A Forced Hiatus

No posting on projects since July. What have I been doing? Well I’ve suffered from eye allergies since moving to Texas. It isn’t the eyes so much as the skin around the eyes. I tolerated it, used allergy medicine, tried cortisone like the doctor suggested and experienced some relief but then it became intolerable and infected. I could only focus on my close up work for brief periods. Finally I went to an eye doctor. She changed my prescription for eye pressure and gave me an antibiotic for clearing up the infection. My eyes became better but the antibiotic blurred my eyesight I could see okay to drive but still couldn’t do close up work. Then finally they were okay, I was back to normal. That is until it flared up again. Then my son requested prayer for me at a healing service and now I’m doing fine.

I did manage to help my daughter and her friend make some banners for a baby shower. That was a fun day and it reminded me how much I enjoy sharing my crafting knowledge with others.

Next it was getting busy for my grandson’s first birthday with a few more banners including a name one. Don’t the lions look cute!

And of course he had to have a birthday outfit. My daughter requested a onsie with a tie and suspenders. I used a pattern from WinterPeach to make it. Then I did a second one. Good thing too since the first one

got extremely dirty from the cake smashing!

Finally I got busy on the TAST 2012 stitches. Seems like I get caught up and then I’m behind by three. Sometimes they are done but I just haven’t photographed them. So here are the latest ones I’ve done. (I’m still behind by three and of course there is a new one this week so I really have four to do.)

Algerian Eye

This was a new stitch for me and a challenge as I wasn’t sure how I wanted to do it. If you’ve been following me you know I’m doing most of them using my continuous line scribble technique. But occasionally a stitch just doesn’t work in that mode. I had a piece of fabric that I had done a design on using the zentangle type concept. Outer borders plus strings were done but that was as far as I had gotten. Maybe I could do the Algerian Eye in those spaces. I did them with a black thread.

Then I tried to continue doing them with color but the black was being lost so I finally did the colors as a satin stitch. Using pearl cotton I did the yellow, blue, and then green. Oh that is color mixing! So I continued with that adding the red and purple. Now I needed a red-violet. It took a while to find the right red-violet color so that delayed the finishing. But I’m happy with the results.

Additional stitches completed:

Cast On

Drizzle

Pekinese

Linked Double Chain

Knotted Buttonhole

Sheaf

Pistil

Now off to try and catch up once again. I’ve enjoyed TAST2012 but I’m not sure if I’ll do all of 2013. It has introduced me to new stitches and gotten me to work with stitches I’ve known but not used very much in my work.

The intent was to expand my portfolio of stitches to use on my crazy quilts but now that project is way behind too! So I’d better get busy. I’ll keep you posted!

Happy Stitching!

Rose