Well I’ve almost caught up with my Jacquie SAL, but I seem thwarted at every attempt at the moment! This is the SAL by Faby Reilly for a needlecase, she releases the pattern for a section every two weeks. Last time I shared my progress I’d started stitching the first section. This involved back-stitching felt squares in place and embroidering two labels. I’d managed one of each…

I wasn’t 100% on the way my label had come out, but I decided to stitch the other one before I made a decision. At this point I also hadn’t done my preparation work of outlining all the blocks.

I took it to my Skipton Stitchers meeting on Monday. This was the Embroiderers Guild but since the Guild decided to take our money and abandon us, we went independent and call ourselves Skipton Stitchers. We had our second outdoor meeting and as it was hot we sat under the shade of a tree and stitched for a couple of hours. It was lovely to see everyone again. I managed a fair bit of outlining on my SAL. Afterwards I met my friend for lunch in a local cafe. A lovely day all in all.

Roll on a couple of days when I tried to crack on with the outlining. I realised my piece of fabric wasn’t quite long enough to get all the pieces from. I couldn’t fit the last two large rectangles on. I messaged Faby on Facebook to see, from a design perspective, which two rectangles would be better in a different fabric. The answer was sections three and four, which left me free to start the cross-stitch on section two…

Then I couldn’t find my flosses, I tidied my sewing room, checked down the sides of chairs etc, no sign. I decided I must have lost them on Monday in Skipton. My friend even kindly went down to the coffee shop to see if they were there. I resolved to buy a new set. I walked into Otley for my market shop yesterday, queued up at the butchers and then realised my purse wasn’t in my bag! I ended up getting the bus home, checking another bag and then getting two buses into Leeds to retrieve my purse from my locker at work! Thank goodness I have a free bus pass!! Whilst in Leeds I popped into Sam Taylors to get some more flosses. I caught the bus back to Otley, did my shopping and finally got home about five hours after initially leaving! I sat down in my chair with a welcome cup of tea and then spotted my bag of flosses hiding on the floor!!!

So I now have plenty of floss for my project!!

Last night I cracked on with section two, the first of the big rectangles and the first clue we had to the theme of the SAL. I did make me chuckle though…what does this look like?

Well it looks like a blue jelly baby to me!. So now I know what happens to jelly babies that don’t get eaten…

…they metamorphose into a dragonfly 🙂

I think this is going to be beautiful. I love the colours and in the next pattern release we’ll add the Faby magic bit, all the detail and different stitches.

Last night I also stitched the second label, it looks much better than the first one. I think it’s mainly due to the way the colour worked out with the variegated thread. I’m tempted to either undo the embroidery one and restitch, or just stitch another one, maybe also just using one strand of floss for the chain stitch border.

I still haven’t decided what colour linen to use for the other two rectangles, I’ve quite a selection of colours to choose from but I think I’ll wait to see what the design is looking like before I commit to something darker or lighter, or try to find one similar tone.

If you fancy joining me in stitching the needlecase, follow the link to Faby Reilly Designs.

This Stitch-a-long is organised by Avis, we post our progress on our project every three weeks so please follow the links to see lots of other lovely stitching.

Avis, Claire, Gun, Carole, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Cindy, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Megan, Deborah, Renee, Carmela, Sharon, Daisy, Anne, AJ, Laura, Cathie, Linda, Helen