THANK YOU ALICE



I would like to thank Alice from Paris, Madrid for sending me a picture of her finished sampler of "SHEPHARD AND SHEPHARDESS" she sent it to me a while back and I would like to opologize for posting it until now since I had a lot of things going on in my life at that time.  Alice used DMC and Anchor threads to stitch her piece, she also did some color changes to her liking, which I love, since she likes stiff thicker materials to stitch on, she used 14 count Aida cloth. Since she was stitching during Xmas she added a wreath on the top window of the house and changed the verse to one that refers to Easter. Again Alice I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing a picture of your finished piece with me and look forward to another finished.

I have not been able to post as I would like, since summer is a very busy time of year for me, children, grandchildren who love to spend time at our house really keep me on my toes, but I love and enjoyed their time when they come over and we ride bikes and go swimming. I also like to spend time working in my garden and I been taking time also to stitch a bunch of my wips that I have been trying to finish since I had them in a basket for so many years.

I have had many request that I show some of my designs held by someone (I will ask my daughter) and post the pictures on my blog since they would like to see the size of them. I will try to do that this coming week, since today is my husbands birthday and my daughter had made plans to celebrate her fathers birthday spending time at the pool and with a cookout.

Enjoy your summer and many blessings, Vilma



GOODIES, PICTURES AND WIP



I started this wip from Sheepish Designs so many years ago, and since I made a decision to finish them one by one after so many years of having them put aside. I decided to put a simple border on it since I felt something was missing on it after I finished it and felt it looked good. I also put the initials under the ballon of Alex and Grant since there are two boys in the air ballon and under the crowns I put the initials of my daughter and my son-in-law. So I decided that they would love this sampler for their anniversary, so I am off the hook now since I will not have to go out and look for a present. I will take a picture and share it with you all when I get it back from the framer. I will be crossing my fingers that they like it since I personalized it just for them.



Here is Grant who is two years old, having his first ride on a pony, he really loved it so much that his mom and dad had a hard time getting him off of him, he wanted to take the pony home, he had a great time. So I guess this will be a weekly adventure for him this summer.




I also ordered these six graphs that I had my eyes on for quite a while, but I really want to finish all my wips first before I start on these, I still had some money left over and ordered some graphs and scissors from  Pineberry Lane that I wanted. I will take pictures of them and show them on my next post. So there went my gifts certificates, but at least I spent it on something that I wanted.

 



Since I had received some gift certificates for my birthday and I never got to spend them since I really didn't see anything I wanted. But nosey  me had to go and check out Anita's Little Stitches and saw all these new scissors and I went bananas with not just one or two of them, but nine of them, I know I should not have done that but the temptation was there, so I just ordered them and received them 2 days later, wow that was a quick delivery. I also had ordered the cross scissors since I love crosses and Anita was so sweet and sent it to me as a gift. Love, love the cross scissor it is so well crafted and beautifully made. Thank you Anita for your wonderful gift, I will treasure it always.





Wishing you all a blessed Easter and hope all the mothers and grandmothers have a wonderful time with their children and grandchildren on their Easter egg hunt. God bless you all, Vilma 



Birthday, News and Wip

I was finally able to finish the wip of The Little Fat Birds from Sheepish Designs that I started years and years ago. When I started stitching this design I used silk threads on 32 count Linsey-Woolsey that the Scarlet Letter use to carry years ago. I will take a picture when I get it framed and share it on my blog so you all can see what it looks like framed. I am working on another wip that I will share real soon.





 Nice trip to Dollywood for the grandchildren, the had a wonderful time and it was so wonderful to see Dolly Parton in her antique car waving to everybody, she looked wonderful and Grand enjoyed the rides.


 







Wow did we get a big hail storm the other week, with strong winds and lots of rain, lots of roofs in the Greenville are got damaged, ours included so thank goodness for house insurance because we are having a new roof installed in our house, but it was nice to see it from inside the house.



Last but not least, I want to say a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my beautiful and wonderful daughter Jeannette, her birthday is tomorro April 4th. happy birthday daughter, you are the best, love mom.

