Halloween Finishing Spree Day Six

Hi, stitching friends!

Welcome to Day Six of the Halloween finishing spree! Today's finish is "Pumpkins," a gorgeous pattern I first saw when Honeybee featured it on her beautiful blog, The Copper Fox. If you haven't already visited The Copper Fox blog, please do. She does such amazing stitching and she has some very good inspirational posts on finishing. I owe a lot to Honeybee for helping me to silence my inner critic! (I think we are all pretty hard on ourselves when it comes to being perfectionists.)

You can find the PDF pattern for Pumpkins on Etsy at LoLaLottaShop.

I stitched Pumpkins on 32-count Barnwood linen by Picture This Plus. The pattern uses DMC threads, but I swapped out some of the greens for Colour & Cotton threads I had on hand. I wanted brighter greens that would pop on the dark linen. I used petite seed beads from Mill Hill for the lacy pumpkin.

I finished the stitch as a flat fold (thanks for the tutorial, Vonna!) and trimmed it with some handmade cording made with DMC thread.

I used some lovely fabric I received from RJ and Mary at Stitching Friends Forever to complete the flat fold.

I love the finish and the Barnwood linen. It just pops! And I'm so thankful to Honeybee for inspiring me to start this project.

I hope to have Halloween at Hawk Run Hollow back from the framer soon. She called me yesterday to tell me there had been some sort of mix-up with the moulding I chose, and her supplier told her it wasn't going to be ready until mid November! And did I want to wait until November to pick it up? (Would you?!) I'm going in today to pick a different moulding, which is heartbreaking to me because the one I had originally chosen was just so perfect. Wish me luck, and I hope to have it back by the end of the week so I can show you.

Until next time, happy stitching!

Autumn House Freebie

Hi, stitching friends!

Heavens to Betsy, it seems like I have been working on this forever! I mentioned in May that I was working on a series of seasonal houses to release as freebies.

A few hours ago, I finished my autumn house stitch into a beanbag--technically, a rice bag! I've been wanting to try using crushed walnut shells as pillow filler, but I saw a YouTube video by McKenna of Stitching in Sequins where she used rice. Since I had a brand-new bag of plain old white rice in my pantry, I thought, Heck, yeah! And it worked like a charm. It has a nice weight to it, and I did not have to stress about getting fiberfill stuffed tightly into the corners and seams. Yay! I did not add a hanger since this will sit in a tray with my other autumn stitches.

Can you believe I found that lace in a secondhand store in my hometown this summer? Three to four yards for twenty-five cents! The volunteer who rang up my purchase said, "How did I miss seeing this? Oh, this is lovely." I gave her as much as she wanted and still had plenty left over for lots of projects of my own.

I'll show you a few more photos of the finished pattern. You can use any neutral color linen. If you don't have the over-dyed threads I've called for, substitute anything you have and it will be beautiful. I do recommend using "Autumn Leaves" by The Gentle Art, rather than substituting for that color, though, because the variegation of the yellow, green and orange is perfect for the leaves and leaf piles.

The pumpkin vines spell out "Love." This is my love note to my favorite season.

The finished size of the design, if stitched over two on 32-count linen or evenweave, is 3-3/8" x 2-3/4", so it's a perfect project to use up a small scrap of linen you can't bear to waste.

I hope you enjoy stitching this as much as I enjoyed designing it. I used the artwork of Charles Wysocki as a jumping-off point for my sketch, but as I sketched and stitched the final piece, I made it my own.

You can download a PDF of the pattern here.

Happy fall!