Tag Archives: The Fortunate Traveler

National Sewing Month

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September marks “National Sewing Month” in the United States. As motivation to make some progress on my various projects, I’ve decided I need to do something crafty every day of this month, even if it’s as small as washing fabric for an upcoming project, or ripping out some seams. Hopefully, it will motivate me to return to multi-tasking while catching up on my DVR’d shows (such as the new season of Doctor Who). And, I’ll be making more blog posts. As much as I don’t like making posts without pictures, I probably will make a few update-like posts, similar to this one.

Today I:

  • Sewed the seams on the skirt of the Yellow Dress (next, sewing the skirt to the bodice, inserting zipper, hemming).
  • Received India’s quilted quilt from mom (next, binding and labeling).
  • Worked on the Fortunate Traveler cross-stitch.
  • Picked up a few patterns (including this gem) at Hancock Fabrics and some notions for the slacks my husband wants me to make him.
  • Thought about practicing crocheting again, then decided not to.

Now, off to work on the Yellow Dress and finish Downton Abbey Season 2!

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62 Hours of Neglected Cross-Stitch

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My first crafting love is cross-stitching, sadly, I’ve been neglecting to post about my latest cross-stitch project. I was too tired to work on my shirtdress tonight, so you get a post about “The Fortunate Traveler”! Here’s what I’ve completed after 62 hours of work. At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if I surpassed the 500 hours I spent on The Ark I made for my mother-in-law.

The Fortunate Traveler: 62 Hours

The Fortunate Traveler: 62 Hours

So far, I’ve got almost all of the top of the outside border cross-stitched (save for a couple of purple stitches), and I even started to back-stitch the border too, to reduce the amount of times I’d have to turn the scroll. I’m also taking my time with this project–heeding the advice of all the judges from prior Puyallup Fairs about my work–because I want to get better than an honorable mention at the Puyallup Fair I present this at.

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Commence the Blending

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I promised myself I’d work on a cross-stitch project for myself after I finished The Ark. I have a bunch sitting in my To-Do pile of cross-stitch patterns, so I had to carefully choose what to do next, especially since I’m going to try to make this one as perfect as possible, taking all the comments from the judges from previous Puyallup Fairs into consideration.  A long time ago, I bought a series of faeries from Passione Ricamo (winter, spring, summer, autumn), and as much as I’d like to work on these, I opted for a pattern by a designer I know and love, who kicked off my obsession with cross-stitching almost ten years ago: Teresa Wenztler.  And if you’re familiar with Teresa Wenztler’s patterns, you know there is a LOT of color blending involved. I learned that when I worked on my first project from her.

"The Fortunate Traveler" by Teresa Wenztler

"The Fortunate Traveler" by Teresa Wenztler

I don’t remember when I bought this pattern, but I love it. I love the story along with it, too! Apparently, I’ve been wanting to work on this project for quite sometime, because the linen I bought for it was purchased in 2007. Hah! I spent the better part of this past week gathering the rest of the supplies, and organizing the floss I’ll need for the project. Last night, I spent most of my time preparing the upper half of the project by stitching in the gridlines. I only did a little bit of actual work on the top of the border.

Next, I’ll scan the pages of the project and splice them together and have my husband print it out at work on their fancy printer for CAD drawings, so I’ll have the whole pattern printed on one page, instead of flipping back and forth between pages.  It worked really nicely when I did that while working on The Ark.

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