Stitching Along

Have you heard of the Quilty Stitches Sampler-Along happening at Little Miss Shabby?  Every two weeks, Corey introduces a new quilt block inspired crosstitch pattern to us.  They are SO cute (and tiny)!  She has introduced two blocks so far, but there is plenty of time to jump in!  Crosstitching was my first love and it just so happened that the timing for this stitch-along was PERFECT for me and I have been wanting to stitch a sampler for awhile.  YAY! 

Here is my first block, Swoon:

I raided my embroidery floss stash (which, apparently isn't as neat as some of the lovely ones shared in the Flickr group), and pulled out some blues, purples, greens, and oranges.  Some of these are only small pieces because they are leftover from kits, but I think I'll probably have enough.  I'm excited to make something bright and cheery!

I'm a little bit behind because I somehow got it into my head that I needed to stitch all of my sashing FIRST, so that I could have an outline for placing my "blocks."  And it took FOREVER.  Ah well.  I'm using a scrap piece of Aida and I wanted to make sure it was big enough for all of the blocks.  Unfortunately, as I sat down to write this post, I realized that the stitch-along is only going to have 16 blocks and I somehow managed to make 24 spots in my layout!  Geez.  I think I'll go through and take out the bottom two rows so that I have 18.  Then I'll either make up two more or repeat two of my favorites.  

My Aida fabric looks white, but it's actually a cream color. 

You should check out the Flickr group!  There are some fun color combinations happening over there.  I'm really liking the ones with the dark backgrounds and the ones with the backgrounds left unstitched.  But NO, I am NOT going to unpick all of that white stitching and start over...

In other crosstitchy news, I don't think I've ever shared this with you!

 

I made this for my sister and brother-in-law for Christmas.  It's about a year and a half late, but oh well.  I tried to match the colors to their wedding colors - lime green and silver.  I love this cute pattern.

 Also, I blogged about this Christmas scene already, but I wanted to show it to you one more time.  You can read more about it and see more pictures of it HERE.