ROLL OVER AND....

'Roll over little one and go to sleep, winter is coming'

Dianne has just sent me this photo of my piece as it was displayed at the Guild Challenge last night.

The background pattern was printed with the computer onto calico and one leaf was stitched to highlight it. The acorns were recycled  from a piece call necklace for Nutkin that my cat pulled apart  a few years ago.

NEEDLE PAINTING.

 A week ago, I attended a two day workshop on Silk Shading, this is my second attempt to learn this type of embroidery work. In 1998 I also attended a Silk Shading Workshop, however I was carried away with my subject and the result was really needle painting . That piece was "Little Bunnies" This was followed by another needle painting, of little goslings, both these were taken from Marjolein Bastin paintings.  Having found how enjoyable this type of stitching was I did several more pieces all, these were all birds,( see my album.)

Over the years I have done a little sketching and dabbled in watercolours and needle paint seemed to follow quite naturally. I enjoyed the small animals and birds, fur and feathers seem to lie easily in the stitching.  Silk Shading calls for more discipline ! After 10 hours stitching I have only one petal and one leaf of my poppy done I will show this when there is a little more stitching done.

Meanwhile this week I have been back to the needle painting stitching a piece for our Guild Challenge for tonight. The challenge asks for a piece, postcard size - 15 x 10cm and any form of stitching. The design to be formed from 2 lines in any direction,  superimposed with 7cm circle. and wotked in any technique we like.I have finished but yet to take a photo of the piece, it is a very dull day here and I dont like photographing embroidery using a flash, so I will post a photo of it later, meanwhile here is what I did for my 7cm circle, this I copied in the scanner. The background has the minimum amount of stitching, as you will see later

STASH OR STACKS

I look when other people show their stash-  me I have STACKS, stacks of paper, research notes, sketches, drafts for class notes,  design drawings and more and more, need I go on you can imagine the paper pile and its not just one pile but several.

Now I am not teaching I am slowly working my way through and deleting as much as possible !

I did find this little drawing I had made of a rabbit, he was on a Christmas card that came from England some years ago, I had sketched him onto graph paper no doubt the intention was some time to chart him.
He was really calling out to be stitched and that was much more interesting than sorting papers, they have waited this long, a bit longer won't make much difference.
Here he is, I have stitched him from the drawing. and then I charted what I had stitched. The chart is here too in case anyone would like to stitch him.

And here is WIP I am stitching the background  with a Sampler Thread from The Gentle Art Co. called Gold leaf. While I was stitching I remembered how to stitch a shaded background if you want it to go from dark to light.  Divide the background into 5 sections cross wise. Chose three shades of one colour and stitch using 2 threads. the bottom section is stitched in the darkest shade, then next section is stitched  use one strand of the dark shade and one of the medium together. part three is just the medium shade, then for the fourth section one strand of medium and one of the light, finally the top is two strands of the lightest shade. This makes a lovely soft shading.

Not quite finished.... next I will need to find something to back him with... finished item will appear at a later date.

RECYCLING PROJECT

Earlier in the year I listed a few items I really wanted to stitch included was an embroided cover for my bible.

In truth the cover on my bible was not going to hold together much longer and needed some very strong and somewhat ugly tape to give it support. I had drawn up a design I thought I would like to stitch but thats as far as I got.... then the cord holding up my "Love is" piece broke and the embroidered picture came tumbling down.

I have always liked this piece- the design came from an old Christmas card that I found some time in the 70's and would you believe it I kept it for 20 years, This was stitched in 1997 and had great support from Jack my picture framer who cut the mat while I was stitching it and was able to check as I went along that everything was placed correctly. Now all these years later sadly the mat was looking faded and I had the inspiration to take the embroidery out of the frame and recycle it.

I have mounted it onto deep blue velvet, the velvet was some scarps I had from when the Elders chairs at St Andrew's Church Coromandel where re-covered, and added to making my new book cover special. I'm not sure if the threads had faded slightly, but it was hard to find something to match to make a cord  I finally found a Pearsalls 'Filo-Floss' Stranded silk. Here is the finished cover.

MAY 1st

Its May 1st and I said I would announce today who had won my Easter give away. Thank you all who left a comment the numbers were quite overwhelming.
 Caitlin was with me last week while we planned her next piece of embroidery and we discussed how I would do the draw. I decided to make it her age- she is 13 years old and counting down to the 13th comment left on the Easter Giveaway posting I am happy to tell Pam she is the winner.

 Pam please send me an email with your postal address so I can get the parcel away to you

this week

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