More progress on the Chinese Garden and a gift delivery!

Seems ALL I have been doing is stitching on the Chinese Garden Mandala from Chatelaine these days!  I FINALLY finished up to part 8 and have kitted up my next freebie for later this month.

It may look like it's finished completely, but there is still an outer border along with vases, bamboo, mums and phoenix birds on all four sides!  I have had to tweak a bit again due to the black linen, subbing DMC 500 for the called for silk in the Winter Garden pine tree. The green silk was just too dark. Here's the close up of the final seasonal garden....I think it's my favorite!

And here is the entire piece so far....

And also this week I was able to deliver the LONG overdue gift of the New Zealand Map Banner to my dear sister-in-law Ann and her family. Ann was suitably amazed and surprised!

February Finishes!

I have 3 finishes so far this month!  Two are stocking ornaments for my two young brother cats Finn and Tali, stitched on CharlesCraft Mini Stockings. Patterns are from a Leisure Arts leaflet by Mary Ellen Yanick called Cats, Cats, Cats!, c1987. Now all the pets have stocking ornies for next year!

The other February finish has a story....my husband's sister is married and lives in New Zealand with her hubby and 3 kids. We went for a visit way back in 2000 when my daughter was 5. While visiting the Lake Taupo region, Ann and I went to a needlework store and found this New Zealand Map pattern by Susan Ryder for Heritage Stitchcraft, and she wanted me to make it for her. Never having done anything so large before it languished in UFO-dome for a decade! They have come home a couple of  times for visits and will be here again in April and I wanted to finally finish it for her! Since I started it in 2001, I have had TONS of experience on large projects (RE: Chatelaines and TWs!!) Apparently, this was a good thing because I managed to take it from one outlined island to complete in about a month!  It will be made into a door banner so she can take it back more easily. Here are some progress pics since my last update.....this is the North Island (South Island is pictured in an earlier blog post).

The Coat of Arms, or Seal of New Zealand is also on the piece....

....and here is the final map, before ironing and finishing!

This week I'm working on my next freebie release, so check back in the next few days!

My, my...where has January gone?

I cannot for the life of me figure out where January went!  I've been happily stitching along and here it's down to the last few days of the month, already!  My first finish of 2012 was to complete the stitching on the Prairie Schooler 2011 Schooler Santa.

I am now all caught up on Santas and can begin the process of "ornamentification" (thanks Heather for coining that word!).  I also have tons of other finishing to do, including two class projects, several door banners (all seasonal), and a couple dozen other ornaments. I might have to devote a whole month to sewing machine work to get everything "FINISHED"!

This one at least was a breeze....a Pine Mountain kit called What A Hoot! I was lazy and bought the pillow form after I took this picture. This just slips over the pillow and is tied on. If I ever do any more of their series I can just switch out the pillow form. My kind of easy!

Both of these were finished by January 3rd!  About that time I learned that my dear sister-in-law (DSIL) Ann (hubby's sister) is coming with her family for a visit this spring from way down under in New Zealand!
We were able to go down for a visit way back in 2000, which is when this next project started....she took me to a stitchy shop in Taupo and saw the Heritage Stitchcraft Map of New Zealand and asked me if I would stitch it for her, so how could I say no?  Long story, shortened, I worked on it for a while (and I recall that this was BEFORE I attempted anything that big, like a TW or Chatelaine). My daughter was 6 and time just did not allow for much work on it and I put it away the end of 2001.  Now that they are coming for a visit, I just HAD to get it out to finish so she could carry it home with her. I will make it a door banner too, for that reason. This is what it looked like early this month...sorry the pic is not very good.

Now, the South Island is done!

In fact, most of the North Island is done since that picture was taken a couple of weeks ago...I need to take another picture, and finish the coat of arms floating offshore to the west.....hopefully by the end of the month!

I am also working on two mini stocking ornies for my not-so-little kittens adopted last August. They are my carry-around project.  I also have a surprise coming soon, as I have been working on some biscornu designs of my own creation to share this year on my blog!  I just have to stitch up the first one, and get some help converting the pattern to a pdf to make it easier to download. I am using PCStitch Pro which I just got in the most recent form, and am still figuring out some of the new stuff on it.  Any advice on posting would be appreciated for those of you who have experience in this area!  Happy New Year!