Still stitching

The itch to stitch has certainly been a thing over here at my house.  Since my last post, I have finished three more months of little houses for my cross stitch calendar.   All the patterns are designed by Melisa Vandergriff on her blog,   Pinker n Punkin' Quilting and Stitching. 

The first was my September block:

The pattern for this house was "the Ole' Crow Saltbox".  ""Where are the crows? you might ask.  Well, I'm not a big fan of the noisy black birds so I chose to edit them out and replace them with a few swirling leaves.  The Aida cloth I used for the background on this one was a slightly mottled beige color which I have also seen called "Fiddler's Cloth".

I have been trying to find some non-white Aida cloth to buy locally, but have not been successful. I even ordered some fabric online called "Old Beige" that looked about right, but when it arrived it was a fairly whitish cream color.   I finally decided to try to tea dye the white Aida that I had, and I was happy with the results:

You can see the before and after in the picture above.  Now I could tackle those wintry months using a background that would contrast with the snow.  I decided to do December's block first:

This one is called "Christmas Eve Saltbox" and was fun to stitch, although it was kind of funny to be working on a Christmas theme over the Easter weekend.  I'm so pleased with how the white snowflakes and snowman showed up against the tea-dyed background.  The interior windows are all dark because it's bedtime, but I made the top most window alight with gold to represent someone waiting up, hoping to catch a glimpse of Santa.

My third finish started with the pattern called "Autumn's Saltbox".

I chose it for the colored leaves, and the black cat.  I liked the pattern as it was, but I also liked many of the Autumn motifs that Melisa had designed for her "Autumn Stamp" sampler, so I made some changes to the left side to include the scarecrow and the basket of pumpkins.  I think it's amusing that two little crows are having a little chat right at the base of the "scary" old scarecrow, so I had to include them in this one.

I sure hope Melisa doesn't mind that I've let my imagination take over on her delightful designs.  I'm not sure which month I'll do next, but it will get started this weekend.

Linking up to Slow Sunday Stitching at Kathy's Quilts

When is too much too much?

It was time to choose which  house to stitch next for the Calendar project that I'm making following Melisa of Pinker and Punkin's delightful little house patterns, I was torn between these two different ones:

Both photos copyright  by Melisa Vandergriff from her blog.

The one on the left is called "Strawberry Saltbox" and the one on the right is called "Ophelia Manor on Punkin Holler Lane".  Melisa has designed and generously shared an entire season's worth of stitcheries over on her blog Pinker n Punkin Quilting and Stitching.  You really must go take a look for yourself. 

After having made 3 saltbox style houses for previous months, I was interested in trying out the Manor house on the right, but in order to represent the month of June, I wanted to surround it with strawberries instead of pumpkins.   So, I literally cut and pasted (well, taped) two patterns together to see if I could manage it.

While I was at it, I also switched out the two brown birds at the bottom of "Strawberry Manor" and used Melisa's bluebird's from her Spring Sampler.  (It seems that once I opened Pandora's Box and start making changes there was no stopping me!)

After a week of somewhat obsessive stitching as I raced to finish and see how this all turned out, I had this:

I absolutely loved seeing Ophelia Manor done in shades of aqua with the red shutters.  I probably should have quit while I was ahead, but it seemed off balance to me.   I felt that the bottom section with the birds was a little off center from the top half and that the strawberry over on the top right was hanging out too far.  

Again, I should have quit while I was ahead, but instead I decided to add a few little vines over on the left to help balance things out.

I could have stopped here, but no, I wanted to fill in that space above the right side of the house.  Melisa's pattern has a kind of sunshine-ey star to stitch there, but I knew the white would just get lost on my white background.  So I played around a bit, and came up with this filler:

Now....is there too much going on?  I feel like maybe it's overcrowded.  And, I hope Melisa doesn't  mind my playing Frankenstein.

Linking up to Slow Sunday Stitching