February 2023 – Plum Street Samplers

I am positively scrambling to get everything ready to leave in a week! I’ll be driving to Nashville to meet up with my sister (Audrey) and my dad (Paul) for the 2023 Nashville Needlework Market hosted by Yarn Tree and Needlework Retailer, and I am so excited!

This year I will have six new patterns, and here they are:

FLOAT

Model stitched by Beth Twist of http://www.heartstringsamplery.com

This is a collaboration done with Best Twist of Heartstring Samplery, and we had so much fun working on it! As we did with Sewn in Friendship (released in 2020), we worked it out entirely over text messaging. Her half, called Sting, will be available in her market suite – each chart is sold seperately.

(If you would like to stitch both of these pieces as one vertical sampler, you will be able to find a transition strip for downloading here at my site under “Free Charts” or on Beth’s website after the market closes.)

Be sure to look for us in our Muhammed Ali shirts at market if you plan to be there!

PENNY SPRING

This is a companion to Penny Autumn, which was release in 2016. I miss the little fox family that lived behind my house in Nebraska, so I decided to include one in this small spring sampler!

SPRING MOON

Spring Moon was originally released as an exclusive for Fox and Rabbit, and I am finally releasing it now. I’ve got Summer Moon on its way this summer, as well as Summer Mini Moon (Christmas Mini Moon was released last December). I imagine I’ll have lots of moons in this series, so stay tuned!

STARBARKS

It’s been a while since I’ve added to the doxie lineup, so I decided to come up with some coffee-colored pooches. One of these days I’m going to have to get myself one of these little characters.. I think they are just the cutest, silliest little dogs!

TORTOISE TOWER

I had so many ideas of what to do for the next stack, and I truly don’t know why I decided tortoises would be next, but here we are! Originally the shell colors were reversed, with the “scales” (actually called scutes) being the darker blue-grey, and everthing in between the lighter blue. At the last minute, as I was stitching the model (yes, you read that right; if you know me, you know I do not care one bit for stitching my own models), I decided to switch the colors to brighten up the piece a bit, and I’m glad I did! But feel free to stitch your stack any way you please. Brown, green, yellow, whatever you like! It’s tortoisly up to you.

THIS I KNOW

Lastly, this is my market exclusive this year. I designed it as a partner to This is the Day!, which was last year’s market exclusive. Only those attending the market in Nashville will have access to this chart for their customers, but after a short while I will release it openly to those who could not attend. I really enjoyed designing this, and my friend Katrina (who almost always does my conversions for me) suggested she coffee-dye some of the DMC flosses that are used in the model. They came out so pretty! (Instructions for coffee-dyeing floss are included on the back of the chart.) If you choose not to coffee-dye, your floss will just be a bit brighter. But that would be just as beautiful!

I hope you like my first designs of the year.. it will be such a fun market, and I have no doubt your shop owner will show you all sorts of things you didn’t know you needed. I can’t wait!

I’ll see you soon, and thank you so much for stopping by!

Some of you may remember back when I used to blog a lot. Breanna and Sabrina were teenagers, Sophie was a feisty rascal (and she knew it), and I had The Yorkie and Tasha, who used to dress up every Halloween and make the occasional blog appearance.

I miss those days. When the girls grew up, and then people started saying “blogs are out,” I let my blogging go, only checking in once in a great while.

I’d really like to get back to it. I’d like to get back to a lot of things I love, things I let go of because my life got busy with a whole lot of unexpected things… but isn’t that how life is supposed to go? Maybe it’s a blessing to want things to come full circle.

So here I am! Whether I’m the only reader or not, here I am, because I loved it once. And along with it, an under-contruction website that I’ve been trying (read: thinking about) to get accomplished for some time now. Hopefully as I learn new ways of how to build it, you’ll see it progress into something that is a fun place to visit. Whether it’s the latest news from Plum Street, sneak peeks of coming-soon designs, free patterns, or just whatever my family is up to, I hope to update my site often.

Speaking of free patterns, you can still find all of them I’ve ever published over in the Freebie link on the right sidebar. Just scroll down, click, and then scroll through. They are organized by blog post, which isn’t very user-friendly, but in time I do hope to get them all uploaded under the menu item “Free Patterns.”

I suppose it’s time to dust off the camera (I always preferred it to my phone) and get busy! Thank you for stopping in to see my new site.. and please bear with me: I am learning!

P.S: My old blog is still over at Typepad, but all of those posts have been imported to this blog.

New for Market!

Hello Again!