Jardin January Theme-a-licious Check In

Jardin January

 The holidays were a little stressful...let's relax in a nice garden. Work on any piece with flowers or garden.

Another year means another try at Theme-a-licious with my DF Heather. This year I'm getting off to a fairly decent start.

Toccata #1 progress so far:

This piece is a tad addictive. You pick it up to work on a square and boom, you finish that square and think "Ohhh, look I've accomplished something! Lets keep going!" I'm waiting to get bored with it. Hopefully that won't happen since this is the SAL (Stitch-a-Long) for 2013 with my EGA chapter.

Daughters of Longbourn Hall progress:

Look! A person! I'm excited I made so much progress on this piece. I'm amazed. This is one I'm planning on working into each month's theme. I'll have to be creative, but hey, that's the fun of Theme-a-licious!

Well I meant to get this posted right on the 15th, but work and life conspired against me. I'm headed for a weekend of fun with friends in Atlanta later today. I doubt I'll post anything before I return, but you never know. I have some catch-up posts I need to get finished, but I really doubt I'll have time this weekend. But I will return to post another day...soon...I hope....

What's this "finishing" they speak of?

Actually I have finished a couple of things during 2012, and I plan on trying to finish a lot more in 2013. Let's get to what I actually accomplished...

Ok, so it's not a ton of stuff, but that's ok too. I finished one thing that had been in my WIPs for a very long time and two new things. Plus there's the "finishing-finishing" I did!

From left to right starting at the top: Winter Garden Gate (Moss Creek Designs), FSU seal (no idea the designer), Noel Ornament ( ??? ), Rose (no idea the designer), Feathered-Friends Santa (HeathStrings/The Artists Collection, JSC 2005 Orny edition), HallowEden (Plum Street Samplers), Noel (painted canvas), Long May She Wave (Ellen Chester).

I included some things that I'm fairly certain I finished stitching before 2012 but did the actual finishing this year like the FSU seal and the Rose. The other ornaments I finished stitching this year and wow, even did the finishing for two of them.

Winter Garden Gate has been in my WIPs pile for a long time. I even tried to finish it as a SAL with DF Heather a few years ago. Getting it completed in 2012 was fantastic. That makes 3 of the 5 Gates that Rae designed are complete and a wall in my house. When Heather came down to go to the Sun Region EGA stitching weekend with me last year we started another gate. Sadly I haven't worked on it since.

With everything that went on in 2012 I'm pretty impressed I managed to do all this. I'm looking forward to 2013 and getting a few other things out of my WIP pile and hopefully some more ornaments finished. I've actually got a box full of ornaments I've stitched but haven't finished. I think I need some "finishing" days this year.

Thus ends my look back at 2012. Now to look forward!

On the first day of 2013 my needle managed...

(Disclaimer: It took me forever to upload my pictures so you'd have something to look at and not just a lot of words. I blame work.)

To actually stitch a few stitches. I decided to make a start on the SAL my EGA chapter decided on for 2013. I have to admit that Toccata #1 was not my first choice, I was hoping for the canvas piece we had on the ballot. But that's ok, I'm game for a new project and this one looks interesting so I ordered my kit and got it before the New Year. I actually didn't have a lot of time to stitch. I spent part of the morning getting the linen ready, it needed a good ironing and then had to be mounted on some scroll frames. I decided to go ahead and put it on scrolls since the piece is pretty good size and there's pulled work in it. I need some tension for that kind of stitching.

Then I was distracted, in a good way, by lunch with a friend. We decided to try out a pizza place in Orange Park that brews their own beer, and has a lot of other interesting craft beers on tap. We haven't had a chance to catch up and talk for awhile so that turned into a 4 hour lunch. That's my excuse  reason for not having more done. I really only worked on it for a few hours.



I figure this will count for Theme-a-licious as well since there are flowers in this one, somewhere in those multitude of squares. I'm also going to pick up Daughters of Longbourn and see if I can't make some progress on it. I've decided that the Bennett sisters will be included in my Finish Challenge list so hopefully I'll make some progress and **gasp** even finish it this year. A look at it at the beginning of the year...



So, that's the first 2 items on my Finish Challenge list, there will be 8 more before the month is through. We'll see what else decides it wants to be finished to hang on the walls, or sit on a shelf, this year.