Tons of Tiny - September

What is Tons of Tiny? In short it's a SAL where you stitch small projects and talk about them. Click the button above to read more! The SAL runs from the 11th of each month till the 10th so this post will cover things I've made that count for this SAL from the 11th of August till 10th September.

First of all there is the monthly Fob a Month fob. It's 1 7/8" square and is double sided so counts as 2 Tiny's. You can find the pattern for the fob here: Fob a Month - 6.

I made this to go with the sewing box my bf gave me and having started making things for the box I couldn't stop! So I continued on and made a pincushion that fits exactly into a slot width wise but leaves some space for other things as well as it's 2" square and 1" high. It has 5 sides and I'm not really sure how to count this for the Tons if Tiny project yet - I'll update when I know!

 If you wish to make the pincushion you can find the pattern here: Joining the Dots - Part 1. I then went on to make a scissor case for the box. Carla has decreed that as this was stitched separately before being joined it will count for 2 Tiny's

If you wish to make the scissor case you can find the pattern here: Joining the Dots - Part 2. I had to take a break from Stitching things for the box at this point as it was time to do the monthly Ornaments. This month I managed to do both in time for the post! It looks like things are getting back to normal for me stitching speed wise.

On the left is the larger ornament - it's 3" finished made with 16ct Aida and is the basic pattern + an additional border taken from the wall hanging pattern I offer as well with the ornaments on it. On the right you can see the basic ornament pattern - it's 2 1/4" square and made with 16ct Aida it's been finished as part of the garland I'm also making with this pattern.

After that I went back to make the last part of the polka dot set, a little needle book, which is a true Tiny as it's just 2" x 1 1/4"! I haven't given the pattern for this yet as that's due tomorrow but I'll come back here and update the link once I have it.

It's been a busy month for me and I'm amazed at how much I got done! I am able to add 8 (?) more Tiny's to my total count which brings me to a total of  39 Tiny's

Tons of Tiny - July & August Edition

What is Tons of Tiny? In short it's a SAL where you stitch small projects and talk about them. Last time I posted I had brought the number of tiny's I'd finish finished to 27, this time I'm going to raise that number even more, though not by so much as my stitching has slowed down this summer and I only finished things that had blog deadlines other than Celtic Wolf which is too large to count.

July:

From 11th June till 10th July I stitched the following items that count as a tiny:

The Mucha Princess inspired fob - you can read all about it, and find the pattern for both this and several other colour variations here: Fob a Month - 4. You can also finish this as a normal biscornu as Carla did with hers, you can find the photo here: Tons of Tiny Everything Since April....I Think

And as usual I made my Ornament of the Month - this time just the one as I still need to do the garland finish one. As this is the ornament finish I added the border from the wall hanging option to make it larger than the basic ornament, that I finish as a garland addition. It's 3" square and made on 16ct antique white Aida with 3 colours of DMC, seed beads and a bicone. You can find the pattern here: Ornament of the month - July

August: 

From 11th July till 10th August I didn't stitch as much, mostly because I went on holiday with my bf for 10 days in this time and of course I was quite busy in the run up to it. I did however find time to do the monthly fob, though I posted about it after I returned.

The Fob of the Month fob was inspired by my holiday plans: to go to Hastings pirate day and be a wench for the day. I used glow in the dark thread for this just to add a bit of a surprise that one would not normally expect from a fob. You can find the pattern here: Fob a Month - 5

Last of all I did the August ornament of the month It's the same size etc as the ornament above, except I used a flower bead instead of a bicone on the tassel. You can find the pattern here: Ornament of the Month - August


As all of these are single sided, that brings the grand total to 31 tiny's

Tons of Tiny May and June Edition

It's been a long time since my last Tons of Tiny post so I'm taking this moment when I don't have a Wolf update to instead post about that. I have been seriously bad at mailing out the patterns I offered in my previous posts, in fact only a couple have been sent at all and for that I really must apologise. I have come to realise that this might not be working so well so am going to stop offering patterns like this.

Back to the more fun part of the post.. showing what I have done, spilt up as if I'd posted them separately. The total I had at the end of my last Tons of Tiny post was 17

May:

From 11th April till 10th May I did not do so much work on tiny projects, I was mostly working on Wolf. I did however do my usual small projects.

