Jolly July

What exactly is Jolly July, you may ask. Priscilla & Chelsea of the Real Housewives of Cross Stitch and Kimberly from Fat Quarter Shop put together a SAL (stitch-a-long) where you make Christmas ornaments during the month of July. They are starting a new ornament every day and, being experienced stitchers, they may finish one every day as well. Some stitchers are breaking away from the Christmas Theme and making Halloween ornaments as well.

Being very new to the stitching world, Helen & I have no cross stitched ornaments and we want them. ALL OF THEM! However, since we each have 31 projects started (well, Helen has 30 because she finished one) from Stitch-Maynia, we have decided to NOT start something new every day during the month. But we picked out some patterns that we love and we will each start one on July 1 and work on it until it is finished. Then, we will start the next project.

Some of the ones we chose are quite small so there's a good chance we could finish it in a day or two, depending on our stitching time .... which we have gotten quite good at making sure we have time set aside for each day.

We added everything to our Tiny Decisions App, which puts all the projects on a wheel and lets you spin to see your next start. We plan to kit up (pick threads, cut cloth, etc.) at the beginning of each project. Many are from the same overall pattern so the floss colors stay the same for all of them.

Together, during the month of July, we hope to finish all 24 of the days of the Little Stitcher Advent Calendar (bought on Etsy)

and all 12 of the Noah's Christmas Ark animals from Plum Street Sampler.

If we finish all those, we have some fairytale houses by Owlforest Embroidery in our queue. Also, there are some winter animals by The Little Stitcher that I'm not quite sure why we don't own yet. It must be a mix-up somewhere because they are perfect for the Hollow!

 Don't you agree we NEED these?