Done in a Week

The crewel strawberry stitching is done! 

Here's the day by day. . .

Day 4 - The blue flower is mostly redone in a different color that provides better contrast between the two blue shades.  The dark blue is closely packed rows of stem stitch, so considerably more time consuming than some other design elements.  Also new are the leaves of two flower buds (right above the yellow flowers), made from segments of detached buttonhole.

Day 5 doesn't look too much different, but there is progress in a number of little details.  The blue flower is finished along with a handful of french knot embellishments.

Day 6 mostly involved finishing up stems and leaves.

And finally --- ta dah!! -- Day 7 completes the design! 

A project done in a week!  Yippee!

A Crewel-Work Weekend

Sometimes it's fun to stitch something in which you can see daily progress!   I was reminded of this this weekend when I started work on a small crewel project that our EGA chapter is doing over the next two months.  I'm helping check out the instructions by getting a head start on the stitching.

Here's my 3 days of progress this far:

Day 1....a pretty red flower and quite a few stems (I always forget how much of any floral design is leaves and stems!)  The red is done in buttonhole stitch, the leaves in fishbone, and the stems in whipped chain or outline stitch.

Day 2 adds lots more stems and leaves, some tiny yellow flowers and the start of a lovely purple bloom!

Day 3 doesn't look too productive does it?  But of course you can't see the "reverse stitching" (or frogging) where I just wasn't happy with the results and tore out and restitched.  More reverse stitching yet to come, since I think I've decided to remove the blue flower section.  I'm happy enough with the stitching, but have decided to make a color change.

What's left to do?  A fair number of leaves.. . although most of the stems are complete.  Redo the blue flower.  Then to finish up, there are about a half dozen little buds made of little segments of detached buttonhole.  With luck, the stitching should be easily done this week!  Compared to some of the really time consuming pieces I've been working on lately, that seems like almost warp speed. 



Just Waiting for Part 3

While trying to decide what stitching project to jump into next, I decided to join Tanja Berlin's blackwork mystery project that she has posted on her web site.  (You can get your own copy here:  http://www.berlinembroidery.com/blackworkminimysteryproject.htm )  Please note that unlike some mystery projects, the instructions do come with a photo of the piece in progress, so my photos are not giving away the surprise.

Here is a picture of the piece through parts 1 and 2.  Don't you just love the little blackwork bunnies?  (OK, the mice and birds are super cute too, but it was the bunnies that really caught my eye.)

Tanja suggests that the piece be worked with a combination of straight and backstitch, but since I like doing reversible double running, I did try to get a reversible border and bunnies.  Here's a photo of the backside showing that the border can indeed be made reversible. . . and the bunnies almost so.  For the rest of the piece, I figured I'd just do it the easy way and use the straight stitch / back stitch combo.  Not all blackwork patterns can be stitched to create an identical image on the back. . . and some of these patterns probably fall into that category.

The final part of the project is due April 1 and includes how to finish the item.  There are tantalizing notes about those medallion shapes being cut out in the Part 2 instructions, so I'm totally in the dark as to what this piece eventually will become. 

Spring, spring, spring!

Our redbud tree is in bloom!  Spring is officially here!