 First of all the April Fob a Month fob with matching pincushion. You can find the free patterns here: A Fob a Month - 2

 Then came the May Ornament of the Month, as usual I did a normal ornament finish and a garland finish one. You can find the pattern here: Ornament of the Month - May

At the time I *should* have done my May Tons of Tiny post I had a total of 21 Tiny finishes.

June:

11th may - 10th June was a lot more productive due to the number of birthstones available for the month and of course I did a pattern for each one.






















The May Fob a Month pattern is 2 sided and so counts as 2 finishes for Tons of Tiny (yay!)

This is the Pearl Ornament of the Month for June, garland finish.

This is the green Alexandrite Ornament of the Month for June, garland finish.

This is the Moonstone Ornament of the Month for June, garland finish.

This is the pink Alexandrite Ornament of the Month for June, biscornu finished as I only had enough of the ornament fabric to do 3 of the ornaments and pink on pure white looks so much better than on antique white. You can find the free patterns for all 4 here: Ornament of the Month - June I have not yet had time to make the ornament versions of these so they will happen at some point later this year.

This brings the grand total of tiny's made and finished to 27 as I have not included any tiny's I have stitched that are not finished.

See you tomorrow with a Wolf update - the rest I had yesterday and last night was much needed and now the pain is less I'm able to stitch again.

Ornament of the Month - April And Tons of Tiny

This month's Birthstones are Diamond and CZ. As they are both more or less the same thing to look at with the untrained naked eye (I'm sure there are people out there who can tell the difference at 10 feet but I for one can't tell the difference unless an expert tells me hehe) I decided to do just one colour this month. The inspiration was diamonds themselves and how they have facets and sparkle so much. This resulted in a LOT of backstitching, a bit more than I like to be honest which is why this blog post is so very late, I kept thinking "I'll be done soon and can post both together". However the back stitching seemed to last for months!

Here you can see how much back stitching there is - over 60 inches of it! But I have to admit that it really looks nice once completed. This being the garland finish it's 2 1/4" square. This month I finished the edges with some of the beads Carla sent me as they looked perfect for the job and the pendant is one of the string of Swarovski bicones my bf sent me as a surprise in March. I did the stitches of the "diamond" elements a bit differently on the garland finish than I had done for the ornament that I'd finished first as I decided to do all of the stitches into the centre instead of huge stitches across going round in a circle.

Here you can see how I'd originally intended it, but in a way it's nice to have small differences in these things and shows there is no one way to do it. As always I have made the ornament finish a bit bigger by using the border I made for the wall hanging around it which makes it 3" square. I used the same beads and bicone for the decoration of the ornament.

Both designs are stitched on 16ct antique white Aida with 3 colours of DMC - pattern can be found here: Ornament of the Month - April - The hanging loops are made with DMC 762

The more curious of you might be wondering how the garland looks by now - I had the same thought so got them all out, strung them together in the order I made them and hung them on my obliging apple tree and this is the result:

They might seem a bit far apart but if you consider that they may be draped around a Christmas tree or hung across the room and there will be only 12 of them then you can see why I'd want them to be spread out a bit.

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Now for the Tons of Tiny section! What is Tons of Tiny? In short it's a SAL where you stitch small projects and talk about them and hopefully also send your used and useful patterns on to someone else who might enjoy them. Last month I offered 4 tiny cat patterns and Carla was the person who asked for and will be getting them! Linda, sorry I keep meaning to sit down and translate the instructions before sending the Paddington patterns to you - I will make it happen this week!

This month I have done a bit more than I will count now as I have not yet posted about them and want to do them in a separate post, I will count these next month.

Since my last Tons of Tiny post I have been busy making things. Of course my Ornaments that you can see above are part of this but I won't post the photo's again so close to the others hehe.

 Then there is the needle book I made during the last IHSW - you can find the pattern here: Pattern: Blue floral needle book

There is my double sided scissor fob for the Fob a Month project, you can find the pattern here: A Fob a Month - 1.
Carla has decreed that a double sided fob counts as 2 Tiny's so this project counts as 2.

And last of all the Sophie Card that was a freebie from the CrossStitcher magazine a couple of months ago, there is stitching under the dress that was ironed on with fusible interfacing but you can't see it on the photo - I even back stitched a belly button!

All in all I added another 6 Tiny projects to my total which brings my overall total to 17.

