Bears for Rachele

Several of us at my needlework shop stitched a set of bears for one of my former staff's first baby. We finally got the bears stitched and back from the finisher a few weeks ago and they are adorable. Each is about 6 inches high finished with ticking on the back and a twisted cord made to coordinate with the colors in the bear's attire. We have the Upstairs family and the Downstairs staff. The house is still being stitched and will be while longer before it is completed.

The chart is an out-of-print Anchor one called the Upstairs Downstairs Bears Sampler. I have tried finding copies of it but it's been out-of-print for several years. eBay is probably the best place find a copy if one is still out there.

Zecca Purse - Bird is done

I finished the stitching on the purple bird this morning. I'm not quite finished with its lime green outline but all the V stitching is done for the "feathers". I also added a rounded Rhodes for the green eye. Next I need to add the beak and its spindly legs...

Progress on my Zecca Purse

I've been working on the front of a purse from Zecca for the past few weeks. It's a huge needlepoint design - big enough for what I'd call a carpet bag. The front features a very stylized purple bird and I think it was the bird and combination of the colors that appealed to me. I'm working the background in a Byzantine stitch with 2 strands of Baroque Silk. I stitch sewing motion so it goes quickly but it's why the canvas appears so distorted. The body of the bird is stitched with 1 strand of Baroque Silk in a V stitch. This is done by working the stitch in a column (angled in this case) and the next column angles the opposite direction. When I get the body done I'll do the wing in the same stitch, but on a different angle.

I'm doing somewhat smaller stitches so that they will wear well when it's used as a bag. The lime green is tent stitch but I've not yet decided on the stitches for the circles or the leaves. That will be a decision for another day...

Needlework Storage

Back in December I redid my sewing room, which had pretty much exploded (I'm sure a few of you can identify with that problem). I removed most of the furniture (thank heaven for FreeCycle), painted the room two shades of blue and then put up the Elfa shelving I had planned for two of the walls. There were a few changes to the plan - I discovered a way to keep my 2-drawer filing cabinet in the room (which will get painted at some point as well). My sewing machine cabinet got a new orientation and a change to the shelving by the window gave me a great desk space for my laptop - and a lovely view of our maple tree.
Here are a few of the storage units I've used in the room.

Soie 100/3 Spools	Accentuate & Bijoux Spools
Thread on spools work well in this cabinet.	This is a scrapbooking cabinet I use now for threads and I have a smaller one I use for bead storage. It works well because the drawers come in 3 different heights. I use the 1 & 2 height drawers in this one.
This is my desk area.	Storage for books and magazines.
The spool cabinet sits at the end of the book shelves and is on rollers so I can move it.	I took the doors off the closet and it houses my fabric drawers and some of my thread drawers as well.
This is storage for threads (skeins, hanks and balls), knitting yarn, sewing machine cones, projects and other bits.	I re-oriented the sewing machine cabinet away from the window so I have more room. It houses my Pfaff sewing machine and serger. And it made just enough room that I could leave the filing cabinet in the corner.
Several years ago I bought 2 of the limited edition DMC cabinets. This one hold my DMC. The other one will hold my Anchor floss when I get that organzied.

Dena from Kreinik & her finger puppet

In my "day job" as a shop owner I go to many trade shows during the year. Dena, who works for Kreinik Mfg and a real sweetheart let me take a fun photo of her and her new finger puppet friend. This was after a long day on the trade show floor - in fact I think it might have been the last day of the show. We're all usually a little loopy by that point but we do have a lot of fun. Hopefully she won't shoot me for posting this :-).