WIPocalypse October 27th

Here I am posting this 6 days late. So where was I on my stitching on October 27th. If you look at the right had colum of my blog you can see I have quite an extensive list of WIPs. Instead of getting smaller which was my plan on January 1st it has continued to grow as I find new and exciting stitching opportunities. I have added six new starts this month (London, Charizard, Noel, Retreat Band Sampler, White Ornament, Martina's Geometric) and completed two projects. So the WIP list grows to 24. 

My two finishes include a free design from Paine Free Crafts called a Golden Baby Dragon. This was stitched on 16 count aida cloth with DMC threads. You can find this cute design here: http://www.painefreecrafts.com/product-category/cross/free/.  I stitched this in honor of my new grandson who is currently warm and safe with his mother but will join the rest of us in March. The TLO above the dragon stands for "the Little One" which is what my DH calls him.   

I also finished a painted canvas cupcake for my son who has a great imagination regarding efficient techniques to frost cupcakes. His wife and every other female member of his family was in stitches as he described his technique. Our led us to picture the ultimate disaster that would ensue with his technique. However he gets a lot of points for trying to come up with ways to make his wife's life easier. 

I spent a good amount of time in October preparing for a class I taught on specialty stitches at the Cross stitch Club Retreat on October 17th. I designed the piece for the class and put together 72 kits which included fabric, needle minders that I made, DMC floss, a thread sorter card, the design layout, stitch instructions, and finishing instructions to complete the design as a bell pull.   Experience is a great teacher and I learned a lot through this experience. I also had a fantastic time teaching the class and I had a great group of students.

  However, the only picture I have is of the threads I included to stitch the design. I charted the design but did not stitch it before the class. I  will never do that again.  While the students took home the design, we didn't stitch it during class. Instead we  used the fabric (28  count Ivory Lugana) to practice each of the specialty stitches included in the design. While I had this all on PowerPoint slides the room set up did not allow for projection. Fortunately I took samples of work that I had done so the students could see what the stitches looked like completed.  I am now stitching the design after the fact. When I have completed it I  will post it and updated stitching directions for the class and others to download. I hope to teach needlework classes again and will am currently preparing proposals for the next set of classes I would like to teach at next year's retreat. 

The question this month is: Are there any fibers or materials used in stitching that you are nervous to try? I would not say nervous. There are definitely fibers that don't appeal to me and therefore I don't try them because I either don't like the texture or weight of them. Theses are usually fibers that are fuzzy in nature. There are some that I would like try that I haven't tried because the right stitching opportunity has not come up yet. These include very velvet and silk ribbon. 

Until next month may the stitching force be with each and every one of you.