25% Done With Stocking #1 and a New Project is Brewing

Hello all!

I am about 25 percent done with my Christmas Stocking! I have the design all drawn out and perfect on my stocking and I have almost finished with the branches on the bottom. Then comes the holly, then the cardinal, which I am a little nervous about because it is so much more intricate than the pine boughs!

Here is a picture of my design all drawn out. I am going to wait to embroider the name until I finish Mike's stocking as well because I want them to be the same size and color.

Here is the in progress photo, although it is still in the hoop so it is a little bit harder to see. 

I have the bottom outlined and I am hoping to finish all the pine boughs by the end of this month! I am hoping to have all of the embroidery done by the middle of May. 

After much pestering, I had Mike finalize which design he wanted on his stocking. After making him look through the incredibly detailed Pinterest board I had made with a million different types of designs, he really liked this one, and I have to say, it will be a challenge, but I really like it too!! 

A peaceful little village scene I think it is going to be very nice and very Christmasy. 

Now, my favorite topic... NEW PROJECT. 

I have been thinking about this one for a long time. I want to make another bed quilt especially for the wedding and after. I wanted to make a special quilt to put on our bed. Very sentimental, but I want a new quilt for a new chapter in our lives. 

In my Pinterest stalking I found a beautiful and simple quilt design. It is called the Depression Block quilt, known for being made during the Depression era when people still made quilts from feed sacks. 

This is the quilt I found and I am going to use the same kind of idea but instead of blue and grey and white it would be blue and green and white. 

After much searching for a design charm pack that I could pair with a white charm pack to make a ton of HST's. Sadly none of the charm packs I saw had the color combinations I wanted. So I sucked it up and got over my laziness and decided that I can find fabrics that I really like and cut them from yardage. In comes Aria by Kate Spain.

I loved the Aria by Kate Spain collection, but I did not want the pinks the dominate a lot of the collection. So I really truly looked closely at the collection and saw a lot of beautiful blues and greens with white. So I looked and found 12 of the prints from the collection in yardage. Here are the pictures.

I know I repeated a few of the fabrics in the picture, but I really think that the blue, green, navy and  turquoise colors will compliment the white that makes the depressions in the quilt. My favorite fabric is this turquoise and navy and green butterflies on a white background. I am thinking about backing the quilt with this fabric once the quilt top is done.

After I finish the cardinal stocking, I want to start the quilt!

So far it lives in my cart ready to be bought but I am waiting until the embroidery on the stocking is done. Then the summer will be dedicated to the quilt!!

Embarking on a HUGE and HOLIDAY THEMED Project

I have been dreaming about doing a huge quilting and embroidery combo project. I want to hand embroider and then quilt christmas stockings and a matching tree skirt. As the far ahead thinking woman that I am I ordered enough fabric for 10 stockings. I figure that way I can have a huge family and the stockings will all match!

I ordered my fabric and it is going to be coming in on Friday!! I ordered Robert Kaufman Kona Cotton in Snow. It is a very pretty warm white but not quite cream color. I wanted something that would be white but not going to be too stark white. I think that the snow color is a perfect middle ground.

Now to the fun part. THE DESIGNS!

I have already completely scoured the entire internet for Christmas embroidery designs and I have a lot of great ideas. The only one I am having trouble finding is Mikes!

The design for my stocking is going to be a cardinal from the design that is pictured below with my name like in the sketch. I am also thinking about maybe jazzing up the snow on the pine branches with some clear/white beads. It will depend on how it looks after all the embroidery is done. I am going to not have the brown ring around the cardinal but extend the branches so that it looks like they are extending off the "page" of the stocking.

I am so excited to be finally starting this project. I want to have Mike's stocking and my stocking done by our first married Christmas together. Our wedding date is January 7th of 2017 so I technically have 2 more years before these 2 need to be done, but considering how intricate the embroidery I will need all that time! As for the tree skirt, I want to have all of the designs finalized before making it to make sure that it goes with the stockings. 

I am so excited to start this project. I know that I am a project junkie. I currently have a pair of socks that I am working on, knitted pillow covers for my mom and a embroidered initial that I want to frame to put on the door of my room. I am going to try to finish either the pillow covers or the initial embroidery before I fully go for this project. I have no idea about how I am going to quilt them yet because I want to do some awesome designs but I do not have a machine that can do free motion quilting. I should probably do the difficult part of the the time consuming, intricate and gorgeous embroidery first and deal with the quilting later. 

I am so excited to create these amazing stockings that will forever hang in my living room and make me happy. 

Exciting News

Hello blogosphere,

I realize that I have been terrible at keeping up on this blog. I am a terrible blogger. But oh well. Life is busy and thats how life gets.

I have exciting news!! Mike and I got engaged on December 11th of 2015. It was in an Aspen grove outside of Flagstaff in the snow. It was the perfect winter wonderland proposal and I could not be happier.

Wedding plans are already underway and it is incredibly exciting to me that I get to marry the love of my life and my best friend.

Here are some photos!

I promise to post more in the future (maybe)!