Happy Friday, my friends!
My hubby and I are heading
out Saturday for a big trip so the Slammin’ the Screen Door blog may be
quiet for a bit. I’m taking a laptop and plan to journal at the end of each
day. If I do, then I may share here. If not, then I’ll catch up with you when I
return.
In the meantime, may you
have success in all your crafty endeavors.
I hope everyone in the USA
has nice Labor Day Weekend!
Arrivederci!
Yikes! Time really got away from me. It has been two weeks since I gave an update on my cross-stitch and even longer for an update on my quilting progress.
A couple of weeks ago I started
American Sampler by Crocette a gogo’. If you missed it, and are interested, you
can read about it here.
I’m stitching this with friends and one of them has given us monthly stitching assignments to follow. This is my completed August assignment.
I am really enjoying this project.
For a quilting update…grab
a box of tissues (for me) ☹
I have avoided adding the
binding to the Flea Market quilt because it included ric-rac. I’ve never used
ric-rac in a border before. Well, it was time to bite the bullet and get it
done.
Lori Holt and others have
created YouTube videos demonstrating the process so I felt confident I could do
it.
The ric-rac was added…easy
peasy.
I set up my binding bag.
Things were going well. I flipped the binding to check. How pretty…
Until I realized that the binding wasn’t catching the quilt top underneath. How can that be, you ask?
Well, my long-arm
quilter trimmed a ¼” away from the quilt top, leaving the batting and backing.
Not her fault, I’m sure I said
it was ok. It was MY fault that I didn’t take that into consideration and placed my ric-rac in the incorrect spot. Basically, everything was off ¼”.
So now, I’ve carefully taken it apart. I’ll trim the quilt and reattach everything. I want the ric-rac, now that I know how simple it is to attach, and the trim really adds something to the quilt.
My crafting time has been
filled with other “secret” projects as well. Hubby and I are leaving for a big
trip in a week. When we return, we'll be home
for just one day before I head to a cross-stitch retreat. I have been creating small gifts
for attendees, hosts and my tablemates. I’ll share them after the retreat.
We had our monthly book
club meeting last night. We read My Friends by Frederick Backman.
I’ve never read anything by
this author before but had heard he can break your heart. I was prepared and did
not shed a tear. Great story and I love Backman’s writing style.
This is a description of
the book from Amazon:
Most people don’t even
notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner
of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a
depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise,
and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.
Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find
refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an
abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts
of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each
morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.
Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will
unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a
surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and
to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace,
the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy
endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the
transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.
We eat well at book club,
and I keep forgetting to take a photo of the food table. Most people bring a
little something to share. My contribution this month was sour cream cookies
with butter cream frosting.
We will spend this weekend getting ready for our trip and getting the house in order. I do hope to be able to start over with binding the Flea Market quilt, though. Wish me luck!!
Joining Alycia Quilts for her Finished (or not) Friday!
Enjoy your weekend and I’ll
see you soon.
July was a light month for stitching. I stitched 3,301 stitches on two projects.
Every Stitch Tells A Story
by Anabella’s Needleart
Parrot by Salty Stitcher
Designs
WiP update...this is where I am currently on Parrot.
Hobby Lobby had a 50% off
sale on their frames last week. I finally found one that would work for Sense
& Sensibility by Sapphire Mountain Handcrafts. This was one of the charts I
stitched during a Stitching Book Club SAL. I finished the stitching in March of 2021!
Stitching Book Club was held virtually. We were given reading assignments in the book and a portion of the stitching chart was released every two weeks. Book discussions took place on Instagram and Facebook.
My friend Andrea,
mentioned in my last post, is @fancystitcher on Instagram. She
and another friend @rebeccaaparkerr are hosting a SAL in honor of the USA's 250th anniversary in 2026. The idea is to stitch patriotic charts from
now until next July. They are using the hashtag #YOPS (year of patriotic
stitching).
While we were in Alabama,
Andrea, Gary and I started American Sampler by Crocette a gogo’.
I’m stitching mine on 36 count linen from Fabrics by Stephanie in the color Colonial Parchment. I'll use most of the called-for threads with only a couple of substitutions.
There are nine pages in the chart and Andrea suggested we stitch half a page, roughly 70 x 80 stitches, per month. I like working with assignments as I seem to get things done. That is how I finished Witching Hour on time.
My weekend will be spent taking
down buntings and other patriotic décor, then giving my sewing machine a good
cleaning. The poor thing is clunking along.
Happy to join Alycia Quilts for Finished (or not) Friday)
Enjoy your weekend and I’ll
see you soon!
Mama wanted to spend a little time with her best friend in south Alabama so I took her there for a quick weekend visit.
We met at a restaurant in
Hartford. Mama is on the right and her friend, Ms. Martha, is on the left. I
thought it was funny how they wore the same color that day. It wasn’t
planned. Mama was going to change
clothes that morning because she didn’t think her jeans were ironed enough. I
told her she looked fine, which she did.
They worked together for
many years when we lived in Geneva. Ms. Martha was also my girl scout leader.
I stopped at The Pig
(Piggly Wiggly) while I was in Hartford so I could get some of my favorite
cornmeal.
We can’t get this in North Carolina.
After I left the troublemakers
😊, I met my friend Andrea
in Enterprise at Fraley’s Framing.
She drove down from Memphis, TN. We selected some frames for a few of my cross-stitch pieces.
There was a fourth piece but, as luck would have it, I found a frame at Hobby Lobby that worked. Bonus – it was 50% off. I’ll share it on my Floss Friday post this week.
The main reason Andrea met
me in south Alabama was to surprise our friend Ronny for his birthday. And we
were successful.
We had dinners out in the evenings and stitched at GaRon Stitchery during the day. Gary, Andrea and I started a new patriotic piece that I’ll share on Friday.
Our last evening out was
celebrated with a strawberry cake for Ronny’s birthday.
I picked up Mama on Sunday morning to start our journey home to the mountains. She had two hampers of fresh peas ready for us to put in the freezer.
We processed those Monday and Tuesday evenings.
While I was away we had a lot of rain. Hubby said one storm was strong and it flattened one of my hydrangeas.
Our temps are beginning to cool off. I can't say that I'm happy about that but I'm going with the flow.
I hope you've had a great
week so far and I'll see you soon.