Blessings to all of you, Vilma

 

THIS &THAT AND NEW

This is "REMEMBER US" which was stitched on my 38 count hand-dyed linen using 15 colors of WDW hand dyed threads. The designs is 136wX222h. Model was stitched by Tracy Yandle from North Carolina, thank you so much Tracy for the wonderful job you did in stitching this model.



Here is my model daughter holding the new design of "REMEMBER US" as always Ingrid helps me choose the best frames for my new releases.

 

This is the other new design "BEHOLD MY WORK" it is a band sampler that was stitched on 34 count hand-dyed linen with 3 colors of Florimell Silk Floss by Gloriana. The design took 40 yards of each color to stitch.
Colors that were used were Inca Gold, Schoolhouse Red and Antique Black. I would like to thank Anne from Gloriana for the courtesy of her beautiful hand-dyed silks for this design. Last but not least I would also want to say thank you so much to Mindy Gooding from Texas for her patience in stitching the model while she was recuperating from a knee surgery, as always I love how beautiful she always stitches my models. The design
is 252wX367h. It took me a while and alot of thinking before making the decision to release it.

 

Here is a picture of my daughter holding the framed new design of "BEHOLD MY WORK" so you can all see how big it turned out.

 

My wonderful husband had my finished sampler of Ann Kirby framed, since I had picked out that frame one day and I guess he remembered and surprised me with my sampler all framed up and ready to hang on the wall, so what better present for a stitcher to receive. That is my son-in-law Stephen holding the framed sampler while I took a picture so you can all see the the size of sampler. So even though I was sick, it really made my day special receiving these wonderful gifts on my birthday.

 



I was showing my daughter this beautiful scissor fob on Tracys blog that I loved because it was made with turquoises (my favorite stone) and I loved that it had coral, turquoise and silver rondels, and loved the tail detail that she did on the horse, so my daughter bought it so my grandchildren could give it to me on my birthday, love it, love it and it is a very long and heavy scissor fob, there is no way that I would ever misplace my scissors on this scissor fob.



  

My wonderful friend Tracy Yandle from "Tracys Treasures" http://hobbiesfromtheheart.blogspot.com/ made and sent me for my birthday a beautiful scissor fob made of beautiful peach and gold color aventurines with a beautiful butterfly in between the stones and a BIG "B" at the end. I received it the day of my birthday, thank you so much Tracy for your beautiful gift, I will treasure it always and think of you when I am stitching. Tracy is creating some unique and one of a kind chatelaines and scissor fobs for sale, please visit her blog.



My daughter brought me a beautiful vase with two dozen of roses for my birthday with a beautiful hand painted card, also DH gave me a beautiful card and since I had been sick in bed with a bad bronquitis we were not able to go out for dinner, but I really enjoyed their surprised visit with the grandchildren who brought me a delicious chocolate fudge cake with chocolate butter cream frosting.


My many thanks to Faye, Tracy, Susan, Natalia, Alice, April Mechelle, blueladie, tender rose for your wonderful and kind comments, and also Alma Allen :) yes Alma I am really enjoying my ipad, downloading books, music and games like crazy. Hope you are enjoying yours also.

Many blessings to everyone and hope you all have a wonderful Valentine day, Vilma



THE BEST GIFTS RECEIVED



This is my daughter Jeannette holding her precious Christmas gift that she received, his name is DJ and he is a Pekingese, she was so happy since this is what she wanted and my son-in-law was going crazy going to every animal shelter in Greenville looking for a Pekingese dog and he finally found DJ(this was the name he had when he was adopted so she decided to keep the name he responded to) poor DJ was so nerveous after being in a cage and finally having a loving home with my daughter, he is 3 years old.

He loves being around her boys and the boys are crazy about him, he is such a good dog. About nine years ago my daughter had found another Pekingese that was black and a little older at another animal shelter, she fell in love with him and his name was Finnigan, but he died before my grandson Grant was born and she got so upset and emotional because she loved him so much and had him for eight years. So all she wanted for Christmas was another Pekingese since they are so lovable and what better places to go than animal shelters and look around and see who needs a loving home. So now Jeannette is happy and DJ is also happy to have a loving mama and a loving family that love him. DJ follows her everywhere, I guess because he is adjusting to his new family and home.



