The one with all the pictures.

So many projects.  So very many.

I don't want to give the illusion that I've actually completed THAT many projects.  What I've done is kit projects, start projects, and buy projects.  I did manage to finish one or two, though.

In no particular order here is what's been happening in my sewing world.

Have you heard of the paint chip challenge?  It's a popular quilt guild challenge.  There are various ways to put this challenge together but what we did was let people pick two paint chips from a bag and a fat quarter of fabric from another bag.  All these were selected blind.  People had to create something from fabric that matched the two colors on the paint chips AND incorporate the fabric they'd chosen from the bag.  We were not trying to make this so hard that it took the fun out of it so we allowed people to use as much or as little of the selected fabric as they wanted and our paint chips had various shades of a color.  We had such a fun time with lots of laughs as people made their choices.

My paint chips and fabric were:

Ooh, that photo isn't that great.  The second card is purple..making it a nice match to my fabric swatch.  The pink and orange clashed a bit but I still thought I had good colors to work with.

Here is what I came up with:

A Jar of Bugs.  Such a fun little project.  To some degree I just made this up.  I saw something online once somewhere that I couldn't find again  I printed and blew up an outline of the car and the peace sign and just went from there.

The real creativity came in trying to make the jar look like glass.

I used the same gray background fabric but wrong side up to give the illusion of looking through the glass.  At the reveal party I had two people offer to buy it! I'm still enjoying it so it's not for sale.

Next up:  Jeannette Douglas Designs' Sunshine State Sampler.  I started this when I had no business starting something else...but here it is.

It comes with the charms and some lovely silks.  The picture shows the piece stitched on a cream colored piece of fabric but I had a nice piece of sky blue even weave.  Somewhere I might have the name.  I really do try to save that information but sometimes a scrap of fabric gets tucked into the bin without that info.

I put it on my scroll frame...something I rarely use.  I find it hard to hold or use but for a bell pull it is nice.

Progress is being made. I am trying to use strong cheaters since I'm not set up where I can use my magnifier.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it makes me dizzy.

Up next...I'm excited to show a completed Murky Manor.  You've all followed along as I worked away over the winter.  Once I brought it home it sunk to a new level of slow-stitch but it's finally done.

An astute reader will notice that it's actually not done but it will be with just a couple dozen stitches.
I thought I was done then started stitching the skull buttons on. Boy, those looked horrible.  My fabric is 36 count...a higher count than called for...so the buttons looked huge and silly.  I tried stitching the skulls according to the pattern and those looked just as bad.  So, now I'm just stitching more of whatever is in the background behind each pillar.

You can see a couple empty pillar tops.

So, that leaves me with 6 ugly (to me) skull buttons.  Anyone want them?  I'll give them to the first person who asks.  Just be sure to comment in the comments section, don't email me, so that others can see they're spoken for.  And, don't drag this out by being a no-comment commenter then making me chase you down.

I just don't see myself using these for anything.

I did manage a small piece for June.  Have I mentioned that I'm eyeball deep in costume making for a local theater guild? Beauty and the Beast.  OMG!  If you haven't seen it...the movie involves people turned into objects.  There are no patterns to make someone a teapot or a bureau.  I've been lucky to get a single stitch in on anything in my work pile.  So, even though I finished assembling this today, I'm counting it for June.

An artistic tipping of the camera to get the parts of the photo I really wanted.  The patriotic flag was a free kit included in the June 2016 magazine Cross Stitcher from the UK that I picked up at Joann's.  I just roughed up the flag graph to replace the Union Jack included in the original pattern.

I also started finish-finishing an old small for June.  The jury is still out as to whether this counts for June or July.

Lizzie Kate's Summer-licious... a Boxer Jr from 2006.  I forgot to put my initials so I'm not sure when I stitched it but I think it was pretty close to 2006.  I am working on ruching the ribbon.

I did not put a stand on the back.  Maybe I'll put a magnet because look what I can do with all those little chalk board finishes.  I bought a magnetic chalkboard at Hobby Lobby.

I don't know about you but I think I'm done.  Discussion about started and kitted projects will just have to wait.

Happy 4th of July....

Pam