Thursday, April 29, 2010

A week of stitching

This week has been all about stitching. I spent the weekend working on a model for mom's upcoming classes in Nashua. And then a prize that I had won from Shakespeare's Peddler on Facebook arrived in the mail and I really got inspired:

The pattern in the photo is called "Jenny Bean's Halloween Sampler." It uses some specialty fibers with fabulously creepy names like "sarcophagus" and "zombie flesh". I'm placing an order for those fibers soon, as well as a piece of hand dyed fabric from Stitches and Spice called "gravestone". Sounds like it will all go together well, huh?
I spent most of the week working on this little freebie from Blackbird Designs called 'souvenir de france'. I wanted it to be super tiny, so I stitched it over one with one thread of the new Sampler Thread color "Rose Garden" on 28 count Porcelain linen by Silkweavers. I have a couple of other solid red patterns on order, and I think I'm going to put them all on this same linen. I haven't decided whether I'll finish it as a pincushion, or come up with something else strange to do with it. Beside it, you see another small piece I finished recently, February's make-do by Shakespeare's Peddler. I loved the sentiment and the little bird cage, and I just had to have it!

I've moved on to another smallish design I got last month. It's called "Love & Be Loved" by With Thy Needle and Thread. I've replaced all the original fibers the designer called for with overdyed threads, and I'm stitching it on 40 count lambswool linen. When I finish the stitching, I'm going to finish the piece by making it a part of a scrapbook type banner to hang on the wall. This one is probably going to take quite a while to make it from concept to finished piece! And speaking of things taking a long time, I am notoriously bad at actually framing/finishing my stitching. Here are two ornaments I just finished 'finishing' last month. As you can see, one of them was actually stitched almost 3 years ago! I wish I could say that's the oldest finished piece I have lying around, but alas, that is not the case. Happy stitching and happy National Scrapbook Day (two days early).

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