More parcels

Today I was rather excited!  My copy of Natalie Lymer's Cotton Floss arrived!!

I love Natalie's work, and got one of her quilt patterns for Christmas.  I'm a little embarrassed to say that I haven't actually made any of her patterns yet, but I do love looking at them.  This book has got some lovely smaller projects so I should be able to get right into them soon.  Although, I've decided I'm not going to start another embroidery project until I've finished the embroidery for Retro Nine Patch, which will only be a few weeks at the most.

I'm quite interested in the needle holder, since making a needle book has been on my 'to-do' list for a while.  And then the matching thread holder would be handy for storing threads in whilst I'm working on a project.  I don't keep my threads on cards though, so I might have to rework the pattern a little.

The toadstool, as featured on the cover, is just too cute so I'm sure I'll end up with one (or more) of those soon enough.... although you're supposed to stick pins into them!!  I'm not sure if I could bring myself to do that.  I just want to make a row of them to sit on the shelf...... which would work perfectly if I end up making The Hidden Garden canvas art (which can be seen in the first image here) for my daughter's bedroom.

Now I haven't shared photos for most of these projects because Natalie hasn't put them up online and I didn't think to scan them in, so I guess you'll just have to refer to your copy of the book to find out what they are ;)

And since I mentioned Retro Nine Patch, here is the latest block I just finished this week.  Only one more to go and all the stitchery is done.

I made a slight error on this one.  I stitched the yellow with two strands of floss, then started to stitch the purple and realised I had three strands in the needle.  I unpicked the stitches I had sewn, and started again with two strands.  Once I moved onto the next colour, I realised I'd been stitching all the blocks with three strands of threads, so now the yellow and purple on this block are thinner than all the rest.  I had contemplated unpicking it and re-doing, but then decided it can be the little 'error' in the project which proves it is my own work ;)

Oh, and since I made the challenge to myself to post twice a week for the next month, I'm going to do a countdown to help me keep track.  I'm going to say that it's 9 posts from 12th May to 12th June (4 1/2 weeks), so this is 1 of 9.