This month's patterns that are on offer are a clown with a balloon (I don't have a cover photo on hand so used the actual embroidery for the photo) and Miffy with a ball. Neither pattern has a colour code but I will give suggestions for each and you could even do the clown using colours of your own! Please note that these are used patterns that I coloured in with pencil and have since used a rubber (that's an eraser for the American's out there ;) ) to remove as much as I can - the patterns are still legible.

I will be sending one of these to 2 people, just comment with which one you'd like and I'll get in touch with the new homes for snail mail addy's some time next week (at the latest by the next Tons of Tiny post). Please note that you are only supposed to request one of these if you are planning on making it yourself as part of the Tons of Tiny project, these patterns are not for resale! If you were given a pattern in the month before you can still join in!

If more than one person asks for the same pattern I'll write the names on a bit of paper, drop them in a jar and let one of the kids pull a name.

Celtic Wolf - WIP post 26 & Tons of Tiny for March

The above photo is the last full Wolf photo for a bit while I focus on getting the last stitches done as I find taking him out of the hoop, pinning him up and photographing before putting him back into the hoop to be pretty tine consuming and has meant that I have not stitched when I might have been able to get a few stitches in because he wasn't in the hoop. Yesterday's lack of stitching was partly due to that but also due to an appointment and me being upset by hearing of Terry Pratchett passing away. He was an author I am a great fan of and whose books dragged me back from the brink of depression on more than one occasion because it's difficult to become depressed when you are laughing so much you are crying. I also spent some time with my beads after the flip top box cases arrived as well as more beads for Wolf, my CrossStitcher magazine and a gift of Swarovski beads from my bf, most of which you can read about in yesterday's post So.. I got organising....

Speaking of the beads for Wolf I did of course have to audition some on him but he's being fickle and doesn't like the copper beads I got nor did he like the gold lined crystal beads - I may end up stitching this area after all, fortunately it's only 286 stitches. Yesterday I stitched some more using the Kreinik Solar Silver and then, because I was having trouble tying tiny knots I decided to move to the background and do some filling in starting with 820 as that forms a nice grid. As you can see there is not much left to do with this blue so I'll be able to move on to the garnet and lighter blue later.

Stitches done: 217

Total stitches:  11537
Total backstitches: 42.76 inches
Stitches left: 1283

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Now for the Tons of Tiny section! What is Tons of Tiny? In short it's a SAL where you stitch small projects and talk about them and hopefully also send your used and useful patterns on to someone else who might enjoy them. Last month I offered 3 Paddington patterns - I have contacted Linda for her snail mail address so I can send them!

Now on to my Tons of Tiny entries - this month only my two ornaments as Wolf has been taking up all my time, which brings the total of small projects to 2 for this month and 11 in total.







This month I decided would be cat month! As I have 4 cat patterns I will be giving them all away this month. They are all by Lanarte, all 3 1/4 x 2 1/4" / 6 x 8 cm - and have a DMC colour code list. Please note that these are used patterns only that I coloured in with pencil and have since used a rubber (that's an eraser for the American's out there ;) ) to remove as much as I can - the patterns are still legible.

I will be sending one of these to 4 people, just comment with which one you'd like and I'll get in touch with the new homes for snail mail addy's some time next week (at the latest by the next Tons of Tiny post). Please note that you are only supposed to request one of these if you are planning on making it yourself as part of the Tons of Tiny project, these patterns are not for resale! If you were given a pattern in the month before you can still join in!

If more than one person asks for the same pattern I'll write the names on a bit of paper, drop them in a jar and let one of the kids pull a name.

See you tomorrow!

Ornament of the Month & Tons of Tiny February editions + finishes

 

I'm going to start with my ornaments from my Ornament of the Month project. The patterns were already posted on the NCC International Headquarters site (click the button above) so you can rush over and grab them if you like what you see.
This months Birthstone is amethyst so I went for the purples that you see so often in these stones. As the month is February I decided that a wink to Valentines day was ok. Hearts are also popular during Christmas as it stands for loving your family, friends and neighbours. I included a little candy backstitch on each of the corners as candy is a favourite during both Valentines and Christmas.

For the beading I used some amazing TOHO permanent finish silver lined amethyst size 11/0 seed beads which I sewed down with the darkest purple thread. I managed to get my hands on some lovely amethyst pieces that had a hole drilled through and I chose 2 to use for the ornaments. A larger drop shaped one for the tassel of the bigger ornament and a really light one as the pendant bead on the garland finish ornament.

