Almost to the top of the tree now!  It is coming along very nicely and I feel I am now on the homeward stretch of the stitching for this rug. Hopefully, I will be to the top of the tree by next week.

I am looking forward to trying it out in my Santa's Cottage and it will be front and center at Christmas this year.

​Hope you are having a wonderful summer, I have been enjoying the beautiful weather we are having here and love to spend an afternoon stitching outside after my housework and gardening are finished.

This past week I have been spending some time filling in the background when I get some spare moments.  I photographed it against a blue background to make it easier to see.

Background work is always tedious but this one is going a bit faster than I thought it would.  I am approximately half done the background.

I have decided not to put a fringe onto this rug so once the background is finished I will put some little cushions, Christmas stockings, etc around the open gauze to better make use of the extra gauze I have.  To this end I have been designing some new items to stitch.  
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More on this later...

All of this rug is working out so nicely, I am having a lot of fun stitching it.  The tree is almost done (It went so easily I had done more than I realized) so I am working on the background a bit more today. 

It won't be too long and I will be finished this rug!  I think it may be one of the fastest ones I have stitched. I don't intend to put a fringe on this one so once it is blocked, it will just be a case of finishing the edges and it will be done.

As I have extra space around the outer edges of the rug, I plan to stitch some small projects to take advantage of the gauze before I block the rug and cut the gauze.  I wonder what I should stitch?  I will have to look at my small patterns and see what may fit in the spaces.  Maybe a Christmas stocking or a little pair of slippers, or maybe a little purse!  I like to make use of every piece of gauze (other than what I need for blocking) and it will be fun trying to find something.  

Some of you may have noticed that I have been releasing a new pattern every Friday lately.  I have been spending some time each evening reviewing patterns that I had started long ago and never finished for one reason or another. Sometimes, the patterns only need to have colors checked, symbols tweaked and proofing done.  Others were never finished because I couldn't get it to look the way I wanted it to.  After some time away, often I have some inspiration for changes that make the pattern much more appealing to me and I suddenly love it.

This is a small sampling of some of my newest patterns.  As I add a new pattern I update the homepage section that highlights the newest patterns available and add a link to that pattern.  All new patterns show up at the beginning of their respective section when you search our store categories as well.  Thus, you