Time for a Happy Dance!!

First of all, apologies for absence if you missed me.  I was away last weekend at a family history conference and followed it up with a brief but very enjoyable visit to my cousin, so no blogging last Sunday.

However I did take some stitching with me for those odd moments when you aren't scheduled to be doing something or going somewhere.  I came home on Thursday in time for Patchwork Group, following which I am overjoyed to say that Turkish Challenge is finished!

This is the washed and ironed version for you all to see.  The next part of the challenge is to work out how to use the fabrics that Z brought back from Turkey with the stitching to create a finished piece.  The stitching is 6 3/4 inches long, so I need to decide how long the piece is going to be (it has to be a multiple of 6 inches) and whether I am just going to top and tail the stitching, or whether I am going to frame it.  I showed the fabrics on this post, so any advice would be gratefully received.

Next up is Carnation - I stitched two blocks on this before I went away and plan to finish the last two blocks on page 3 this week.  You can just see the second little girl's face starting to appear at the bottom right - the orangey colour is a reflection from the Chinese lantern that she is holding.  I am so close with this one - I am planning to hold a major, major Happy Dance in my next post!

Finally, Enchanted Garden, which is about to get a whole lot more attention.  The black area in the middle is Fairy 2's hair.  The plan now is to work across the middle of this piece, and then scroll either up or down (depending on how I feel at the time) and then back the other way, and then do the backstitch.  How long have I got?  Well, according to my diary, 7 weeks from today is 2 June 2013.  That will leave me a fortnight to have it framed and get it wrapped.  Fingers crossed, folks, fingers crossed!

The weather appears to be warming up here and my heating got turned off on Friday.  I'm starting to see a lot more flowers and blossom around so maybe Spring really is on its way - fingers crossed.