It's Iris Time!

I have a few clusters of iris in by backyard, 

and they've been putting on quite a show in my garden this week, 

and as always, I'm fascinated by their delicate beauty, precise markings, and deep rich colors:

 

And then I remembered a piece I stitched two years ago, 

called "FLEUR-DE-LIS" for a springtime cyber class:

 Oooh, la, la!  This royal French flower was such a pleasure to stitch! 

Lots of interesting (but not difficult) composite stitch patterns,

 and a central iris motif that is surprisingly easy to create.

So, alors.... I thought it would be fun to offer FLEUR-DE-LIS again as a cyber class. 

Stitchers get to choose between two color palettes - BLUE or PURPLE:

The BLUE palette (on the left) is built around Watercolours 289 - "Lexi's Blues" and 

the PURPLE palette (on the right)  is built around Watercolours 006 - "Amethyst"....

both use #5 pearl cottons, a variegated cotton for the background, and a few

fun metalllics for a little bit of bling -- how yummy is that!?!

Registration for this class runs from April 26th through June 1st, and the class will start in July 2014.

If you are interested in stitching this piece in July, please visit my website

 and read all the cyber class details... merci beaucoup!

and.... HAPPY FRIDAY!

Friday Flowers: Blue Iris

In-between all the rain showers this week, my irises have started to bloom:



Which ties in nicely to my blogging theme this week: springtime kimonos. I thought I'd share another one with you....Can you guess which one?? TA DA -- It's my IRIS KIMONO of course:


Here's an up-close look at the different patterns used in this design, plus the irises along side:


All of my kimonos are stitched on 24 ct. Congres Cloth (apprx: 9" x 9"). When a store owner asked if they could also be stitched on 18 ct canvas, I said I'd stitch one up and see how it looked. Here's the same IRIS KIMONO stitched on 18 ct canvas (10" x 12" and equally lovely) in a different color combo:



Anyway, I hope this bouquet of irises - real and stitched - brightens up your Friday!

Oh, To Be in California When the Irises are in Bloom...

The irises are blooming now in Northern California.
It's so fun to walk around the neighborhood and see all the colorful irises in bloom. I never can decide which colors I like best - they're all so luscious. And they all seem so fragile, you have to enjoy them while they appear, for they are gone from the garden so soon...

Here's an iris that's blooming in my neighbor's yard. She has drifts of purples, yellows and even some coppery bronze ones that are very different.

And look what I did after playing around with the iris photo in Photoshop... I used one of the artsy effects to create this painterly version of the iris. I just love the effect! It reminds me of a pastel drawing, or maybe a bold watercolor painting...

I can visualize this translated into a quilt, using batik fabric. But I'll have to think about how you could translate this image into a stitchery piece. The blurred edges are so soft and very Monet-like....I'm not sure how you could stitch that effect, but it's worth considering using blobs of color, outlined with light, to create that halo effect...hmmmm.

And as long as I'm mentioning iris, here's one of the first flower collages I stitched: the Bearded Iris Collage. I used a soft variegated thread (Watercolours' Harvest) that had soft apricots and lavenders. Although I stitched it to hightlight the apricot iris, you could certainly use lavender colors to create a lavender iris in the center instead.!
I wish I could stitch it up BOTH ways, to see both versions....(and then of course you could also try a pale cream iris too)...sigh...there's just too many yummy possibilities sometimes, and it's hard to pick just one to stitch...

And because there are so many different types of irises, I'm planning to stitch another iris collage sometime - I'm thinking I'll do a Japanese Iris or my favorite, the Pacific Iris (both flatter flowers that you view from above)....