More finishes

Finished my cushion. This is made from a silk material from J R Fitzgerald and Co, San Francisco and is a fully lined cover. It took me a number of goes to get it to work but only the inner seam to hand stitch. I was impressed with myself and unfortunately could not get the beaded fringe sewn on with the machine so hand stitched it later. I am really pleased with the use of the fabric and it looks quite neat.

Been stitching on my 15 sided biscornu so I have two squares completely finished and about 7 partly done which leaves 6 to go. Also have to get stitching on pieces for the Arts Festival and will have a little corn sack to make this week for the mice to come out of. I have also been writing my story about the village store so I hope it will be all right to put into the competition.

Went for a bike ride this morning and got nearly all the way to the school but ran out of puff. On the way home I pedalled more of the distance rather than letting the gradient and bike do the work so I was happy with that. Went out for a nice lunch and catch-up with friend Shellie and had the most delicious lemon slice at the Shakee Pear at the Stratford Pioneer Village. A great cafe and really busy today for sunday lunch.
Diane

Stitching news

Just a quick note to say that i have nearly finished all the bargello on canvas two of walk on the wild side - yeah.
started a 15 sided biscornu with my night class girls and it will be interesting. think mine might become a couple of cubes by the time i am finished as dont think i will get 15 sides done.
also onto christmas decoration number 6 and about 6 to go but need to find some more balls to use. It is a small pattern called sequin dainty that I have designed so quite excited about it and very simple. writing instructions next weekend and giving them to mum to trial.
been reading up on stuff for election and have training day on saturday so that will be fun. watched the DVD and it is great.
will publish pictures later this week.

BJP For March nearly there

March BJP Nearly there

Guild Biscornu project - three members completed.

The royal wedding dinner

We had cake as well.

Biscornu Finished; BJP 2011

Had an interesting week and finished another item. So pleased with myself as this is a 2011 guild project – started and finished in the one year. It is a 15 sided biscornu from the Stitch magazine from the Embroiderer’s Guild of England. I used a rainbow gallery encore thread in the greens and added a green marlitt, bright yellow perle 5 with a second variegated perle 5 in pale yellow plus the lime green thread was a rayon from Jane Van Keulen (a thread dyer form New Zealand). - Photo will come next time.

February 2011 BJP

February 2011 BJG - Red Eyes

Another ATC finished for the 2011 BJP so this is continuing the theme of eyes - “Red Eyes”. The word added to this one is precious. Lots of thoughts went through my head about this one and how precious our eyes are. Along with the thinking that eyes are precious the title of this piece was “Red Eyes”. Red eyes are eyes that are sore and inflamed hence the very redness of this piece. Precious comes from the fact that eyes that are often inflamed, sore and diseased may lead to blindness and the world of darkness, hence the precious sight is gone. A little bit of darkness in the centre of one eye shows that blindness is creeping.

Red eye also the late night flight into this modern age, a movie from 2005, the effect in photographs when using a flash and lots of eye disease.

Other finished items:

Also finished this month is Stephanie's birthday present - the three knitted coathangers. Lots of fun to knit and gives me something to do at morning tea time. I enjoyed these as all three are different.

The next thing to show are the two birds I sent for my swap with Carol in Tasmania. I am hoping that she should have received them by now so here they are. One of her favourite colours is purple so I did a purple one for her and realised (a week later) after I had sent them that I did not date and initial them. My apologies Carol for this oversight.

Birds sent to Carol in Tassie for the Swap - Bird for my christmas tree.

Also just done today is the most gorgeous phone charm from Maree for my birthday. A little lion face peers out from my phone now.

Busy Stitching week

Busy ten days.
We have had our Latvian class with 21 attending the two classes and lots of progress made by various stitchers. Lots of colour choices as well with some changing colours halfway through (Lee). I have only stitched in class and pleased with my progress and colours chosen by Maree as an accident selection.
          I have all but finished the stitching on my canvas biscornu and will sew it up over the weekend. I am very pleased with it despite having problems following the pattern and colours. Should have had four threads and I used five or six. Should have had five patterns with three of each stitched the same to make the 15 sides but I managed to only do two the same of each pattern and then add in my own stitches. I think this comes from having too many favourite stitches. Ann (tutor from weekend) showed us her little blackwork biscornu with 15 different patterns stitched on it. I may have to do something like that with my Florence fabric and a silk thread.
          I have started doing a couple of swaps with swap-BoT.com and sent my postcard off on Monday. This week I have two more to send off – need to put eyes on a Christmas decoration before I can put it in the post on Friday so that is tonight’s task. After that it will be to start the decoration for next months swap. Think I will be in advance of this one as I have my idea and want to get it made.
          The holidays are looking to be busier than ever and hoping to have a few days at the beach with mum at some stage so that will be lots of stitching time on walk on the wild side.


Ann showing the weekday class some of her finishing and other designs.



My colours.  I have nearly completed one half of the holbein stitching.

          As far as beading goes I have completed febraury BJP (no photo taken yet) and it seems like the ATC size is the go for this year. I am trying to complete a couple of some of them so I can send them to Karen Cohen for the ATC swap so holidays will mean that another couple will be completed and can be posted off to her. I have the May page for 2010 to do and I am thinking about whether to continue with that series as I enjoyed the process from each person but it was really hard to get inside their heads.

Stitching taking place



Tabitha's pocket in one of her incarnations.

It has been a busy couple of weeks with stitching taking place on a number of things. I have been putting more stuff onto my Tabitha’s pocket – more needed according to the tutor.

I have also completed the pre-stitching for the Latvian class for next week and chosen some colours. I hope that they look good and I will take a photo of the class next week.

Also I attended our regional embroidery retreat and make a book using paper. It was really loads of fun and quick to do with lots of exciting things being done. I had a blast and think I may make a few more at some stage (great idea to use up old visoflix which is not working too great).
Also stitched a little more on my BJP but not certain if the February one is finished yet.
My Biscornu has three squares to go so wanting to get that done before our meeting on April 19th so I can sew it together at the meeting. It is looking good and I am pleased that I have done it. I will have to look into another way of displaying my pincushions as getting too many for the basket now.

Biscornu nearly done!

On swap-bot this month I signed up for a swap with a red biscornu. I stitched a lovely little one using aida and a varigated thread then had an accident with dye so I space dyed the fabric and restitched part of it. I have sewn it up now so it needs its corner decorations and then to be posted. yeah for me getting it done before the deadline of 27 feb. I will post a photo after that as I am pleased with it.
Watching the winter olympics has been a popular pasttime over the weekend so the stitching did not get done but nearly finished another log on block 5 of heart of the cabin.

On a more exciting note mum and I have chosen our classes for Colombus and in two weeks we will be able to book them and hopefully get our choices. I had three classes that I wanted to do on a more teachers side of things but two of them were on the same two days. I have decided to do a four day class with mum and then we are both having a day off and a two day class - different for each of us. It will be exciting to do this.

BJP is very slow and this week is the starting week I think so get a move on is my instruction to self. Hoping to have finished January by the weekend.