my October WIPocalypse Update

Her Majesty's Carousel

It's time for another WIPocalypse update.  WIPocalypse projects are all of the projects that I have in progress, that I would like to finish before the world ends. 

I am attempting to stitch (at least a little bit) on ALL of my WIPs this year.   

I finally pulled out "Her Majesty's Carousel" after not touching it for about 2-1/2 years. (shame!)  It appeared to be nearly finished ... however, I now see that there are many parts left to complete.  Aside from finishing the cross stitching and back stitching, there is the gold border to finish, a lot of beading throughout, and some twisted cording to make for the horses reins.  So, I do have a ways to go AND it starts with a single stitch - so I filled in here and there with some of the cross stitching, and I completed the back stitching on the horse's pole.  

I then moved on to Teresa Wentzler's "Summer Carousel Horse".  Oh Boy.  My stitching on this one moves as slow as mud.  I worked for hours on the tail ... here is what I have to show for it:

 Here is where I was last time:

Oh well.  Any progress is good.

I also stitched a bit on "Ride to Dreamland":

It may be hard to tell, but I did make some progress on the flowers from the top center towards the right.  Here is my before shot:

The most enjoyable stitching I did this month was on Sandy Orton's "American Sampler".

I added an entire bird!  lol.  I also worked a bit on the background filler "Alternating Half Cross Stitch", which basically changes the look and color of the linen behind the other stitching.  This project is barely begun ... but I love working on it!    

I did work on a few other projects this month - with one finish, which will be revealed during the upcoming "Halloween Blog Hop".   Stay tuned.

Topic of the month: How did you begin stitching?

I have my Grandma to thank for that.  She was very crafty with sewing, crochet, embroidery, etc...  I remember going with her to a sale (most likely a church sale), where I found some printed floral pillowcases & just had to have them to stitch on.  Never mind that I was very young and had never done any type of stitching before.   Of course, my Grandma bought them for me.  I do have the finished pillowcases tucked away somewhere - I ended up removing my clumsy first stitching and restitching them years later.  

In the 80's I moved on to cross stitching - as it was quite popular and easy to find.  I stitched through the 80's and 90's (hence all the Carousel projects - very popular back then).

That's all for my WIPocalypse update this month.
Happy stitching!