Incoherent Scribblings

Sunbonnet Sue

I was going to post this picture of my latest finish last night but I was experiencing technical difficulties.

Anyway…

For those of you who may not be familiar with this motif, it is Sunbonnet Sue, one of the most widely recognized quilt block patterns of all time. However, in this case Sue has been stitched instead of quilted. The pattern comes from the November/December 1993 issue of Cross Stitch and Country Crafts and is one of several traditional quilt block motifs in the issue.

I am sure I have mentioned it before, but I have always thought it would be neat to take several small cross stitch pieces and put them together for a quilt. Unfortunately, I have always run into a number of difficulties with this scheme; the main problem being that I don’t want take the time to actually learn to quilt. However, after reading the instructions for this project and seeing these motifs finished into a wall-hanging/doll quilt in the magazine, I think I may have found a solution to my dilemma.

This Sue won’t be for that though. I stitched her over one on 32 White Belfast for one of my PIF gifts. I had originally intended on finishing her into a fob, but I had a different idea last night so now I am not sure.

However, the thing you will probably notice as I am stitching up my PIF gifts is that I have decided that I am going to show them on my blog when they are finished. I am not going to say which gift is for which recipient though, so that will be the surprise. I figure this is my PIF and I make the rules, so I will show them when I want!

PIF

For my PIF, I will stitch (and finish) a “needleworks small” by March 1, 2009 for the first five people to leave a comment in this post.

Technically, the idea behind a “pay it forward” is that whoever signs up should also commit to doing something for X number of people. While I encourage this, it is not a requirement of my PIF that you must do so.

Sign-ups will be open for two weeks and I will contact those who sign-up via email within 48 hours to get mailing addresses, so make sure you leave a valid email in the comments box.

If I haven’t had five people sign up in those two weeks, I will stitch for however many have signed up.

Let the sign-ups begin!

Update: Wow! What an awesome response! I haven’t even had the announcement up for 48 hours and I already have 5 participants so sign-ups are closed. Thanks for signing up ladies. I will be emailing you shortly for your mailing addresses.

Queenie and Confetti

Well, not only did I finish my ten-hour rotation on “Spring Queen” last night, my new camera arrived in the mail yesterday so I was able to take a decent picture of my progress. I would like to keep working on Queenie until I finish the rest of her chest, but since that is the way that I get off track with my rotation I won’t. Instead I will put her away and move on the next piece, which is… (drumroll please)

“Above the Clouds!”

Yes, the illustrious Confetti is next in my rotation. As I have stated the past three times that it has come up in my rotation, I would love to work on “Above the Clouds” until it is finished, but as most of you know I have nearly burned out with it and demoted it to a UFO each of those times. Therefore, this time all I want to do is to stitch on it for ten more hours.

However, since I keep putting it off, it is very likely that I will start the first in the series of Christmas ornaments that I want to do for my family instead.

In other news, since I stopped doing exchanges I have considered doing a PIF a couple of times as a way to continue to stitch small gifties for my fellow stitchers. Obviously I have never gotten around to doing so, but yesterday when I signed up to be PIF recipient at Cross Stitch Happy I decided the time had come to officially commit myself to it. Details concerning my PIF will come shortly in a sticky post…