A NEW Collage Design!

Last week I showed you some of my favorite flower collage for summer, including the ever popular CALIFORNIA POPPY COLLAGE:

 Well, I just finished a piece that perfectly compliments it, called CALIFORNIA QUAIL COLLAGE:

I've wanted to do a collage piece with a bird in the center for ages, but haven't been able to get around to it until this summer.  I realized a California Quail design would be a perfect summer-into-fall piece, so I got straight to work and stitched one up.  Instead of using the same "Woodlands" colorway that I used for the poppy piece, I went with the softer "Kelp" colorway, because the aquas, golds and browns have a Western pastoral feel, as well as a Southwestern desert feel.

And quail -- aren't they the cutest birds?  I was amazed as I was graphing him out, how many different colors there are in his body.  Lots of color changes as you stitch, but you're only using a few strands of each color, so it somehow gets stitched up pretty quickly....  Here's a close-up look at the quail, as well as a peek at the patterns in the boxes:

It's a fun one to stitch, with luscious squares of composite stitches, plus a handful of cheerful California Poppies!  So, if you're a California Quail lover, like me, this might be the next fun project for you.  Please fly over to my website and check out the new CALIFORNIA QUAIL COLLAGE information.

Summer Flowers

Summer is a fun time to stitch up some seasonal flowers.  What better way to spend some time outdoors on a hot day than stitching on a project filled with summertime flowers, colors and patterns!

Actually, I was doing some printing this morning of a few of my popular Secret Garden collages, and that reminded me how fun these were to stitch up, because they all have small blocks of stitches that are totally fun to work, but not so extensive that you have to spend lots of time on them.  And they're all built up around a luscious variegated Watercolors skein, so seeing the colors and patterns come alive on your canvas is a real delight.

Anyway, I thought I'd share some pictures of the ones that evoke the deep warm days of summer.  Here's CALIFORNIA POPPY COLLAGE:

And BLUEBONNET COLLAGE:

 
The warm RED POPPY COLLAGE:

And the very perky PANSY COLLAGE:

All have the look and feel of drowsy summer gardens, don't they?

So if you're interested in sitting in the shade and stitching up a garden, please mosey on over to my website and check out all the flowers growing in the Secret Garden Collection...

Bored With Borders Yet?

Not Me!
I love thinking up new and different types of borders. (Can you tell?!?)

So, I'm going to show you another border trick you might want to use some time....

First, let me tell you how it came about (it's one of those HAPPY ACCIDENTS that occur when you just GO FOR IT, trusting your creative instincts to lead you somewhere wonderful). ANYWAY... I was trying to come up with a good teaching project (something fun, slightly challenging but not hard,with fast results and yet adaptable to several color combinations - gee, that should be real easy, huh?).
While stitching PRIMROSE PATH, I enjoyed the floral tapestry pattern so much, I decided to use it in a smaller project. Since California Poppies were on my mind, I stitched this version first:


I jazzed up my usual plain satin stitched border with metallic insets. I liked it well enough, but it just wasn't as ELEGANT as I wanted it to be. I felt it needed SOMETHING, but I didn't know what exactly. Then I decided to try the "repeat border" technique I used on that green Diane Evans piece I showed you a few days ago.
Here's how it looked after I repeated the border:


Oooooooh....much better! See how I repeated the first border, but slightly darkened the orange colors, and expanded the corner sections so they echoed the first border? Suddenly, the piece had more elegance, more pizazz and definitely a more eye-catching border. (And see...I snuck in a narrow row of the variegated color - in between both borders, to pull the variegated colors out to the border, and also to create a calming rest between those two elaborate metallic borders.)

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!