Work in Progress Wednesday - 13 Feb 2013

I've been looking forward to Wednesday this week so as to be able to post about all these projects!  This makes a pleasant change as, so often in the recent past, I've been wondering what I was going to scrape together for a WIPW post!!

Again, I've worked on all three projects and made what I feel is significant progress with them all.=)

First up, the old peacock feather. This one is progressing the most slowly, but then I actually work at this one at my desk as it's helpful to have the table there to both lean the hoop on so that I have both hands easily free to control the springy rayon threads and also somewhere to lay out said threads without having to put them in an awkward place.  It's not as easy to work in there at times.

As the Chinese say, 话说回来 (speak speech come back - 'having said that'), I have done some on it and feel that it's beginning to take more shape now.  There's still plenty to be done (sigh!  I'm longing to get this one off the list!), but it's coming along at long last and that's all to the good!

Now, on to the rabbit and here's a little someone whose also taking shape rather well.  First, I finished off the shading (although a few more pieces were put in after this photo to plug up a few gaps and thin patches.

Then along came the fluffy tail!  I took a lot of WIP photos of the process, so there'll be a tutorial coming up on how to make fluffy patches, i.e. ghiordes knot stitch.  There are some more to do for the garden patch of this piece, so I'll wait until that's done and I can show more uses of the stitch.

This is the detached ear in progress.  WIP photos are also collecting nicely for it so that I can do the long-delayed 'wired fabric elements' tutorial as a complement to last year's popular 'wired needlelace elements' tute.  That'll come when the butterfly (next stumpwork project) is done and, again, various uses can be shown.

Now for the sampler and I've had a very green week where every single stitch has been green!  This series of three photos shows how much work was done in each of the three sessions I've spent on this piece:

Finally, here is the overall look of the piece right now.  It looks a bit dark towards the top as the fabric is loose there just now - I only put the top gripper on when I'm working on it so as to reduce pressure on the stitches there as some are covered by it.

This coming week will, I hope, see the rabbit piece finished, the left hand side of the feather done and the rest of the green work completed on the sampler, which includes replacing the lettering with dark green.

What have you got planned for this week?

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013