Monday, April 2, 2012

Shopping From Your Stash

After finishing my Hello Spring, I decided to work some more of my project for our retreat in August. We are stitching With My Needle's "My Needle's Worke Box". I finished my 5th square but really wanted to keep working on it. Soooo, since I hadn't decided what to work on next, I decided to do all the stitching with the perle cotton, which is mostly 4-sided and back stitched borders. I kept going even still and now I only have the cross stitching to do on the top square. I will be happy when this is done. I can't remember if we are finishing these at retreat or not. It is so time consuming to do this kind of thing at retreat and we really love to just stitch.

I now needed to decide what to work on next...
Once again, I had to "browse" through my stash as I was looking for a Birds of a Feather pattern that I knew I had. I still haven't found the pattern I was looking for but I came across 7 BBD patterns that I didn't realize I had. You see, I keep all of my BBD patterns together in a large pouch and these 7 were not in there. I was on the old Loose Feathers automatic so I have quite a few...and alot of them with fabric and some (as I found out) even with the fibers. When I found a BBD pattern with the fabric AND the fibers, it was a no brainer. This is what I will stitch next.


I do love the colors in this one, especially my 2 favorite...purple and green! It's not too big so it should be fairly quick.


Another thing I did this weekend was I overdyed some floss. While surfing the net, I came across, Primitives by the Light of the Moon, that showed how she did it. It seemed fairly easy and since I had everything that was needed, I figured I would give it a shot.

My friend Viki, the garage sale queen, had given me a big floss of assorted floss some time ago so I went through this and picked 3 colors that had multiple skeins.



I used DMC #435, #891 and #434. I followed her directions using the Tan dye. Here is how they looked after dyeing and dried.



The #434 doesn't show too much color change as it was probably too dark for tan to do anything. But I love the others. I undid the skeins and wound them.

#434...


#891...


#435...


This was very fun and I really love the results...especially the red! I will be doing this again for sure. When I get some more dye, I am going to go ahead and do the rest of the bag.


I think that's all I have for now. Happy Stitching :)

JillMN

12 comments:

Daffycat said...

A lovely choice for a new stitch, Jill! This was your "fated" project!

Love your prim floss! I shall have to try dying thread some day.

Chocolates4Breakfast (Terri Malinovich) said...

Great job on the floss! Love your new project; it's perfect for you.

Annette-California said...

Oh I just love BBD. Great choice for your next project. The floss you dyed are just beautiful. I really like the color change. Looks like what we would buy. Wonderful job. I'm off to read about the dying of threads:) Thank you for sharing. p.s. I just found your blog:)

Chris said...

great post Jill!
I love what you find in your stash that surprises you. It is frustrating when you can't find something that you know you had.

Cathy B said...

How could you forget about your BBD projects? I like the one you picked; very pretty floss colors!

dixiesamplar said...

Great project choice...and what an awesome job on the floss dyeing!! You have been having some fun, haven't you?

Christine said...

"Shopping from you stas" ~ I love that! And the thread dying looks great!

Ruth said...

Well look at you. Little Miss Inspiration. Love the floss dyeing and really, really love how well you shopped from stash. :)

Charlene ♥ NC said...

Always wish I had been into stitching when those BBD Loose Feathers started ... many are so hard to come by now. Your floss experiment turned out great - have you tried other liquids? I did some black walnut on linen recently, and it did a good job. I've done onion skins before, too. That would have to be on lighter base threads, but would still work well, I think.

Pam said...

Great idea and thanks for the link. How could you NOT try this!

Karen said...

They look gorgeous! how did you dye them with the Rit tan dye? would love to give a try at it.

Karen said...

They look gorgeous! how did you dye them with the Rit tan dye? would love to give a try at it.