Stitching Stuff

Well, I guess since it's now been around a month since I finished my hoop box I should post about it. This was a project through my local EGA chapter on fifth Saturdays. The dragonfly was a design by Zoe in the UK when she was teaching us how to do stumpwork.

And I finished a panel on the first rotation of a round robin that I'm doing.

Almost forgot - I did these earrings for my friend:

I also made a second beaded Holiday Bauble Pendant (but didn't take a picture - just look at the last one and correct the mistake) for our local EGA Christmas party, which thankfully found a new home. I say thankfully, because we donate the ornaments to the guild who then sells tickets (to raise money for the scholarship fund) that you can use to vote for your favourite ornament. Once the votes are counted up the ornaments are then won by one of the voters for that ornament. So by someone winning my ornament, that means that someone voted for it :)

I won an ornament this way too, but I packed it safely away from the cats before without taking a photo of it (they pretty much killed the Christmas tree this year - and it wasn't even living to start with). So we'll just pause a minute while I go find it and take a photo...

I also received this beautiful ornament in our gift exchange at our local ANG Christmas party.

In going to get those ornaments out to take photos I decided that perhaps I should take photos of all the ornaments that have been given to me over the years and post them and see if I can get names attached to them all. So below are the ornaments with the names I know or think I know - if I have doubt there will be a question mark by the name. If you recognise any of them as being your work could you please let me know - thanks :)

Mum

Sally (UK)

Sally (UK)

Marion (Amsterdam)

Terry (US)

?Zoe (UK)?

?Paula (UK)?

?Fiona (UK)? - or at least I sent to Fiona in the same exchange - I remember that because I stitched TW's beginner whitework ornament as well.

??

??

??

Terry (US)

??

??

??

Just to round off the post - our two gorgeous cats :)

Finally - pictures of the finished products:

And stitching finished with petal veins and buds.

Upper petals done:

All the petals done:

And with the stamin:

The stitching is finished - it just needs framing now.

I also started on the second Iris (the brooch) last night.

I finished stitching the petals:

And cut them out:

I don't think I got as close as I should have in some places, but it's going to have to do. I think if I do too much more of that I'll have to invest in some different scissors.

Over the weekend I managed to tack down the wire and do the buttonhole stitch all the way around the wire on the detached petals. The buttonhole stitch seemed to take forever to do.

Here is the tacked wire:

And here is the finished buttonhole stitching:

Then while waiting at the doctor on Monday morning I got this far at filling in the petals - that goes quite fast so I'm hoping that if I get half a chance I might even finish this tonight and then I'll just need to put it together. Then I can start the companion brooch.

Here is the flower started. The colour is a bit more pink than I was expecting. I'm not entirely sure about it. I guess I'll just see how the whole thing turns out.

And with the petal (and all the rest of the stitching) on the backing fabric complete:

I haven't posted for a while so I've got a few pictures to catch up on.

We went on holiday to Scotland and this is the small amount I got done there:

Then I gave myself concussion and didn't stitch for a bit. But when I did get there I did this:

And that's all the leaves done. Just the flower itself to go now.

My updates are getting slower but they are still coming.

My work on Monday:

My work on Wednesday:

My work on the Iris from Friday:

My stem stitches are definately getting neater. I'm really not happy with the stem - especially one section - but I can't undo it without causing major problems. If I was going to redo it I should have done it back when I was stitching it, but due to the nature of the wrapping that was done around the stem stitch I didn't think it was possible without completely starting over.

I went to a GTG on Saturday and got this far:

Then watching a movie last night I finished the leaves:

Rather overdue update.

Photos from three days:

I cut the fabric to size and traced the pattern for both designs, and edged all the squares. I'm not going to show a picture as all there is to see is some white squares with very faint pencil marks.

I do have to see if I've got some double sided iron-on stiffener as I'm pretty sure what I got before is only single sided. If I don't have any I'll have to buy some.

I'm going to stitch a couple of stumpwork irises for my Grandmothers 80th birthday in October. One is a brooch and the other is a picture - both are from Stitchers World magazines.

This is the pile of my supplies so far:



I'm still missing one thread, and I discovered the beads I got were the wrong size. I got the number given in the instructions and only discovered later that the prefix was wrong giving me seed beads instead of small bugle beads. So I'm going to try and rectify that tomorrow as I'm going near an LNS.

I'm also going to start pulling the threads for a freebie from Caron.net hopefully tomorrow (Midnight Garden by Orna Willis). The threads called for aren't available over here, but that's alright as I object to paying up to £5 per skein for so many colours when I need so little. So I'm going to find substitutes from my stash - which will also help with the using stash up thing.