vivian - in stitches

Wishing you and yours a Happy new year!
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Canadian Rocky Mountains

CANADIAN ROCKY MOUNTAINS:

wall hanging for my brother's new condominium in Canmore.
Where ever you go, the scenery is fabulous! The Rocky Mts. tower over layers of hills with mists in the valleys. As a tourist, you can easily get glimpses of wildlife ... while the wildlife keeps an eye on you!

Merry Christmas

Wishing you a Merry Christmas!
Myspace Christmas Graphics

TAST #51 Chained Bar Stitch & #52 Spanish Feathered Stitch

These are the final stitches of Sharon B.'s Take-a-Stitch Tuesday Embroidery Challenge. All year I stuggled to keep up to date. Now that it is finished, I feel sad! I've learned a lot! The challenge stitches have been varied in difficulty ... some more of a challenge than others.TAST 51 - Chained Bar - makes a good couching stitch. The sample has blue veriegated thread over hand spun wool. The yellow is a plain chain stitch, the larger gold stitch is zig zag chain and the orange is detached loop (chain).
The sample on blue: red is a practice of twisted chain. The yellow is my first attempt at the Spanish Feather stitch - too loose.

The orange is bettter, nice and tight. With the green thread, I varied the size.

TAST 50 Berry Stitch

The Berry Stitch consists of two detached loop stitches with one nested inside the other. Both the large 'berries' and the small green 'leaves' are the Berry Stitch.

Painting on Batting

After painting fabric for skies, I had some diluted paint left over - couldn't throw it away! I had seen a small wall hanging that was mounted on painted quilt batting.

So,I dug out my bag of scraps. I floated the batting in the paints, swished it around and added some blotches and lines of paint.

The result looks like a felt with an interesting texture. It would make an interesting background fabric for embroidery, beading, postcards, or ...?

Abstract Challenge: theme journal quilts - layers

' Layers' is the topic for December. My little quilt consists of layers of fabric, threads and angelina.

It reminds me a little of Christmas Lights reflecting in the rain ....
Here on the Pacific coast, we recently had two days of 'Winter Wonderland', followed by warm air called the 'Pineapple Express'. Our snow was gone overnight and torrential rains followed.

TAST # 42 to # 49

TAST 42 Twisted Satin Stitch: green - with beads, yellow is 'in line' with 'fill in' at bottom. Flower is 8 stitches in navy & 8 in coloured ribbon. This stitch = more texture than regular satin stitch. TAST 43 The Drizzle Stitch, a cast-on stitch that extends up at one end, producing a 3D texture. TAST 44 Knotted Spanish Stitch: veriegated thread and coloured ribbon.
TAST 45 Pekinese Stitch: two lines of backstitch laced with blue metallic thread.TAST 46 Chain Braid. A little difficult to get the stitch, but easy to do once you 'get the hang of it'. I tried thread, yarn and coloured ribbon.

TAST 47 Thorn Stitch. The branches are thorn stitches and more thorn stitches are added to the main branches. In th spirit of Christmas, I added beads for decoration.

TAST 48 Knotted Cable Chain. It starts with a twisted chain, adds a knot & a chain stitch. The red line is practice twisted chain. TAST 49 Pistil Stitch, a straight stitch with a small french knot on the end. There are additional french knots. Lavendar is detached chain and greenery is thorn stitch.If you are interested in hand embroidery ... think about joining the 2008 challenge! Take-a-Stitch Tuesday Embroidery Challenge 2007 is almost done. We have been doing a weekly sample since January. I've learned patience along with the stitches! For 2008, the challenge will be 'TAKE-IT-FURTHER' http://sharonb.wordpress.com/take-it-further-challenge/