A little of this and a little of that

 My mom was kind enough to finish my July wordplay pillow for me. I actually made the pillow, but I rely on her for all of my zippers and trim. I am more of a "creative" sewer (read I can't sew a straight line to save my life), while she is more of a practical sewer and actually has some skills with a sewing machine. I love how this one turned out. I originally had in mind the crab fabric on the right in the photo below, to match the little crab down in the corner of the design. But I am so glad I went with the more primitive look of the stripes. I used the red stripe on the front, and the blue stripe on the back of my pillow,

I also ordered fabric for my August pillow, but am not loving it, so am on the hunt for something with a smaller bee themed print on it. I may still use this one for the back of my pillow, but didn't want the pattern to overwhelm the cross stitching. I am still torn on it, but hoping I can find something I like a little better. 

 And here is my other stitching this week, the bonus chart from Lizzie Kate's Mystery Sampler (from 2013 I think). I want to stitch all three of these, but did not plan for the odd shape of my fabric very well. I probably have room to do all three charts vertically if I wanted to. This was a piece I hand dyed from stash, and you can see I had already cut pieces off of it for other ornaments. The color was a RIT dye "Hibiscus" that came out a very dark violet, so I wound up bleaching to this kind of dusty medium purple. Sorry for the wrinkly fabric, I haven't had a chance to iron it out yet.

 And just a close up of the first design. I used WDW "Kohl" and like it better than "Onyx" for an all black chart.

Not reading much this week, but I do have a movie recommendation. We watched "Passengers" this weekend, which just came out last year I believe. It has Jennifer Lawrence (Hunger Games), Chris Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy) and Lawrence Fishburne (Matrix) as pretty much the only characters. But it was really good, not a total action movie but not slow either. I really liked the characters (though the bartender reminded me a lot of the Stephen King movie "The Shining"- I wonder if that was intentional). I also took my girls to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which was ok- about what you would expect for a movie franchise that has lasted this long. We went on a Thursday afternoon, and had the whole theater to ourselves which was kind of fun in itself.