I’m excited – happy mail today!  I’ve signed up for “United Stitches”, which is Rosalie Quinlan’s 2015 block of the month (I’m still working on 2013 – Best Friends Forever & 2014 – Simply Blessed, we don’t talk about those just yet…)

Unlike the previous ones though, this is designed around a ‘stitch and switch’ theme.  Each set of stitcheries is numbered, and actually comes with two stitcheries of each design.  The intention is that you stitch one for yourself, and one for someone else – either in a sewing group, or as a round robin, or by posting on the Facebook group and finding someone to swap with, and most people will select whether to do the odd or even designs.  The team over at Creative Abundance have been posting up pictures of all the stitcheries, and I have to say they are ADORABLE!

I’m going to be doing this one with my mother, who is the one who took me down the rabbit hole of craft addiction, so it seems only fitting. I predict as usual she will be way ahead of me, as I tend to take on far too many WIPs at once, but it’ll be nice to do even if it takes me a couple of years!!

The pack arrived today and includes a fat quarter bundle of the “Chirpy Lola” fabric which is gorgeous, all of the Cosmo threads needed, extra linen for the quilt, the quilt instructions, a tin to keep all the swap cards, a 4 1/2″ template for the stitcheries/blocks, and the first two stitcheries.

I can’t start it just yet as a) I want to get up to date with the Story Time Sampler and a couple of other cross stitch projects, or reach a certain point, and b) I meant to order some thinner stabiliser as I don’t want to use Parlan on this, but totally forgot to! So I’ll be ordering some of that shortly now that I have the requirements for the full quilt.

This is the finished quilt that Rosalie finished – isn’t it just so bright and adorable?? I think putting it together may be a bit of a challenge, but to be honest, once I’ve reached that point I’m hoping to be more confident with some of those blocks.

The Story Time Sampler is trucking along and I’m definitely going to reach my goal of finishing all of the frames before the next clue is released on the 31st (which is Sunday lunchtime here due to the time differences).  The frames are all so intricate and so require a lot of concentration when counting, although I’m pleased to report that I have remembered how to count properly so haven’t had to rip out whole frames any more!!

One of my friends who is also stitching this came over for dinner tonight and we were working on this together so I managed to make some decent progress – I’ve begun the last frame! I probably won’t finish it until Friday evening but I’ll definitely have it done, which means that I can hopefully put some solid progress in on the banner and knock out some of that before the clue is released.

I’m determined with this to stay up to date and having the frames is helping so I can jump straight into the stitching – I managed to stitch up Alice incredibly fast and on the day that the clue was released, so I’ve proven to myself that I *can* knock things out and I can stay on target – and I’ve got a couple of other friends who are doing this as well to keep me on track 😉

Is anyone else doing either the Story Time Sampler or United Stitches? I’d love to see your plans and if you’re staying 100% true to the design or making a changes to give it your own personal touch!