Stitches -and Time

A few years ago -not sure now if it was 4 years ago now or maybe even five -but that summer, whichever it was, I got started on a kick of doing embroidery work and before I realized it, I was really hooked on doing all kinds of embroidered handiwork.

For most of that time I was pretty much almost churning out embroidered items -from terry hand towels, to pillowcases, tabletopper cloths and yes, even some fairly large tablecloths too.

The past year though, I haven't totally fallen off that bandwagon but I have definitely slowed my productions down a good bit.

I posted several photos the other day on my Facebook in an album containing pictures most of all the items I have either embroidered or crocheted since the beginning of this year. I neglected to take any pictures of the two baby sweaters I managed to knit for the little great-granddaughter, Miss Lola Bug, or of the two baby blankets I crocheted for her too. I did take some pictures of some experimental things I made which can be used as bath or shower mats -experimental more for the types of yarns I combined in those items -but I don't remember what file I hide those pictures in.

This past Sunday evening, I finished a project that had taken me well over two months to get this done and that really is pathetic, time-wise, as it really wasn't a big project per se, but was a very slow moving one for me to work on. Hence, the long time it took me to get it done.

Here's a picture of that project for you to view. (If you aren't friends with me on Facebook that is, because you could see all the items I finished if you are my "friend" there, ya know.)

It's a set of two placemats with two matching napkins and if you remember some other things I've done over the past so many years, birds -particularly cardinals though -tend to have a big place in my heart as I do love to do things with cardinals as the focal point but other birds too enter into that realm from time to time.

What made this set so daunting and time consuming for me is the fact that the placemats are quilted material so I had to try to make each stitch go down into the design and then, run the needle underneath that, in between the two layers of fabric without allowing the bottom of the placemat to be covered with the flip side of my stitches. That isn't that terribly difficult but yes, it is a very slow, very, very time-consuming thing to do!

I am however, quite pleased with the way this set turned out and the fact that there are very few little traces of threads visible on the underside of the placemats and that is what I was striving -no struggling really -to achieve!

Considering I have at least two large plastic storage totes filled practically to the gills with kits of many kinds just waiting, just needing to be picked up and begun the task of embroidering the picture  each item features, enough kits to probably last me several years now too before I will have them all completed, I do have my work cut out for me, that's for sure.

In addition to the embroidery work kits, I also have at least two more totes filled with various yarns too -just waiting as well for my fingers to get cracking and begin to knit of crochet some things and get at least a little of the yarn stash used up sometime during my lifetime! (Don't really look for that to happen though as I am, by nature, a slow knitter and even more than that, a very slow crocheter too!

Late Sunday night though, I was still wide awake and decided to root through my embroidery kit stash and pull out some items I want to get started on and finished too, hopefully before Christmas. One of the kits I pulled out is for a tabletopper and the design is stamped on a very pretty piece of red fabric -fabric that is sort of a combination of homespun and regular cotton and it, when completed, will make a very pretty tabletopper for someone! Who that someone might be remains to be seen though.

I decided then tonight to scan a photo of the tabletopper I began working on late Sunday night/early Monday morning just to serve as the starting project for me to get finished as soon as possible and so, here is a photo of the project I am currently embroidering!

The photo here shows the tabletopper along with a table runner too but I only have a kit to embroider just the tabletopper -and trust me, that will be more than enough stitches for me to do and try to get it completed!

This design uses only four different colors of floss -a gold tone thread, red threads and green threads along with a bunch of stitches using a gold filligree type of thread too. So far, I have most of the candle  done in one corner using the gold filligree thread but that is still just a drop in the proverbial bucket too,  ya know.

A lot of my friends who also enjoy doing embroidery work feel that the slowness of embroidery uses up too much of their time before completing many items and that slowness then also makes them very nervous and anxious too.

For me, embroidery works in the opposite way as it tends to relax me very much so cross your fingers that I manage to get this completed with no major screwups involved and then, perhaps it will also work the way embroidery projects have generally run for me -they calm me down!

It takes my mind off the things that otherwise would wear on me and become very strong things in my mind that are also of a very depressing nature for me then. But I've found being able to sit uqietly amongst my needles and thread colors, stitching away!

The normal feelings I have tended to be experiencing a lot of the time here of late with a sort of sick feeling in the bottom or pit of my stomach -along with the urge to just let loose and allow the tears to flow and maybe clear my heart and mind a bit of the things I'm dealing with here right now.

Issues of trying to get things in my house in compliance so the reverse mortgage I've been working on acquiring will finally go through, is just one thing that tends to make me a bit of a nervous wreck. That, along with a lot of confusion in my mind about an insurance policy I took out a year or two ago and which I really don't understand how that is operating and on top of those two things, throw in how quiet my house is these days, how lonely it is to try to fix something to eat just for me and not really wanting to bother because it takes way too much work then to cook something for only one person -and the factors that, above all, really send me into a tailspin much of the time with the two younger grandkids now having moved down to Middletown to live!

So, I am, in essence now trying to stitch my heart back together I suppose you could say, couldn't you?

Doing the work involved in this particular design and concentrating heavily on the work and stitches needed, surely to goodness this will be the thing that really keeps me going then, makes me a little bit happy then, at least, when I complete one -or  hopefully several, of these patterns!

Now I think the time has arrived for me to polish off this Busch pounder before it does me in and puts me sound asleep in the process! More pictures to come over the next couple projects I hope to complete and also, things that will most definitely serve me and whoever wants to purchase any of these things perhaps sometime down the line.

Meanwhile, I'll be here, stitching away in between selling Avon and munching on stuff instead of bothering to cook any meals that way.