An incredible day.

Bless this man and keep him safe.

The embroidery project

As I've written in the past, one of my creative goals for this year is to learn embroidery. I'm beginning with a very simple buttonhole and the blanket stitch variation. 

On the left side and upper left corner of this sample, I've begun with the buttonhole stitch. The stitch looks great when worked in two rows of different colors with the straight edges back to back. But hey, that will come next time.

On to the blanket stitch. This isn't a tutorial, just a bit of show-and-tell, or show-ing off. Look at me! I can do one embroidery stitch. In this photo, the needle has come up at "point A" and my thumb is holding the thread in place while the needle and thread are looped over the edge of the felt. (I think this is "point B".)

Then the needle is brought from the back to the front at "point C," as close to the loop as possible. "Point C" becomes "point A" for the next stitch.

 Look at that. Nothing to it. Just try to keep the stitches evenly spaced and relatively straight.

                                                                       In the next installment of the embroidery project, you'll see me performing variations of the buttonhole, such as the closed buttonhole, the knotted buttonhole, and the up and down buttonhole. Or, I may still be on the simple buttonhole. Either way, you can be sure that my descriptions will be confusing.

So here are a couple of good books that will both teach you right, and inspire you in your projects:

"Elegant Stitches: An Illustrated Stitch Guide and Source Book of Inspiration" by Judith Baker Montano (C&T Publishing).

"Stitch Magic: Ideas and Interpretation," by Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn (Quilters' Resource Publications), takes embroidery stitches and expands our vocabulary and vision for the creative ways to use them. A wonderful book to look at and enjoy.

Poladroid?

Is that a misspelling? Nope. It's a free application from poladroid.net that will turn your digital photos into the similarly soft focused images that the Polaroid camera once made. (Thanks to Victoria at sfgirlbybay.blogspot.com for the heads-up.) It's really easy, even for computer challenged people like myself. In other words, if I can... . Simply download the application from the website and drag your photos into the "camera." What's really great is that we can see the image appearing slowly, and can stop the process at any time. Some strange and wonderful photos can be produced in this way. Here are a couple of my own before and after shots.

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

Hurry! Before it's gone.

We haven't seen the sun for weeks. But when opening the curtains early this morning, the sky was already a few shades short of blue-black, and shot through with orange and pink streaks. The sun rose and a beautiful light filled my living room. It didn't stay long--a heavy cover of fog soon followed. But just that brief time lifted my spirits, reminding me that winter doesn't stay forever.

It's finished!

I'm writing about a piece begun about two years ago. It was my first real attempt at working with embroidery and beading, and I was frustrated with it. It seemed overworked, and I was having trouble with some of the stitches. But hey, it was a start. Even so, I had set it aside.

 When watching at a DVD, "Contemporary Fiber Artists Maker Profile: Jean Littlejohn" from Odyssey, Jean commented that when placing beads on a piece a lot are needed to really make an impact. I took heart from that, and sewed of beads to outline the leaf shapes as well as fill in some areas. Much better. The beads added texture and depth, bringing the shapes forward.

"Garden Wild" Painted paper, stamping, fine silk embroidery cord, threads, beads

I still think the piece needs more contrast, but trying so many different stitches with both fine and heavily textured embroidery yarns and threads was a great learning experience.

Here's a detail of some of the embroidery stitches I used: French knots, couching of the textured green yarn, loose satin and seed stitches.

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