Author Archives: alisonshirley

About alisonshirley

My true love is cross stitch, but I also dabble in a few other needlearts and love to quilt and craft in general.

March YOTA

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For my YOTA stitching project for the month of February, I spent some time with The Legend of the Dogwood Tree.  This is a project I haven’t stitched on in a couple years.  I’m not sure what fabric it is – I believe it is an antique white 28-count loosely woven linen.  The pattern calls for three threads over two.

This is what I started with:

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This is my progress as of today:

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This pattern is not the funnest to stitch as it has A LOT of color changes.  And I am not used to stitching with three threads so it feels strange, but, over all, I am mostly happy with my progress this month.

For March, I will go back to stitching on Home Sweet Home.

See you next month!

Valentine Monster

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For the little one’s Valentine party at school, he (and by that I mean me) was tasked with taking a cereal box and turning it into a recepticle for the kids to drop their cards into.  This is what we (I) came up with:

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This was made with stuff found entirely in my craft room (except the cereal box – I don’t hoard cereal).  I used some shiny red fabric left over from a Halloween costume, a scrap of orange felt for the teeth, pipe cleaners for the “hair,” and a styrofoam ball cut in half for the eyeballs.

Sometimes it is nice to have a boy because you can get away from all the cutesy stuff and go wild!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Valentine

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I’m not a big fan of Valentine’s Day.  I think there is too much pressure to be all lovey-dovey and that is certainly not me.  But, this year I decided to make my hubby a gift.  Of course, it was something I saw on Pinterest.

It was a little canvas with black/white stripes and a red heart covered in buttons.

After only one trip to JoAnn’s to pick up my supplies (I can’t believe I remembered to get everything in one trip! YAY!), this is what I have:

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Step one was to draw the lines.  Since my canvas is 10 x 10, I figured I would go easy on myself and mark 2″ lines.  I didn’t want to have to paint over black, so I painted the red heart before I colored in the black.

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And here it is with the lines and heart finished.  I used metallic white and black paint for a little sparkle, although it is hard to see in the photos.

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Now off to glue on some red buttons! I LOVE BUTTONS!

I glued two layers of buttons to ensure decent coverage using plain ol’ white glue.  Ohh, buttons are pretty…  Did I mention that I love buttons?

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I stenciled “You & Me” on the bottom white line and TA-DA!

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It definitely looks “home made” with the uneven stenciling and some of the buttons being a little out of whack, but, overall, I like the way it turned out.  I’m sure he won’t think it is as cute as I do, but I’d rather give something I made than something from the store.

Happy Valentine’s Day!