Friday, June 26, 2015

Peace Square and the Four Goddesses embroidered

4 Goddesses
Another hand embroidery piece has been hand stitched, now onto pressing and adding a simple border.

My Peace Square stitchery is done and also needs to be pressed and trimed to size then mailed off.
Peace square
I love working small hand embroidery pieces, it keeps my fingers busy and my stitching improves with each piece.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

What I'm Stitching this week

Stitching on the Goddess hand embroidery piece was started over the last weekend, with 2 Goddesses to go.

I will put the piece aside for a short break so I can start embroidery this little Peace Square for the

Artists for Peace project, information can be found at this link.
https://obsesivcreativ.wordpress.com/

Oh and I finally replaced the Goddess cookie cutter that disappeared from my supply box a few years ago while I was teaching a class, this one is a little different from the original, bought 3, one to use for actual baking, one for clay projects, and one to adjust the bottom to resemble the original cutter.
Goddess Cutter
original Cutter

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Greenman #2 completed.

All the stitching on the Greenman #2 hand embroidery is complete, I am quite pleased with the piece
now I just have to decide how I am going to finish it. I have been considering adding borders for a small wall hanging or altar cloth, a friend suggested a pillow and I have toyed with the idea of framing it. In the meantime I have been planning a few other hand embroidery projects.

On the 21st of May I attended another hand embroidery class at the local quilt shop, this class focused on fill in stitches.
Getting the chain stitch to curve at first was a challenge as you can seen by the cane shape stitches, I made improvements at the top and achieved the arc I was aiming for.  The chain stitch looks great in spirals which I need to practice.  The other stitches are the blanket stitch top in both dark and light purple floss, when they are flipped and stitched together they make a nice fill space.  The purple leaf shape is my fishbone stitch which I love and the heart is a randomly stitched long/short stitch.

A small hand embroidery I finished yesterday is this cute little motif a free download from: http://www.red-brolly.com/
I am selecting the floss colors so I can start the Goddess piece I have traced onto the fabric and added a backing fabric to stabilize my stitching. I plan to begin stitching during tonight's Full Moon.
Over the past few weeks I have been gathering a few new patterns for hand embroidery, many with a garden or nature theme, two of my favorite things, and since I didn't plant a spring garden this year I grow my plants with needle and thread. These two patterns are from http://www.birdbraindesigns.net/
Garden Sampler
Thyme to Garden
My love of the ocean and seaside had me buying this cute little pattern on one of my trips to the quilt shop, I am planning to get a few patterns on the lightbox for tracing so I have several things to work on.
I also have an old iron on transfer book of just seashells which I have used over the years usually
tracing the patterns in the book rather than cutting them out and ironing onto the fabric, I have an idea forming in my mind for a summer or ocean goddess altar cloth using some of the shell motifs. More about that in a future post I'm sure.