A design's not final 'til the stitching's finished!

This was the design I initially created for friends' Silver Wedding (25th) anniversary card, to be worked in silver goldwork threads and Anchor Marlitt:


The changes started when I went to my LNS only to find that, although they stocked plenty of gold goldwork threads, their supply of silver was very low indeed. I wasn't able to get pearl purl and so had to adapt straight away to twist instead. I managed to get the silver kid leather, but when I tried to cut it out into the inner heart shape, the result was so creased and, frankly, cheap and nasty looking that I couldn't bear to use it. So, that bit got dumped too and I decided to move the trellis from over the purples, to filling the inner (now middle) heart. The tiny heart in the centre was to be filled with silver bright check purl.


However.... I noticed that the silver of the bright check was not as cool as the rest of the silver threads. In fact, it was relatively yellow. That bothered me, so I ditched that idea and decided to fill in the space with French knots in DMC metallic floss.


Above you can see the first stage of the purple shading completed and the second layer underway. The top right hand side ended up so un-even that, when I'd done the lot, I realised that, not only would I have to outline the inside of that section with Kreinik Fine Braid, but that I needed a line of it between the two purples as you can see below:


By this time I'd also decided that I wasn't going to fussing around adding in accents in pink Marlitt either!!

So, much changed from the original design, here is the finished item. It's a little puckered, sadly, but that came from my not getting the silk fabric totally flat on the backing cotton when I was sewing them together - a problem I've had before.=(


And here's a side view. Of course, it isn't possible from this angle for my camera to focus everything perfectly (so I had to cut the bottom section off!!), so the right hand side is a tad blurred, but I hope you like the effect all the same. All that remains now is to decide whether to mount it in a round or square aperture card.


So, although I haven't blogged my work for a fair few weeks, I have been stitching! This isn't all I've been doing either, there's more. I'll post about that in the days to come.

Finished the Goldwork, plus other updates

I can't believe it's really been over a week since the last posting, but it has! I've had the worst head cold I'd ever experienced this week. My throat was that bad when I woke up on Tuesday morning that I actually thought I had tonsillitis! Anyway, it's 'just' been a bad head cold, but not fun. I haven't done a lot of stitching, but here's the goldwork dragonfly completed and a photo 'across' the piece, which seems to show the glittery aspect of it up better. I quite understand why Pierrette felt her goldwork photos didn't do her lovely work credit recently, it is SO hard to get the shimmer to show. On this piece, I also have the coloured part done in very shiny rayons, so it really has lost a lot in translation, so to speak.


I've been working on getting the 'Child of Spring' piece sewn up into a cushion/pillow cover, but am not too happy with it. I've only actually sewn the top and bottom red pieces on. DH thinks the red is too near to the pattern and that there's not enough border, but having already unpicked it once, I'm not keen on having to do it all again, so I'm thinking about adding some small white motifs around the edge of the red near the pattern, or stitching on some other sort of white border. What say you, ladies?

This is the current status on the 'Bluetits and Seedheads' cross stitch. Haven't touched it for weeks, but there was more to show than the last picture.

Thanks to Chiasmata and Pierrette (links on left hand side to both their blogs) for my 3rd and 4th 'You Make My Day' awards, and today is the deadline for submissions for the Hobbycraft Big Arts and Crafts challenge that I entered 'Branches' for. When the Hobbycraft judges have picked the final 20 per age category, (kids, teenagers and adults), then the public voting will open on 2 March. If I've made it that far, I will post the link as promised and hope to get one of the 3 prizes!=) Not that I need any more art and craft supplies, but winning would be lovely.=)

Slow progress

Haven't done much more on the dragon/damselfly yet as I wasn't up to sitting up stitching much yesterday, but managed a little on the forewings as well as 2 legs and antennae. You can't really see the marks for the rest of the wings on this shot, but this isn't the finished story!!

I liked Doris's comment yesterday about when she only has one large project on the go, she gets bored with and neglects it. That answered why I wasn't getting on with the bluetits and why I've had repeated problems with that sort of feeling in the past. Yes, variety is needed and so, whilst finishing the brids trio (of which bluetits is only the 2nd piece), I intend to do as many small pieces as I can without totally neglecting the main items!!

Another quickie

Started stitching a 'goldwork' damselfly that I've been wanting to do for years - since I first saw <-this picture of the project in the Anchor Beginners' Guide to Freestyle Embroidery book. As you can see from my WIP photo, I've cut the design down to half as, pretty as it is, all the couching is a little dull and it's easier to use as a small design (can be mounted in a card no probs) than a larger one, which might need framing. £$£$£$£$£!! I've also made some colour changes. The book says that the fabric is deep blue silk, but this photo looks more like it's purple to me (if you saw the book proper, it's even more 'red' there!) so I fished out a very vibrant royal blue colour silk to work on, backed with dark Vilene, as ever! I also change the colours of the threads for the bodies from the blue and green cotton in the book to 2 shades of turquoise with black for the eyes of Anchor Marlitt (rayon) to increase the glimmer effect of the whole thing. Here it is so far and, if you look carefully, you can see the outline of the wings. I did this bit in about an hour and a half last night.

Oh, how I am enjoying quick projects at the mo, but after this, I must get that cushion/pillow cover made up for baby sis and then get back on with the bluetits cross stitch. I think that the latter is, frankly, boring me!! Still, I can do a bit on that and a bit on something else, no? Kind of a rotation. Do a few pieces of thread on the bluetits, then move on to something more interesting.