Vacation weekend

Hello stitchy friends!

Mike and I are back to work today after a nice long relaxing weekend visiting my sister, BIL, and family in Minnesota.

The heat wave finally broke before we left bringing much nicer, cooler weather to us here in central Illinois. We are still very dry with just slight rain from time to time, but the departure of the hot temps has made everyone feel better.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, my sister is an amazing seamstress. She had some wonderful surprises waiting for me...





She sewed this super cute purse for me, one of the coolest things about it is that the bottom part is removable, so she sewed a fall cover for the purse as well....




How cool is this...it's the fall cover to button on, then she made this one reversible to this cute Halloween print.


So, as if this wasn't enough she also stitched up a beautiful tote bag for my cross stitch.




She made a matching chart pouch, which I neglected to take a picture of...
If you look closely, you can see she embroidered my name on the front.

We had a fun weekend with them, a little swimming, a parade and community dinner, as well as hanging out with nieces, nephews and their children. So, all-in-all, we had a great time. It felt so good to get in their pool and swim! Plus it was great to do some knee exercises in the water.

Our daughter was glad to have us out of the house for the weekend as well...she had some friends over for her birthday celebration. She turned 21, so it was a big milestone for her.

I finished up stitching 'Summer' by cross-eyed Cricket- I don't have a picture of that, I will save that for another post. I have been stitching on the new Halloween piece by Prairie Schooler. It took awhile to adjust my eyes to stitching on 32 count linen, most of my recent projects have been on 28 count linen.

I took some stitched but not 'finished' pieces to Minnesota with me, so Karen and I did some finishing together.



I am really pleased with how Ida and Ira came out. I have to stuff them and hand sew the seams yet, but I'm happy to have them done.




Jolly jack came back almost done, I just have to tweak the stuffing add a bow and hand sew the opening shut.




Then this one got sewed into a long skinny pillow that I will put on a shelf. It too just needs the stuffing smoothed out and hand sew the seam shut.




Finally last picture for this looong post, a freebie I stitched up which we sewed into a small pillow. I found some cool old hand crocheted lace to add to it.

Thanks for sticking thru to the end of this long post.
Happy stitching friends!