A Garden for my Scissors

About a month ago, Lorna Bateman came to town to teach a couple of classes for my local chapter of the Embroiderers' Guild of America (EGA). She brought a lot of gorgeous threads with her!

Bye Bye Blue Bird

I have the blues. I have to say goodbye to my lovely little bird because he's finished.

Looking Back at Spring

It's autumn where I live in Southern California, although it feels like summer sometimes! Much as I like the fall, I can't wait for spring. Several years ago, I bought the kits for Helen M. Stevens' designs for the four seasons. I started with Spring.

Thread Painted Royal Blue Bird: Lots of Progress!

I have made some needed fixes and quite a bit of progress on Royal Blue, the thread painted blue bird designed by Trish Burr for Inspirations. I corrected the direction of the feathers under the head (and found some better lighting for taking photos). I hope it's obvious that before is on the left and after is on the right!

Blame the Cat

The shadows and leaf veins are in on Royal Blue's branch and it's looking better. I'm almost to the part where I get to stitch with bright pretty blues!

Royal Blue Burr-dy Time

I need some mindless, relaxing embroidery and I have a burr-ning desire to stitch a Trish Burr-d. (Sorry, I couldn't resist!)

A Fan-tastic Old Kit

I learned to embroider by working commercial kits. I have a few favourites and I recently saw one of them come up for sale on ebay.

The Chocolate Trellis

There are three main elements left to stitch on Melbury Hill's Galanthus Collector: two 'caps' (sepals?) on the flower tops and the bulb at the bottom. They will all involve trellises. I don't have a lot of experience stitching freehand trellises. I prefer having helper marks along the sides of a trellised area so there's no guesswork. However, the three elements will all be filled, so there's no place for helper marks. It'll be good experience to work the trellises freehand.

A Whiter White

It's snowdrop flower time on Melbury Hill's Galanthus Collector. The Heathway crewel white isn't white enough for a good contrast with the linen twill ground fabric. That means all the embroidery on the bud has to come out with the help of a laying tool and scissors.

Dragonfly with Underside Couching

When I stitched the Opus Anglicanum Little Man, I became intrigued with the background that was created with underside couching in gold metallic thread. I was fascinated with the patterning that appeared to be etched into the gold.

My first attempt at this technique was quite rough, so I definitely wanted to try it again.

Shading with Odds and Evens

I'm making some good progress on Melbury Hill's Galanthus Collector, a crewel design with snowdrops.

A Solution in Search of a Problem

I've worked in the technology field for several years and we are always trying not to have a solution in search of a problem. You're supposed to have a problem to solve first! Then you look for an appropriate solution and not the other way around.

I am currently faced with the embroidery equivalent of a solution in search of a problem. I have a beautiful set of Heathway crewel wool and I need a problem, I mean a project, on which to use it.

Wild Child: Mostly Tamed

I have finished the embroidered part of Wild Child. It's taken longer than I thought, but due to other restrictions on my time I haven't had a lot of opportunities to stitch over the last year.

In the last episode, there were just a few outlines and a bit of green filling left. The majority of the remaining work was the black beaded filling throughout the entire piece, lots and lots of filling!

Sweet Violas in Thread Painting

As I'm nearing completion of the embroidered part of Wild Child, I'm contemplating what to work on next. I have two other large pieces to finish (Summer of Love Challenge and Antique Society Silk Violets), but I need to do some relaxing stitching for a bit. I think I'm going to find a small thread painting project in order to give my brain a rest.

One of my favourite sources for easy, but gratifying shaded embroidery projects is Trish Burr's book Needle Painting Embroidery: Fresh Ideas for Beginners. While it's a wonderful book for beginners, there's enough detail to interest more advanced needlepainters.

Several years ago, I embroidered Wild Pansy.

Loop de Loop de Loop

The procrastinating is over and the loops (aka, Curly) on Wild Child have been tackled.

The plan was to use surface embroidery to enhance Curly with the look of coloured pencil. My goal was to have the shaded loops appear as if they had been printed on the fabric, and only by looking closely would you know that they were stitched.

To begin, I selected a lot of potential colours!

Little Man in Opus Anglicanum

For many reasons, I've had Medieval embroidery on the brain lately. Several years ago, I had the  good fortune to be invited to a symposium put on by a Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) group. They taught four embroidery classes over two days, and it was an incredibly valuable experience.

One of the classes was Opus Anglicanum (translation: English Work) which I don't think I'd even heard of at the time! We worked a traditional Medieval character in silk and gold threads.

Fiddly Beadily Bits

I'm procrastinating. I haven't had time to focus on how to stitch the golden curly bit at the top of Wild Child. I know I'm going to embroider it with some sort of shading, but I haven't figured out a plan.