Cottage of the Month Series

This is the final current Wip I have to write about. This is the June Cottage from "Country Cottage Needleworks." This is actually the last of the 12 cottages. I did them in an odd order. In 2013 for my daughters birthday I made her a message center.It has 2 pockets for note pads, 3 pockets for pens a space for a calender and along the bottom hooks for keys.

When I was making this I had thought I would get a calender and put it under the pockets. Well at that time I could not find any that would fit in that location they were either way to big or too heavy or so small it looked weird. So then I had to decide what could I do. At the time I was very active on a Cross Stitch forum and one of the other members had just completed this series of cottages. I really liked the look of them and so decided it would work super for this. Since my daughters birthday is in October I started with that month and just finished the cottage in time to give it to her for her special day. I then completed November in very short order so she had that month to change to when it came up.

Well as we all know from October to December we are all scrambling to finish up gifts for Christmas and I was no different so the remaining months got pushed off to the new year. And in comes 2014 and during the January doldrums I started and finished December. 

But 2014 was a year of many projects. I was hosting a family reunion and in that I set myself a task of stitching a gift for each niece(8), nephew (2), grandniece(4) and partner of those that are married(3) and both of my sisters that came to the reunion in July. As you can imagine I was hurrying to stitch and finish those gifts......that is a story for another time. But long story short the cottages got pushed to the back seat of my stitching duties. Finally in late June I was back to them and I finished September and July. And when she came for the reunion she was given these 2.

After the reunion and in the time I was able to relax I finished August, January and February. That completed my work in 2014.

2015 came and I was determined to finish these cottages. So I set up a rotation program for myself and I have been quite happy with that. Again a subject for another post. But this year I have now finished March, April, May and June is quite close. This month I hope will see the final cottage.

 

If you follow me for any amount of time you will soon discover that I love to change patterns. I mean I like to switch out colors and combine patterns to make a scene that is different from the original the designer  had planned or take out a component that I do not care for. These cottages are a good example of that. I could go on for pages with all the changes I made, but I do not want to try and name them all so lets just say colors changed to suit my style, I added a tiny pompom for the bunny tail, windows on the spring designs got kreinik to lighten them up. And on the February design most of the hearts got changed and the pink became purple because my daughter is 100% anti-Valentines. I choose not to print the words she uses to express her dislike. 

I guess I should show my June progress already...........