New Handwork Project

I haven't been posting much lately.  I think I have had a case of the summer doldrums.  Here in the South, it is hot and humid.  (In recent years, Virginia has been branding itself as being "Mid-Atlantic", but growing up, Virginia was in the South and that is how I still think of it.)  It has been hard to get motivated to get a new project started.  However, I have finally bestirred myself and started on a project.  The year is turning, and my thoughts are turning towards autumn.  This brings up thoughts of Halloween and Christmas.  I am starting to work on some needle keepers that will be Christmas presents.

I saw a project in a magazine some years ago for some wool felt needle keepers.  As usual, I saved the article because "Someday I am going to make those."  Someday has finally arrived for this project.  The needle keepers are in the shape of fruit.  There were patterns for pear, apple, orange and pomegranate needle keepers.  Right now the photos only show the first layer of each item.  At the moment, they don't look like much, but the finished project will have a lot of decorative stitching and some beading on them.   When they are finished, they will be really cute.

This project has been hanging fire for a while.  The fruit is made from 100% Merino wool felt.  I had to order it.  The quilt shops here do not carry a lot of wool felt here, especially at this time of year.  Once the felt arrived, it took me a while to get started.  As I mentioned earlier, I have been having some motivational issues.  Now that I have all the pieces cut out, I was ready to start stitching only to find that I don't have any dark brown embroidery thread.  I had not purchased any while I was out and about because I have a few hundred skeins of embroidery thread.  I thought that surely I would have something that was usable.  Probably, many of them would do, but I want what I want, so I need to make a trip up to the craft store.  I will be heading that way tomorrow.  Now that I have things cut out, I am ready to go.  It is good to start feeling enthusiastic again. 

Anyway, this is where the project starts.  It will look much better as the stitching is added.  I will also be blogging about a Halloween project and some updates on the latest quilt. 

A note to regular readers:  I have been having intermittent telephone and internet access problems recently.  A repair person should be coming out this week and hopefully this problem will be resolved.  My husband tells me that intermittent problems are hard to fix because it could be working when the repair person arrives and they cannot find the problem.  It has been very frustrating.  I did not realize how much I depended on the internet until I started to loose access to the internet for days at a time.