Crosses and Flosses

Progress continues on my Saltbox calendar series inspired by Melisa Vandergriff at Pinker 'n Punkin Quilting and Stitching.  

The next design I worked on was to represent July.  To start, I chose as my background a tie-dye looking printed Aida cloth that reminded me of Summer's blue skies and green grass.  

I wanted to go patriotic for July 4th, so I looked through Melisa's many patriotic designs and combined a few elements together. (You can check out her roundup of patriotic designs here. ) For the house, I started with "Candy Corn House", and then included a mashup of a couple of her stacked barn animals from her Christmas designs , then I tossed in a flag and a few fireworks to come up with this pattern for July:

As fun as it is to play puzzle maker with a variety of stitch patterns, it can be a bit of a challenge to make it all fit together.  So, for my next house in the series, I pretty much followed Melisa's pattern directly for my February block, aptly named "A Cold Winter's Day".  ( I did have to break down and add a few hearts for Valentine's Day, and I moved the snowman up in front of the house so he didn't get lost in the "February" label at the bottom). Here is February's stitch:

In between the Saltbox stitches, I continued working on my Nutcracker project.  I have 2 of the four nutcrackers finished, and today's slow stitching will be to continue working on number 3.  (There are 4 in all.)

Linking up to Slow Stitching Sunday at   Kathy's Quilts.