Village Stitcher

Village Series Designs

2012-03-04T06:25:00.001-08:00

The Stitchers' Village has been a challenge for me since I purchased it in June 2010. Particularly, the addition of the social module, which I have seen grow in membership and now work to enhance content. Moonflower Designs, being my first venture, has taken a back seat in the past months. I am now working to finalize a series of designs to celebrate The Stitchers' Village. I offer here a sneak peek of "Village Welcome". I truly enjoy my designing - especially when I finish one!! What would your home be if you could reside in the Village? I will offer a few ideas in some companion designs soon! Thank you to all the members who participate and help make The Stitchers' Village a great community. I sincerely admire all the stitchers who share their beautiful projects.

March in the Village

2012-03-02T06:45:00.000-08:00

I attended the Nashville market last weekend and realize that I do not envy the shops. It is an amazing collection of creative projects and products. To select which to take back to a shop would be an unbelievably difficult task. To spend the time going through and meeting the vendors and seeing all that is available is a physical and strategic challege. Give your LNS owner a "thank you" next time you visit.
March Madness has begun in The Stitchers' Village. The first act was to put the names of the group members from the "Blackbird Designs" group into a drawing. Gabriele K's name was drawn to receive the Limited Edition Kit "Wild Garden" which was available in Nashville.

Expect some additional random drawings, maybe a contest, and general fun in the social area of TSV!

The Basics

2012-02-07T06:59:00.000-08:00

The January and February birthday recognition gift and the February drawing prize is a set of the 30 Weeks Dye Works colors that are 2 strand and available on spools. I have dubbed these "the basics" as they are a selection of colors that should cover your basic stitching requirements. I very much like the 2 strand version and love the little spools. The convenience is nice. They are truly a treat! The spools are 45 yards and retail for about $5.50. Compared to the six strand skeins that are 5 yards (which translates to 15 yards of 2 strand) at $2.20 retail and they are a bargain as well.
The February newsletter "The Stitchers Voice" gives the details on how to enter the February drawing and members who have joined the social area of TSV and have registered their birth date are automatically entered into the birthday recognition drawing.

Watch for a new design from Moonflower Designs utilizing some of "the basics" from WDW soon!

Site issues

2012-01-10T05:29:00.000-08:00

There have been some issues with the main TSV site. http://stitchersvillage.com The server moved and I needed to contact my domain company (which I did) to make the changes. I found that things were still not working this morning, so I have again "corrected" the problem. Hopefully, it truly is and everything will work as it should.

In the social area http://stitchersvillage.ning.com the Forum discussion "What are You Stitching" has apparently reached it's maximum capacity. When we got to 145 pages of replies, it started having issues. So, we have started a new discussion for 2012 and hopefully, it will continue to be as popular.

Mental Note to Self

2012-01-05T03:13:00.000-08:00

With a long day ahead, I found it difficult to sleep last night. While trying to relax, among all that was going through my mind, "Mental Note to Self" popped in there and then just a quick few entries:

Mental Note to Self:

Shhhhh! I'm trying to sleep

Turn that off, I don't like that song

Stop chanting!

What are you counting?

Adapting to my floor stand

2011-12-18T06:19:00.000-08:00

While looking to choose a WIP to work on for the 2012 project on The Stitchers' Village, I brought my floor stand out of the corner and slid it against the sofa in my work room to get it out of my way. I generally sit in a chair to stitch and have not gotten into the habit of using the floor stand as it makes me feel "trapped" in my chair. It never seems to fail that, the moment I am in my seat and stitching, I have to go and do something elsewhere. I find it an annoyance to move the stand to get up from the chair. This morning, however, the light bulb over my head lit up. If I sit on the sofa with the floor stand, I can leave it in place and scoot out from behind it. No, I am really not that dense. My opinion of the floor stand was formed long ago when I had a very different room situation for stitching. Today I have options and have just now realized the advantages. I will definitely give the floor stand a try for stitching and not use it strictly for a display device.

2 Sampler Projects received

2011-10-28T07:59:00.000-07:00

I seem to receive the project sections in pairs. What a nice surprise in the mail yesterday - Val Baker and Rita Safford's sections arrived. They can now be viewed on the project sampler page -CLICK I try to keep to a "system" for making the images and information for each section received so that they are up as quickly as possible and can be viewed. They are photographed, posted to the slideshow, made into a pdf, posted to the web page for the project, the photos are posted here in the social area, the pdf put into the project notebook, and then the section is sewn to join to the project. Not hugely time consuming, but I am one who prefers to have my process to follow for a project to be certain I do not forget something.
I have also added a chart pdf to be used as a design for a sampler project section. It is based on the graphics of the cottages on the mail Stitchers' Village site and includes an alphabet for personalization of a section. The link is on the sampler project page.

The chat with Thea Dueck from The Victoria Sampler Tuesday night was a great success. Thea was pleased with her time spent among the Villagers. Her time and participation was greatly appreciated. Thank you to all those who made her feel welcome.