Since I can imagine people wondering how those long ears on the garland ornament work I decided to make a photo of the January and February ornaments linked.

While I was taking photo's of the February ornament I decided to also take new photo's of the January one as the original photo's were made indoors after dark. And I also took the following photo so you can see the two together.

Stats: 
Size: 3 inches along each side for the bigger ornament and 2 1/4" for the smaller one.
Fabric: 16ct antique white Aida
Colours used: DMC 550, 552, 553 and medium purple craft thread for the loops.
Beads: TOHO size 11 Permanent Finish silver lined milky amethyst and a real amethyst
Pattern can be found here: Ornament of the Month - February

Next month's pattern will be posted on the NCCIH site on Friday 6th March.

This month I am a bit early with posting the Tons of Tiny but I decided to do a 2 in one post as my ornaments also count for Tons of Tiny. What is Tons of Tiny? In short it's a SAL where you stitch small projects and talk about them and hopefully also send your used and useful patterns on to someone else who might enjoy them. Last month I had 3 to talk about, this month I have quite a few more to add to that total.

First of all is the scissor keeper and fob that I made using a kit from CrossStitcher, you can read all about it in my blog post I have been informed that this counts as 2 items for ToT.

Just around the time I finished this my much delayed January issue arrived with another little kit in it. Again I had a bit of bad luck with it as the metal necklace pendant the cross stitch was supposed to go into was broken - the hanger bit that had been spot welded on had not been welded properly and had dropped off in transit. However the metal bit has been very useful to put seed beads in while beading so it's quite handy to have it! I turned the fabric and some of the thread into a lasso bookmark for my youngest son.

These were really the only colours he liked from the kit so unfortunately the letter isn't as clear as it might have been I added a lot of backstitching in an attempt to make it stand out more.

This little initial is 22 stitches square on 14ct white Aida and uses 3 colours.

Next up is this lovely little owl ornament . I found the cross stitch pattern for this a while ago and kept it in a tab so I'd not forget to make it (things that go to bookmarks tend to get lost, even though I am careful about sorting them lol). I decided that it was madness to keep the tab open till autumn so decided I may as well make it and then I would have a Halloween ornament ready well before time for a change as more often than not I never get round to it.

I decided to do the pattern on black Aida and use variegated thread to make the design itself, so I reversed the pattern. I had some trouble with the pattern at first as the designer did not use the standard 10 square grid but a grid of 14, 15, 15, 5 so I re-charted it and worked from that instead.

The pattern is free and can be found here

Stats:
Size: 41 stitches square
Finished size: 3 3/4"
Fabric: Black 14 ct Aida
Floss: Cosmo variegated thread 8034

That brings the total of small projects to 6 for this month and 9 in total. Funnily enough I haven't managed to do much on my bigger projects this month.

Now on to the patterns I shall be offering this month to whoever puts their name down for them. Last month Leonore was sent the Daffodils and Carla will be sent the dog rose soon. The other pattern was not asked for so that will go back into the box for a later date.

This month's theme is Paddington. I have 3 little patterns for him all of which are stitched with DMC colours.

The one on the left was a freebie with a magazine, meant to entice you to buy a bigger pattern that this was taken from, on it's own it's fun too though. 8 colours, whole and back stitching. no grid so I'm not sure of the size.

The middle one is Paddington sitting on his suitcase with a lollypop, made by Permin of Copenhagen. It's 33 stitches wide x 42 stitches high, whole and backstitches, 8 colours. It also contains an alphabet and 0-9 numbers. Downside of this pattern: I used a red ballpoint pen to mark where I stitched however you can still clearly see the symbols.

On the right is the smallest of the lot - 19 stitches x 30 stitches, 5 colours - they are not listed as DMC numbers but it uses the same colours as the other Permin Paddington pattern so I'll write down which number floss is what.


I will be sending one of these to 3 people, just comment with which one you'd like and I'll get in touch with the new homes for snail mail addy's some time next week. Please note that you are only supposed to request one of these if you are planning on making it yourself as part of the Tons of Tiny project, these patterns are not for resale! If you were given a pattern in the month before you can still join in!

If more than one person asks for the same pattern I'll write the names on a bit of paper, drop them in a jar and let one of the kids pull a name.

