A Late Night Finish

 You all know (maybe you don't know but I've said it a lot) that Teresa Kogut is one of my very favorite designers. I've stitched a lot of her designs and I love her work but I did NOT like stitching this one. This must have been one of her early designs (don't know where the paper chart is at the moment) but it had a LOT of quarter stitches and I did not like stitching those. Probably the main reason I didn't enjoy stitching it is because when I made the PDF (on my printer), I did page 2, then page 1. I'm not going to say it's a big hassle but it's kind of a hassle to re-arrange pages on a PDF because I don't have an app that does it and finding a website that will do it for free isn't easy either.  There are some that want you to sign up for a trial and I wasn't going to do that either. Honestly, Judy . . why didn't you just get up and make another two page PDF and get the pages in the right order? I didn't think it would be such a hassle but it was. The right side of page 2 is what butted up to the left side of page 1. There are mistakes in my stitching because I didn't get that part right. My fault.

Anyway, I knew with the struggles I was having, if I put it down, I might never pick it up again so I told myself I had to finish it before I could work on anything else. That was almost a week ago and at that time, I could have finished it in one evening if I put a little effort into it. Nope. I played on the computer, talked to friends on the phone, played games on my tablet . . thinks your average 6 year old would do!

It's finished and I'm very happy with the result - just not so happy with my laziness and procrastination!

Even better news - I have a frame here that I paid $1.50 for at Goodwill and it fits! I had planned to rub some gold on the black but I think I'm not. I think I like it just as it is.

There was supposed to be just a straight stitched border around it but those make it so hard to frame. Any little area where the piece is laced too tightly or too loosely shows and makes the piece look crooked so I left that border off.

I may think about framing it today . . but maybe not. We'll see.

Anticipating A Finish Today!

 Every day for at least a week, I've said "Today I'm going to finish Let Love Reign".  The next day Vince will say "What are you going to work on today?" and I'll say "Let Love Reign" and he'll say "I thought you finished that yesterday. Nope . . did not.

Today I'm going to finish it (I hope).

You know I'm working on two Let Freedom Ring pieces. This one is by Teresa Kogut.

For this to be a small project, there is a lot of stitching! All I have left to do is finish filling in the dress, add another angel wing, her hand holding the star, add a second sheep near the bottom, fill in their faces and fill in one white area on the bottom bunting on the left side. I think that's it.

I may even have a frame that will work for it but I'll finish stitching it before I think much about a frame.

Week 1 - September, 2025 Progress

 In this post, I listed all my goals for September.

The first project I worked on was Let Freedom Ring by Lila's Studio. 

Here's what the project looked like on July 1:

I didn't take a screen shot of the project summary on July 1 but I did on July 2.

My notes in Markup XP shows that on September 1, I had completed 26.13%. 

At the end of September 7, I have completed 36.39%.

My goal is to complete 40% by the end of September. Here's what the project looks like now.

That was a lot of stitching on that building. I stitched a little over 3,531 stitches in a week. On average, that's 504 stitches per day! I'm happy with that.

I'm a bit tired of working on this one so today I'm going to go back to Let Freedom Ring by Lila's Studio and see if I can get it finished. Here's where I left off on it.

I figure I need three, maybe four days, to reach my September goal for Lila's Studio Let Freedom Ring so I'll be sure to get that done before the end of the month.

9/3 - Progress on Let Freedom Ring #2

Yes, there are two WIPs named Let Freedom Ring. This Let Freedom Ring is by Teresa Kogut.

I don't usually get 400+ stitches done on my stitching days with Debbie because there's lots of talking and googling charts to show each other . . and eating and talking!  :)  But, today I made 408 stitches. It was easy because everything I stitched was already outlined with no real counting or the need for paying close attention. I do think I might get this one finished by the end of the month. My goal is to get two projects finished this month.

9/2 Progress on Let Freedom Ring

On 9/1, I stitched 1.58%. I thought I had written for my goal for 9/2 that I wanted to get to 30%, which meant I would had to have stitched 2.29%, which was a LOT of stitches. Yesterday (9/2), I ended up stitching several of the long lines across the building which were pretty quick to stitch, though I stitched a LOT of stitches!  :)

I stitched 819 stitches - a few more than double my daily goal. There are several other things going on today so my goal for today is going to be my usual goal of 400 stitches! 

Yesterday evening a friend down the road called and her daughter who is about 20 years old, wanted to try her hand at sourdough so she ran down and got a quick lesson in sourdough and I gave her a starter. Last week I took starters to two ladies who work where I'm having physical therapy. That makes me happy to share my love for sourdough. I figure if one of the three continue with it, that will be great.

We could have storms this evening with hail. Having hail here happens so often with thunderstorms that I never thought much about it but now that we have a new roof, it makes me nervous to think about hail. Our insurance agent told me a while back that new roofs are less likely to be damaged by hail than are older roofs. I hope he's right.

9/1 Progress on Let Freedom Ring

 There probably won't be daily updates on my September stitching progress but there may be almost daily updates.

The first project I tackled was Let Freedom Ring by Lila's Studio. This is where I started this month and I had 26.13% completed and my goal is to end September at 40% completed.

Yesterday I made 678 stitches (400 is my daily goal) and I now have 27.71% completed, or I completed 1.58% today. Sorry for the math but to reach my goal of 40%, I have to complete 13.87% this month. If I can continue at 1.58%, I can reach the goal in about 9 days (8 more!). That's very possible! That means I would still have 21 days left to work on the other goals! I will be shocked if my math is correct. What REALLY matters is when I get to 100% completion!

Here's what the piece looks like now.

It's probably hard to notice the small changes but, for the most part, these were the stitches:

• Finished stitching the windows in blue
• Finished the columns and stitched more greenery 
• Did a bit more in the trees
• Finished the gray area and the steps in the area to the left
• Started filling in some of the reddish brown in that area to the left of the structure, which will become the main part of the building.

Doesn't seem like that should have been a whole day's worth of stitching but it was.

Today I hope to finish the shingles on the roof and get more done on the main part of the building. It's kinda hard to explain the areas I'm working on since I don't know what they are but if you go here, there's a pretty good picture of Independence Hall - still doesn't tell me the parts but it's nice to see the real building. I've never been there.