April 2, 2008

Debi Murray and I were on the phone late last night into the wee hours of this morning. She's really been encouraging me to work on something else because I'm in such a slump with Deftly Wrought. Sweetheart that she is, she even offered to finish stitching it for me! I know she doesn't like stitching on linen and I don't want her to have to suffer through, and she told me "there would be no suffering; it would be a labor of love." Shoot! She's gonna make me cry! I finally convinced her that it's more than she's bargaining for because I stitch "backwards" from most stitchers.

I stitch like I read: Left to Right, Top to Bottom and that's how my stitches go. First \\\\\, and then //////. Left to right and then right to left, top to bottom. I also am more comfortable starting in the middle of my fabric if it's in a kit. Too many times, that fabric doesn't have the extra three inches on all sides for matting and framing. In most cases, there's barely a border of fabric outside the stitching so starting in the middle is a must. Since that's the way I learned to stitch, I continue to follow that method. DW was the first project I started in a corner of the design. Since then, I've started a few others like that, mainly because that's the way the directions are written. You have to start with one line and finish it before moving on to the next.

Debi and I concluded our telephone conversation for the night but were still communicating on MSN Messenger, stitching between messages. Yes! I finally did it! I STITCHED AT HOME! I decided that I wasn't enthusiastic about stitching the Navy Emblem, any more than I was Deftly Wrought, so I grabbed all my bread cover leaflets and was browsing through when I found the perfect one: 25 Bread Cloths for the Holidays by Leisure Arts.

Why is it perfect? Because it's small, cute designs for all the major holidays and some minor ones as well. I sell my bread cloths at Greensborough Trading Company and these designs will appeal to a variety of people. Additionally, the small designs will lend themselves to quick finishes. They'll hopefully help me out of this slump, too!

I decided to do the three patriotic designs for 4th of July. There's a firecracker with stars, Uncle Sam waving a flag with "God Bless America," and a heart that is decorated like our flag with "Liberty" on either side. Together, the three designs only use eight colors of DMC floss.

After consulting Debi, we determined that Fiddler's cloth wouldn't look good and neither would cream. Luckily, I had two white and one light blue cloth left in my bin of bread covers. I started the firecracker design on the light blue cloth because it will look like the sky.

I tried finishing the design before I went to bed, but I couldn't make it past 8:00a.m. My headache also started coming back so I took an Aleve, turned out the lights, lowered the thermostat to 68 degrees, and crawled under my blankets.

I woke up at 1:10p.m. when my alarm went off. Amazingly I was wide awake. I usually stumble around for a few minutes preparing to leave for dialysis, so I was very suprised I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after only five hours' sleep.


I finished the Firecracker at dialysis!! I went straight to work on the Liberty Heart design. This is finish number thirteen for me, and my sixth bread cover of the year. I'm completely elated to have one more finish towards my goal. I really needed this for a pick-me-up. I've been mentally beating myself up for this slump I'm in lately, but I still do everything except stitch once I'm home.
And I have a new stitching toy!! Ray in Saskatchewan sent me this great DMC Stitch Bow mini travel binder. It holds ten half-size pages which in turn each hold ten floss holders. In total, this could hold one hundred skeins of floss! He also included sixty floss holders and two full-size binder pages. Thank you for a wonderful trade, Ray! As you can see, I'm already using the binder to hold the floss for my current project!