Three Tier Tray, Autumn Style

Recently I brought my three tier tray out of hiding and spruced it up for the fall. I thought I'd share some pictures of it in all of its autumn finery.

I bought my tray on Ebay, but a lot of stores have them now. I've seen them at Hobby Lobby, Wal-Mart, and Amazon to name a few. I lined the two bottom trays with plaid cloth napkins in fall colors.

Let me tell you a little secret. Most of the items in here came from the Dollar Tree. Yes, the Dollar Tree. These owl salt and pepper shakers, for example. The fabric leaves too - a pack of 50 for $1? I'll take it!

The glass turkey candleholders were found at an antique place, and that art glass pumpkin was something I had for a while.

Only one stitched piece?, you might ask. Yes, and I didn't even stitch that. I think I got it as an exchange, or maybe a giveaway. It's cute though. I will be working on some fall-themed smalls for future displays.

Who can resist a sparkly beaded pumpkin? Yep, another Dollar Tree find! And so is the mirror-glass one behind it.

And just because it's cute, a dough bowl filled with faux gourds and leaves. That little owl seems pretty interested.

I hope you liked this little three tier tray tour. Before you know it, it's going to be time to fill it with Christmasy things! Thank you for visiting, and thank you for all of your sweet comments! Til next time.

A Trio Of Finishes

After I finished the first of the Little House Needleworks' Christmas Farmhouse series, I wanted to finish (FFO) it right away to see how it would turn out. Using The Twisted Stitcher's directions on Youtube, I gathered my supplies and went to work. Here's the result.

It was stitched on 30 count natural Northern Cross linen using the called for threads. I purchased the backing fabric and the ribbon for the bow at Hobby Lobby, and I got the jute trim at Joann's. The rusty jingle bells were found at Factory Craft Direct online. If you haven't visited Factory Craft, I urge you to - they have so many fun and useful supplies for crafting!

Next up is a FFO for a finish I stitched a couple of years ago. I found "Snow Birds" by Country Cottage Needleworks in the 2013 issue of the Just Cross Stitch Christmas issue.

I used the same basic pillow ornament finishing technique and added some fluffy white chenille trim on the edge. The hangers were left off because I'll probably display this one and the Farmhouse Christmas ornament some other way than hanging them on the tree. 

Finally, a Halloween finish! "Scaredy Cats" by Mill Hill was a recent finish and I knew I wanted to frame it. I purchased some unfinished frames from the Etsy store Nice Frames. Using some acrylic craft paint, I mixed up a kind-of rusty orange and put a couple of coats on the frame.

The color is actually darker in real life. I had a very bright orange paint and I wanted to darken it a bit and tone the brightness down. So I added black. Big mistake. Don't do it. It turned into a really bad, unusable color. So I did what I should have done in the first place. I Googled it and found out that to make a rusty orange, you need to add BLUE to orange. It worked. You can still see the knots in the frame, but I like that.

And those are my finishes for this post. I hope you liked seeing them. If you have any questions, please let me know. Today I'm doing some fabric dyeing. It's a fun, crazy, messy experiment. So tune in to my blog again because I'll be posting about that soon!

September WIPocalypse - Mega Stitching Edition!

Let's just say that September was a big month for stitching. I attended two stitching get togethers, with one of them a two day event. So I had a lot of stitching time to make some progress on a lot of WIPs. It's always like that, right? We either make a little progress on a lot of WIPs, or we make great progress on a few. In my case, it's the former.

I started with Blackbird Designs' "Salute To Abigail", which is in the "Sweet Land Of Liberty" book.

This is being stitched on R&R linen in the color "mink". The chart calls for silks, but I substituted overdyed floss that I already had in my stash. As it's coming together, I can see that it's a very good substitution!

Next was a new start. I joined the Facebook group "Halloween March Stitch Along - Teresa Kogut Design", which is a SAL. I know, I know. I said I'd stay away from SALs because I'm the Slowest Stitcher In The World. But this design is so adorably vintage.

This is going to be a challenge for me because it's a LOT of confetti, but I'm diving in. I will be putting this into the rotation more often in an attempt to try to keep up, but I'm not locking myself into a finish date. I'm stitching it on 30 count "Tin Roof" linen by Weeks Dye Works.

I have another new start.

Little House Needleworks' Farmhouse Christmas "Horsin' Around". Just a few stitches in.

My favorite project is next. It's "Life Tree" by Rovaris, which is my birthday start.

If I could only stitch one project, it would be this one. I just love everything about it. I'm stitching it one over one on 25 count Lugana in the color "potato". I did a quick tea dip (not really a dye) on this fabric to give it some very subtle mottling.

At my last stitching get together, I worked on "Be Ye Thankful" by the Cricket Collection.

Also in my September rotation was "Rainbow Row" by CW Designs.

I am really appreciating how beautiful this chart is with all of its detail. I worked on the green house, but noticed a few confetti stitches undone in the area of the blue house! I'll get to them. I'm stitching this on 32 count antique white Jobelan.

Lastly, I worked on "Light Upon The Lawn" by Blackbird Designs.

Talk about teeny-tiny stitches! This fabric is the one I coffee/tea dyed and seemed to expand in the process. The result is that the 28 count fabric turned into maybe 27 or 26 count! The stitches seemed too big for me so I started stitching one over one. It also distorted the fabric a bit, but the pattern is still looking good, so I'm happy.

I even had a few finishes, but since this post is so photo heavy, I thought I'd leave those for the next blog post.

For more information about the WIPocalypse, go to Measi's Blog.

Thanks for visiting me today! Thank you for all of your comments. I appreciate each one. See you soon!