This is one of my other best Christmas gift that I received this year and it is a 12x14 picture of my other two grandchildren that live in Texas, Haven is 12 and Trinity is 8 WOW how times goes by. Since they were not able to come for the Holidays, my son Harold sends us a picture of the grandchildren every year so that I can frame and hang in the family picture wall going up the stairs. It is so amazing how fast children grow. My other best Christmas gift was spending Christmas with my daughter and son-in-law and my other two grandchildren Alex and Grant. We feel so blessed by God to for these beautiful gift he has given us.

WHAT I HAVE BEEN DOING

What has been happening and what I have been up to. With Christmas so close and being so busy doing so many things to have everything ready for the holidays, I have not had time for anything else but getting ready for the holidays. But thank goodness I can now relax since I have finished with outside and inside decorations, packing all the gifts to put under the tree, sending out Christmas cards, grocery shopping since it is my turn to do the cooking and baking, so now I am ready for Christmas.

I had to do alot myself since my husband went out of the country for 10 days (not very nice of him) and
left me to do alot on my own. So I have not had any time to relax or even do some stitching and that is sad :( but I do have my new releases for Feb. 2011 framed, and that is good.

It has been really cold and windy down here and kind of kept me inside for a couple of days, but lucky me I came down with a bad cold which left me with no energy but to stay in bed. Until today I had a little time to post something and let you all now what I have been up to and what is going on in my life.  Thank goodness my husband came home last night because I was ready to cry, yes cry out of desperation since with all the days of strong winds my phone went dead, the alarm system went crazy in the house scarring me to death and having to deal with everything else, I was ready to run out of the house. Thank goodness my son-in-law took care of the problems, thank goodness for son-in-laws when husbands are
not available.

Hope everybody is ready for Christmas, especially those with small children how are so anxious for that special day when they can open all those presents and see their big and happy smiles on their faces.

I posted these pictures of two of my grandchildren that I took pictures of when they came over for holloween and loaded up on lots of candy and seeing them have a great time and their big smiles on their happy faces.

Many blessings to all of you, Vilma





WHAT I HAVE BEEN UP TO LATELY.

I received an early Xmas gift from my wonderful husband that was on my Xmas list, well the thruth is I had to force him to give it to me since I did not want to wait until Xmas, so he gave in and I am so happy, happy since I have wanted a iPad since they first came out. In the box was a generous gift certificate from Amzon and Barnes and Nobles so I can download the BIG LIST of books I wanted. The
other gift on my wishlist is a Tablet computer from HP, where the screen rotates and can also lay flat. I know  he has gotten it for me but the problem is I have not been able to convince him to hand it over, yes that is the way I phrase it to him but I am having trouble in getting it, so I guess I will have to look at all the hidding places in the house, because I do not have the patience to wait until Christmas :( :( I know patiance is a virtue I do not have.

I have also been so busy with Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays coming and trying to get my list of Christmas finished since I like to do my shopping early and not get caught in the rush, when everybody is going crazy and you cannot even walk in the mall or find a parking space. That is the only thing that drives me bananas during the holidays. But thank goodness I am almost finish.

So with all this going on, I have not been able to do anything involving needlework :(  :( but then I also
needed a break and do other things that were a priority right now.

I wish everyone of you a blessed Thanksgiving, may God bless you all and your family in such a wonderful holiday and give thanks to God for all his blessings, even though for me everyday I get up is  a blessing which I thank God for.

This has also been another project I have been doing at home. I bought this comforter with the ruffle and pillow shams because I fell in love with the color. The color is like when you slice a sweet and ripe dark watermelon inside, but it is not red, well I went to Home Depot and see if they could do a paint match of the comforter and they did a wonderful color match, so I have just gone bananas redecorating this guest bedroom and love the way it turned out. I also used three diferent kind of materials with the same color scheme, they blended wonderful so I had the sofa redone in a antique gold, the cushions in diferent patterns, but most of all I love the two oil paintings above the bed and the two angel figurines that I fell in love with as soon as I saw them.

So now I am busy redoing the other guest room, but more in a Victorian style, I fell in love with a beautiful paint color that kind of resembles DMC 930 and I want to do the compliments in the color white. When I finish I will take some pictures and share them and see what you all think.