Sampler Project - chart

2011-10-27T08:05:00.000-07:00

I spent the majority of the morning creating a cross stitch chart to be used for The Stitchers' Village Sampler Project. I know that many are not at ease creating their own designs for stitching. So, I took the general look of the houses on the main TSV site and created a house and am providing an alphabet to use. I hope that stitchers will utilize the alphabet to add a personal statement to their project sections, or at least their name, location, and date completed. Click here: MY HOUSE They are also free to make the house any color combination that they wish. I hope that this will help more to finish their sections. Remember, the information on The Stitchers' Village Sampler Project can be found at http://www.otwd.net/Samplerproject.htm

Cleveland Visit

2011-10-24T05:29:00.000-07:00

We visited our daughter and son-in-law in Cleveland this weekend and had a wonderful time. While there, I visited the Wool and Willow needlework shop. They have two needlepoint canvas trunk shows going on and I really enjoyed seeing the hand-painted canvases. I purchased one small Tang horse canvas for a friend. Otherwise, I had a very difficult time choosing one to stitch for myself. I wanted a 5x7 size but could not find one that I fell in love with so I decided not to make a purchase for myself. I think it was a matter of too many to choose from.
The weekend restaurants we visited were Maggianos, Pier W, and Parallax for the evenings and 2 trips to Corky and Lennys for lunch. All were excellent choices but Maggianos was the one I insisted we go to on Thursday as I was craving their chopped salad. I have made it at home but it is more fun to have it at the restaurant.
Also this weekend the online needlework show was open. I did not have much chance to go through it, so that will be on my agenda for today.

The trouble with organizing. . .

2011-10-06T04:18:00.000-07:00

While looking for the perfect piece of fabric for a project, I decided it was time to organize and catalog what I have on hand. This, I know, is a very good idea. I found several pieces of fabric that remind me of design ideas that I have not yet completed. I was re-inspired by some of the beautiful pieces. The down side - inspiration has not yet come together and I do not have the time free at the moment to create. I will share one of the sources of inspiration that I kept out of my stash to admire. It is a Picture This Plus color named "Tempest".

October Newsletter

2011-10-01T14:17:00.000-07:00

The October "Stitchers' Voice" is in the newspaper office for viewing. If you have a Victoria Sampler project going, that is the subject of the Stitch Along this month, so be sure to post your project in the Forum discussion. Then, be sure to join in on October 25 when Thea Dueck will host a chat! The Halloween event will be slightly different this year. That information will be posted in the mid-month email!
If you do computer graphic work, you understand the time involved in that effort. I did manage to get the Village changed to Autumn and just for the fun of it, put some of the trees from the main site as background for the social area. I heard recently that the color yellow makes people anxious, so out with the yellow background!! Don't need anyone anxious while visiting The Stitchers' Village.
Have a great day!!

OT - Irony

2011-09-27T11:38:00.000-07:00

I am off the stitching topic today. While shopping with my daughter yesterday, I picked up a publication at the check out of Bed, Bath, and Beyond called "Real Simple, Life Made Easier, A Month of Easy Dinners". I took a few minutes away from my keyboard this morning to take a peek, as I planned a trip to the grocery store, hoping for some inspiration.
I started turning the pages, expecting a few advertisements before the recipes. On page 60, I finally stopped, fanned it from the back, and looked for a glimpse of the recipes. Believe it or not, on page 238 to page 249 of a 335 +/- publication, I found that for which I searched! For someone with a slightly shorter attention span, this did not produce any clues to an easy dinner. I did mark the page with the handy subscription card that conveniently fell out while I fanned and will keep this handy for the next time I seek culinary inspiration!
Lesson: Fan through before purchase next time! ~and~ there is no easy dinner solution for today!

The Stitchers Village

2011-09-14T06:26:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the official blog of The Stitchers' Village. http://stitchersvillage.org

First order of business is to introduce the Sampler Project which started in July 2011 and is intended to be an ongoing project so that all new members of TSV can participate. for information: CLICK

Here is a photo of the first sections joined:

The project is currently being stored on an Images Stitchery Doodle Frame. I am working on an upgrade stand for when the project outgrows this.

2011-09-14T05:46:00.000-07:00

It's a great day, even though I seem to be in the re-do mode lately for my stitching. I am working on the fourth canvas design in preparation for the upcoming online wholesale show and it has been easy to remove the stitches. Uses a bit more thread, but not much time. I am wondering if there is something different about the color process for the canvas I am using "Levantine Blue". I have had to use shorter and shorter lengths of thread because it seems to be fraying on this canvas. Interesting, but aggravating.

As usual for me, I am working on more than one project at a time. I did finish a section for the Sampler Project for "Moonflower Designs". I kept that one simple. I have had moonflowers blooming on my deck recently. I usually try to plant some in a large planter every year. I haven't gotten outside to take a night picture, but took some one morning. They make me smile!