Finish It In...2019 - Check In Post for May, TUSAL, and More

 

Welcome to the fourth Finish It In... 2019 post for the year! In this post I'll show you what I've been up to since the last post (except for the still secret stuff), and all the other things that I have added to this once a month mega post. Get your coffee, tea, or favourite drink of choice out and make sure you are on Wi-Fi if you are on a mobile device as this post is picture heavy as always.

Not sure what a TUSAL is? Click the picture!

As always I'm first going to start by showing you my ORTs - the bits of thread that get cut off and usually thrown away.

This is my jar of ORTs for April - I did a lot of stitching, and quite a bit of thread chicken this month! It's full of lighter and brighter colours - with a small smattering of black. As to what I stitched... I'll show you below in as much as I can of course - after I show you how many hours it was!

I worked on quite a few projects this month - some for as little as one minute (still got a few stitches in so counted it) and as much as 18h 13m! Click to enlarge, it will make the picture clearer. Quite a lot of these projects were started because I joined a thing called the TeamKLT vs TeamJodyri over on Facebook and it ran the entire month of April setting us challenges every day, most stitching related! I chose to join TeamJodyri as I'm a huge fan of her fabric and threads. Needless to say that due to me being somewhat competitive I did my best every time and set some new personal records for speed stitching! Unfortunately the whole month is a bit of a fog number wise and the posts so many that I can't find how many it was *sniff*.

And here you can see how much the event affected my stitching hours! Yes, I stitched over 84 hours just on the challenge things! As for what all these things are... let me show you! I'll start at the top of the project list and work my way down. As both Michelle of Jodyri Designs and Kim of KLT Charting are designers (and more) we usually had challenges that included patterns they had designed, using fabric and thread (where applicable) they had dyed, so I usually used both Jodyri fabric and threads for most challenges, just to get bonus points. It was fun doing other people's patterns for a change!

Please note that I'm not affiliated with either designer - I'm just a happy customer of Jodyri and had a great time with their shared challenges and I feel it's only right to link to designers you are talking about, especially when sharing pictures that use their patterns. Many of the threads and fabrics I can't link to due to me having amassed a rather nice collection of Limited Edition fabrics and threads over the past few years that I have been using instead of hoarding this year.

First of all is my first finish of the event: Jodyri Designs "Lotus Flower" that I stitched over three days - it was fun to stitch! I used Jodyri Designs October 2018 Limited Edition "Boulder Opal" 18ct Aida and I did the stitching with Jodyri Designs December 2013 Limited Edition "Snowy Pines" and Jodyri Designs "Eyes of Jade" Solo thread (sadly discontinued).

One of the challenges was to stitch a pattern by KLT Charting, which I didn't have so I joined the Facebook group and found this delightful pattern in the files - a great way to discover a new to you designer! I used this chart for several challenges and only have around 650 stitches left to do. It's stitched on Jodyri Designs January Limited Edition "Mermaid Dreams" 18ct Aida using Jodyri Designs "Shades of Sunlight" and "Orange Sherbet" Solo threads (both sadly discontinued).

Before

After

Then on to Shannon Wasilieff's Midnight Sail that I started as my day one new start - I showed this already in last month's post but I did get another day of stitching on it as well during the event! It's actually looking like something now!

Next up is a sneak preview of a SAL I'll be doing sometime this summer - we needed to do as many stitches as we could one time and blackwork/backstitch was counted as one stitch too - as it wasn't a designer specific challenge and not everyone had a blackwork pattern I quickly made a pdf of this and gave to to everyone to use for this challenge (did I mention I was competitive?) I'll tell more about this when the time comes.

Then my second finish of the event is Jodyri Designs "Pawprint" Stitched on a scrap of Jodyri Designs April 2016 Limited Edition "Cairns Birdwing Butterfly" that I had left over from another project. I stitched it with Jodyri Designs "Bitter Chocolate" 150R thread to make a muddy paw print on the green fabric.

The Spring Mystery SAL happened during all this too and I hadn't finished stitching it so I had to do this between everything else! I was doing the finishing on the Saturday of the mystery!

For another of the new start days I finally started stitching this Celtic Spiral bookmark that my fiancé gave me a while back. I managed to stitch about half of the bookmark before the end of the day.

My third finish of the event was this lovely Butterfly mini that Michelle had designed for our team - handy as this was useable for two of the stitching challenges: a chart with butterflies and a chart with words. I finished on the words chart day. Jodyri Designs January Limited Edition "Mermaid Dreams" 25ct Lugana. I used Jodyri Designs "Fiery Topaz" 244R, "A lions Courage" 115R, and "Wicked Witch of the West" 111R to stitch the design.

Rather unsurprisingly I didn't have time for the older Finish It In... 2019 projects, but I did have time for some of the SALs - but they are for another day. Now on to what I can show you of the current SALs! If you want to stitch something you see below look to the right hand sidebar and scroll till you find it.

Ornament of the Month:

Last time I could show you January to March now I can add the April ornament to the mix too!

Here they are all together in one image - with January on the left and April on the right. I have already stitched May and June, I did that last month so I could cut February and April loose.

Mamluk SAL:
Last month I could only show you the February picture as I'd forgotten to take a photo before starting April - this month I can show you both at the same time in the same photo, so again there is only the one picture.

Medieval Owl:

I have nothing new to show for the Medieval Owl as I'd stitched the April part a couple of months ago so you had already seen that. I have not yet stitched the May part of the SAL.

Blackwork SAL:

The Blackwork SAL also suffered from my forgetfulness (I did stitch them on the same evening) so last month I had nothing new to show. This month I can show you March and April in the same photo.

50 x 50 for 2019:
This one I am the least consistent on in amount of stitching, some months I do it all, others just the main pattern and I've even showed you a completed alternate pattern but an incomplete main one. For April I was able to stitch both.

Main pattern.

Alternate pattern

25 x 25 for 2019:

For April I designed a simple to stitch back as well as a more involved front. Both patterns are included in the pdf.

Front

Back

I didn't have time to stitch the NFSAL so do not have anything to show for it. The Blue and Yellow Hexagon blanket has been set aside till it gets colder as I'm in full stitching mode right now.

Now it's your turn! Make a blog post if you blog, make a vlog/flosstube, a post on Instagram or Facebook and make sure I at least can see what you have stitched in the last month!  If you blog or vlog please put a link below - it will be fun to see what you have stitched and who knows... you may gain a larger audience in the process! Not sure how it works? Check out the overview post!

There is now a Facebook group just for this project so you don't have to wait till the first Wednesday of the month to share your progress on a project that isn't something I designed. You are encouraged to start your own photo album in the group so it's easy to see your progress between postings of each project. Members of my main group are automatically accepted others will need to be approved first. You can find the group here
 
I'll see you Friday for the May Ornament of the Month!