When kits run short of threads...

...one needs to either complain (and hopefully get more threads) or smile as a chance to become creative makes itself known. I chose the latter as this was a freebie kit that came with the February issue of CrossStitcher. Thousands of these are made and sometimes someone miscounts threads - in the end I only needed to add a little white to complete it and that was for an extra bit that wasn't part of the pattern.

I really liked the Owl freebie kit and started it the same day I got it, though my son's illness got in the way of craft time so I didn't get round to finishing it till last night. I measured everything carefully and found that I'd be able to make a 2 sided scissor fob as there was enough fabric for 2 of the 5 x 5 squares of Aida.  I wasn't sure what I'd do on the back but I left that for later.

The owl went smoothly, especially because I'd taken the time to measure the centre and mark both that and the starting place for the different parts. At one point the scarf on the bottom half reminded people of a ray gun and later it resembled a nerf gun more - this is the fun of stitching - seeing what shapes pop out during the stitching, I decided to not backstitch the scarf fringe but to use Ghiordes Knot: instead so I now have a 3-D fringe. I used wheat Hoffman's batik for the back of the keep as I didn't like how stretchy the felt was and I was certain I'd make a mess of sewing it as a result.

When I got to doing the scissor fob I discovered that I was a good 50 stitches short of finishing the blue and there was no more blue thread left. As a stingy stitcher who uses up thread to the last possible mm this was really surprising. Normally I have "stacks" left over as kits usually include enough for a less experienced stitcher to be able to complete it even if they have to rip a bit. I too had to rip as I'd started the column of 5 blue stitches doing the 5 next to each other before before doing the next row. This would have mirrored what you can see on the right in the photo above. Half way up was the place where I ran out so I carefully removed all of that and re-did the rows but then doing them in columns of 20 instead - I had enough for 2 whole columns so stopped after that.

As I finished colours I decided I could stitch them onto the back in a "circle" and decided to start with the bit of orange I was certain to have leftover after backstitching as I'd made a note of how much I'd needed on the owl itself.  I then did the yellow and green and then the white. It was at this point that I discovered the blue issue so I looked at what I had left and decided to use the last of the brown to make one row and some of the remaining grey to make the other two rows.  I only had enough grey left (one length of 2 strands of thread) that would do about 25 stitches but needed another 100 to complete the back so went with some white from my own stash to complete the back and used the grey to do the backstitching around the edge of the front to make the biscornu shape.

In the end I'm very happy with the result - this is really a one of a kind fob which uses the basic pattern and then does it's own thing.

Size: Scissor keep: 3 1/8" x 4 1/2" / 8 cm x 11.5 cm - fob: 1 2/2" / 4 cm across the middle
Fabric: 14ct Aida
Thread: 7 colours.

IHSW report for January

This IHSW I did a lot of crochet instead of stitching because my oldest son had a friend staying over and I was pretty tired and decided I'd rather avoid frogging. Considering the amount of crochet I had to rip out I'm pleased I made this decision as ripping out crochet is a LOT easier. Before I started on Friday I took the following photo, if you enlarge it you can see the wool to the top right about where the fold is.

The shawl is going to be a bit of a monster - it's 126 stitches wide and 27 inches high, so far I've used about 4 balls of wool - Stylecraft double knit special - I have 14 balls in total to use so there is another 10 balls to go. Each strip is 2" / 5 cm wide and I'm 2 rows into the diamond pattern I'm adding - white with rust diamonds which explains the rust dots at the top of the photo below. Over the weekend I added 8 inches of crochet. Fortunately Carla had her hangout open and I was able to chat quite a bit with her and Nancy who also dropped by for the first time in ages, so I was able to de-stress from having other people in the house which isn't my favourite thing but it's good for the kids to socialise in this way.

Yesterday my February issue of the CrossStitcher arrived and it has a cute little owl scissor holder with matching fob as this month's freebie so I decided to start that in the evening and extend IHSW by a day so I'd be able to report on something stitchy after all. My January issue hasn't arrived yet but it's still within the 14 working days since they told me they were re-sending the issue so I'm not worried yet.

I didn't get much done but it's good to have at least done a few stitches and have another pair of items for the Tons of Tiny project. It's not going so fast stitching wise right now as both kids are now ill (youngest was poorly on Sunday and oldest came home from school today)