Yet Another Collection

I'm dying to buy this book right now so, to deter myself from making such a large and unnecessary expenditure this close to holiday gift-giving time, I'm looking back at all of my other Blackbird pieces I've stitched over the past 7 years. Blackbird Designs are, by the way, my very favorite of cross-stitch companies and Barb and Alma are the nicest people (I was lucky enough, in about 2004 to get to travel to the cutest store in Mexico, MO for a rug-hooking class that they taught).

This is the inside of that needle book at the top of this post. An old, retired loose feathers pattern. I love how they mix little things like needle books and boxes in with the plain, flat cross-stitch pieces in their designs. They always have great instructions for finishing these little items and its fun to occasionally not just use the stitched pieces for framing or pillows.

My most recent framed cross-stitch project. A new addition to my miniature houses collection, from a Loose Feathers pattern. More miniature houses (with a box of pins for scale) below. I have done 3 of these houses so I guess that this is really becoming a Blackbird Miniature Houses Collection.

I don't remember offhand where the pattern on the left is from (if anyone is interested, email me and I'll dig it out of my old patterns to tell you what it is) and the one on the right is, if I remember correctly, a free download from their site from about 4 years ago. Maybe longer. Time flies.

This one can be found here. I have a series of cross-stitched pieces that I like to hang for each season/holiday. I think I have about 13 of them, mostly stitched between 2003 and 2005. Every place that I live, I find a nice prominent wall, put one nail right in the middle, and rotate out these pieces. I'm starting to want to put two nails in the wall and make a set of complimentary pieces. Yikes.

This one is my marriage sampler. It's from "A Fine Collection". They mentioned in the book how they'd originally stitched the initials of a group of their friends in among the leaves. I loved this idea and we had a tiny wedding so I put the initials of all of the attendees in among the leaves, with my and Patrick's names and the date at the bottom. We came to NYC on the train in December of 2003 after being married in November and I stitched most of this on that 3-day ride.

Also somewhere around here is another half-finished piece which I believe I'm planning to make into a pillow. But it's hiding. Probably with my rotary cutter and the bin pulls for the kitchen drawers. So I'll save it for a later post.

Maybe in the meantime I'll go stitch something else from the Fine Collection book since I've only made one thing from that whole book (and surely I don't need to buy another book until I've made better use of the one I already have!)