Picnic In The Park

EEK! I can finally show you one of the super special, super secret projects that I've been working on "undercover" for the past couple months. Back in January my friend Melissa mentioned that she was looking for a few cross stitchers to help her out on a project. I love to cross stitch in my free time so I volunteered to help her out.

(ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF MELISSA STRAMEL )

And I am so excited to announce that TODAY she's releasing her awesome pattern! Run, don't walk over to Melissa's gorgeous blog, Lilac Lane. If you're not already one of her regular readers, you should be. She's amazing, super sweet, so creative and has so many amazing patterns available on her site. I am more than honored to be one of her featured stitchers on her latest pattern "Picnic In The Park".

(ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF MELISSA STRAMEL )

I showed a couple sneak peeks of the super cute bike I stitched for her (mine is the green one in top left I think) while I was working on it. I always love to have some hand stitching with me when I'm traveling especially. And this super cute bike was the perfect travel companion. Additionally Melissa's cross stitch pattern was so easy to read. What I really, really love about this pattern is the clever way Melissa incorporated cross stitch into a quilt. How cool is that? We cross stitched the bikes onto linen, rather than regular ol' cross weave Aida, which made them super quilt friendly.

(ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF MELISSA STRAMEL )

But I have to say I sweated this one out. She needed our bikes back by the end of March so she could make the quilt and shoot it in time for the pattern release. I was done with the bike and working on the flowers when I decided I was going o South America in the middle of March, so I needed to have t done and sent off before I left - sooner than I anticipated. I had all my time planned out to finish on time, and then life throws you curve balls and I found myself, the night before I was leaving for Argentina, with a few more flowers to fill. So I woke up at 3 am (I can sleep on the plane) to work through the wee hours of the morning to finish it. A snag here, a fantasy baseball draft at our house there and two flowers to fill in, I still wasn't finished when my taxi arrived. So I brought an envelope with plenty of extra postage on it (I hoped) and hopped on the plane, intending to drop it in the mailbox when I landed in Washington DC.

(ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF MELISSA STRAMEL )

I finished it up on the plane with plenty of time to spare (although I forgot my black thread so I couldn't fill in the spokes) unfortunately my plane was late and left me with only 20 minutes to make my connection to Buenos Aires. I just want to send a super huge shout out "Thank You" to the man sitting next to me (eying my stitching with such curiosity) he was my savior. Not only did he tell the people in front of us to let me off first because of my connection, he even took my package for me and mailed it to Melissa and she got it! I will always owe him a debt of gratitude.

(ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF MELISSA STRAMEL )

Oh my, I love this pattern so much. I think Melissa is so super talented and you all should go check out her amazing work right now!