PAULE'S "FANCY TULIP"

I want to thank Paule from France, who is such a wonderful and sweet friend for sending me these pictures of her finished piece of "Fancy Tulip"

Paule stitched this piece for her 10 year old niece who loves insects and collects them. She stitched it on a 30 count Thieffry French linen, using GAST one over one, WOW one over one, I know that design is not small, so my congratulations Paule on your patience in stitching this piece, I hope your niece likes it and give her a big hug from me.

Thank you again Paule for sharing these pictures with me. Sending you lots of hugs.

Blessings, Vilma

WIP OF A.W. 1756

I have picked up another of my wips that I started years ago WOW I do not even remember when, but I have picked it up again and have been stitching  on this reproduction sampler from the SL.

If you go back a couple of post, you will see where I had left off when I put it away. I am working it on 40 count linen that I dyed, since I did not like the linen this kit came with, but I am using the silk threads
which are Au Ver A Soie in the colors Rose Red (4623) and Dark Brown (4136)

This is a Vierlande sampler and what caught my eye was that it was all in one color, with the exception of A&E hair and the serpent in a very dark brown color. I really am so happy that I decided to finish this wip of so many, many years ago. I am enjoying the couple of hours I have available to stitch it. I will post another picture when I finish it.

Blessings to all, Vilma

MY AAWFAA FINISHED AND FRAMED

 I finally picked up my framed AAWFAA and just love it. Ingrid from Michaels has been framing my models for the last 10 years and frankly I do not know what I would do without her, we tend to put our heads together to see what frame would look good with each design and she always picks the right frame that enhances the design, so I would like to thank Ingrid for her great and positive imput in always being there to help me. I do not know what I would do without her.

I love the frame she picked for this design, yes it was a little costly but I really wanted something nice and permanent and in the end when I saw it framed I just fell in love with it.

I have also finished framing one of my new designs which is a A&E and it is  called "GUARDING EDEN" I love the way it turned out and also the frame Ingrid helped me picked, I will post a picture of it on my next post and would appreciate your comments on it, since I feel stitchers are my best critics of my designs and I hope you like it.

So I leave you with these pictures and see what you all think, I did cheat a little since I re-graphed the saying, with the same square placing of the verse and did it in plain cross stitch, I also did some color changing that were more to my personal liking.

NOTE: I have added this note since lots of ladies have e-mailed me and ask me some questions regarding this design, yes there are a couple of mistakes in the chart, so what I did was enlarge the picture to a letter size sheet, study the picture and graph and I was able to stitch it more accordingly to the color picture guided by the graph, some examples are the center of the fruits in the darker rose, the tail of the snake not completely graphed, also if you see the color picture and the graph, you will notice some of the insects mising legs or not completely finished. I also noticed the hand of eve rising to the snake which was only outlined, so I just added another finger to eve or you can just omit the middle outlining of that finger. But these little mistakes are very clear to notice and I really enjoyed stitching
this sampler since the filling in goes very quickly while you are whatching some favorite programs on TV.

A surprise birthday for my DH

It all started with my daughter and I planning a little surprise birthday for my DH, we wanted to have a special cake made for him, so we started looking at  some Martha Stewart magazines and we found this square cake but she showed it in white and pink, but we went to our bakery who has always done our family cakes and came up with this.

A three layer chocolate fudge cake mix (super moist) with lots of cream icing, a darker chocolate icing for the ribbons across and a lighter chocolate icing for the ribbon, the tag is made out of sugar and the cake looked like a present box.

We grilled sirloin steaks, chicken breast and salmon marinated in ginger and garlic, corn on the cob, baked potatoes and a nice salad, my husband and the rest of the family had a great day outside where
my son-in-law and daughter were doing all the cooking.

Then we came inside and sang happy birthday to him, but most of all he was so impressed with his cake.
We sat down and just splurged on the delicious cake, which was delicious. I also did three floral arrangements and placed them in diferente areas, so happy birthday my dear wonderful husband.

But what he mostly enjoyed was seeing his grandchildren having a great time in the yard, we played a ball game and threw horseshoes and rings on the pole, had a bubble contest which the boys (that includes him also) had a wonderful time. So my DH I hope you had a wonderful birthday and may God allow us to enjoy many more with you and you with us.

**WINNER ** and more photos

My grandson Alex was gone this weekend so we got to do the drawing today for the winner of the two Quaker Virtues graphs. I thought I would show you a couple of photos of him drawing the name.
Here he is drawing the name from the hat:

And here he is holding the paper but is too shy to open it:

And lastly here he is holding up the name.  And the winner is........Robert

Congratulations, Robert!  Please email me at vilma.c.becklin@att.net with your full name and address so I can get these out to you.   Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone that commented here and entered the drawing.  I wish I could afford to give each of you the charts because you are all winners in my book and in my heart..

And now ...

Here are a few photos of my garden. The flowers are really beautiful this year and all the work I have done is paying off. I hope you enjoy them.  This is my favorite place in the morning.  I love to come out and have my coffee while looking at my flowers and birds playing in the fountain, eating the seed and watching the squirrels from h*ll!  Yes, Sam and Samatha are still here with their friends.