wildflowers were in full bloom, and I even saw a family of swans. Please have a look and ‘like’ the video, if you do like it that is. It is my first public video on You Tube. If you subscribe to my You Tube channel it will be easier for you to see when I have new videos. I have tons to learn, but I am totally loving working with video and turning video into little movies.

Bye for now. ❤ Thanks so much for visiting!

The Past Couple of Weeks

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Hello! How are you? I hope you are doing well. All is well here with the days flying by at the speed of light.

I have started a couple of new ensembles for the Little Darlings–apple themed. I only have a small stash of apple fabrics, so had to pick from what I have used before, which is fine. I don’t mind using up what I have.

I am making a red sweater coat for the blue fabric and a mohair cardigan in blue (to match those cute little flowers) for the pink. I finished the red first and am glad I tried it on before sewing up the underarm seams and weaving in the ends. Look at how big it is on Alice! Is she shrinking? lol

I’ve heard this happening to knitters–your gauge changes over time. I guess mine did just that. I thought I noticed in my last two cardigans that they seemed a little roomier, but they still fit nice, so I didn’t think twice about it. It really shows up in this style though, and with this type of yarn. I first thought I’d need to find a bigger doll to wear the sweater coat, but then I thought I could save it by ripping out rows. It seems like the biggest size problem is in the length and not so much in the width. I’d think it’d be both. Anyone know why that is?

I’ll be working on these two ensembles this week and hope to have more progress to show you soon.

Other news… I received a couple of embroidery books for my birthday in July. They are both beautiful additions to my library! I love looking at floral embroidery–such beautiful hand made gems that make my heart sing.

If you need bullion stitch inspiration then “A-Z of Embroidered Motifs” is for you. It’s chock full of motifs created with this stitch. This is the stitch I use to create the roses on my cardigans. I have an album created on Flickr that contains all of my floral embroidered pieces in case you’d like to see them.

There are 28 pages dedicated to bullion roses in this book! In addition to detailed visual instructions for creating bullion stitches there are instructions for other flowers, foods, nursery motifs, animals, and Christmas motifs.

My second book is a newer book titled “Embroidered Country Gardens” by Lorna Bateman.

This book is dedicated to flower gardens using a multitude of embroidery stitches. She also includes instructions for garden gates, archways, baskets, birds, bird feeders, a birdbath, insects, gardening tools, watering can, old-fashioned lady gardener. She has a dozen projects as well as showing you how to build your own embroidered garden. If you love gardens you will find this book inspiring.

We visited the Chicago Botanic Gardens last weekend. It’s so wonderful to be able to visit again. We went once in July and again in August (last weekend). I took a ton of video on this visit and made a little movie in iMovie showcasing the sounds of water there. It’s not complete as we didn’t get to every garden, but it shows some of the water gardens and the relaxing sound found there. If I can figure out how to get it on You Tube I can share it with you. I will let you know.

Did you have a nice weekend? I hope so! It’s hard to believe it’s September! Thank you for visiting.

WordPress has changed their editor, so I apologize in advance for any weird things going on in this post. I have just now learned the bare minimum to get this post made. It’s so hard learning new things…*sigh*