A Little More Flower Nectar, Please

My new little camera (a Canon Power Shot A1000) takes the most amazing macro shots, which I normally focus on flowers. And it's always a thrill to see the pictures up-close on the computer screen, because you never know whether the shots are good or not until they are enlarged.

Here are some shots I took recently of a Tiger Swallowtail sipping nectar from the pink Jupiter's Beard wildflowers that grow all summer long in my garden....




He/She was quite a fluttery fellow skipping from one flower to the next, and while I wanted to get a full shot of its magnificent wings, I also kept getting closer and closer to see just how close a shot I could get. Here are my best shots:



I never imagined I would be taking pictures of butterfly tongues, counting the hairs on a butterfly's wings, or peering into the multi-faceted eyes of insects -- and loving it!

More Turquoise

While I'm in a turquoise mood, I thought I'd show you more of the TURQUOISE BEAR COLLAGE, which is shown in part in the header photo above.


I actually have a turquoise bear fetish like this one; it was the inspiration for the whole piece, actually. I love all things southwestern, so it was really easy to put this design together, highlighting some of my favorite western things......

Such as Indian blankets,


turquoise and silver jewelry (I was trying to suggest silver concho belts),


and other Indian designs and symbols...

And they all combine to form this Southwestern design:

Along the Turquoise Trail

A stitching friend of mine was asking me about a project she had seen on someone's blog called TURQUOISE TRAIL and wondered if it was one of my designs. Yes, indeed. It's one of my "Impressionist Collection" designs, and I designed it to highlight a southwestern color scheme. My TURQUOISE TRAIL design looks like this:


One of my favorite techniques (which I find endlessly fascinating to play around with) is to stitch the same pattern in different weights of threads (thick and thin) and see what the contrast looks like. Here's the top right corner of TURQUOISE TRAIL -- see how the same pattern looks totally different depending on which type of thread you use?


The "thick" pattern (done in #5 pearl cottons) would look great as a dense filler pattern, let's say a Santa's coat, for instance....while the "thin" version would look as a great background pattern on a painted geometric canvas perhaps.

And here's another trick that's hidden in this design: the center cross motif. When I was stitching up this design, I left the center cross unstitched, waiting to figure out how to finish off the focal point of the whole design. Here's what I finally did:


I used one ply of the variegated thread, and just stitched long diagonal stitches to fill in the cross shape. I tried to create mirror images of each opposing section, carefully using the same thread colors in each section, to create an echo effect. I then filled in the rest of the center with simple diamond borders, finishing up with a small Rhodes Star in the center. I could also have put a jewel in the center, if I wanted a sparkly center. What amazed me, after I stitched this cross, was how three-dimensional it looked, all due to the variegated thread - and that was a complete surprise, but a very pleasant one, I must admit!

(Oh, and if you're curious to view another version of my TURQUOISE TRAIL and see how another stitcher totally changed the color palette (she chose gold and raspberry), look at the STITCHLADY'S WEBLOG, and click on her WIP project box, then scroll down to TURQUOISE TRAIL to see her photo & progress.)

(P.S.: If any of you stitchers out there have stitched this design in different colors, please send me photos...I would love to post them for other interested stitchers to oogle!)

A Rare Mood I'm In

I find myself in a rare mood these days... called "I'm Really Sick of Looking at Them, So Let's Pull Out Those Old Projects and Finally Get Them Finished Right Now!"
(Have you been there? Do you know what I mean? Can you relate?!?)

Suffice to say, I'm not the kind of stitcher that stitches one project at a time. HA. Far from it. As far as I'm concerned, starting new stitching projects is one of my all-time favorite things to do (right up there with eating chocolate and buying new threads.).

ANYWAY.... when the mood hits to actually finish some of those projects, I realize the rarity of the event, and I go with the flow and focus, focus, focus on finishing - before that fickle mood passes. And then of course, I can enjoy the finished project -- at long last - which give me immense satisfaction (not to mention justification to start more new projects).

Here's a project I had started a year ago and only had this much of it stitched, before I set it aside and it got "lost" in the project pile... (I think I even showed you a picture of it in a post and asked you to guess what the central flower would be):


I wanted to use sky blues and apple greens; create a bit of gingham ribbon; sprinkle in some fun blackwork floral motifs; and surround it all in a simple scalloped border. Often times, when I get all the separate parts of the design stitched, I can actually "see" the finished project in my mind's eye, and at that point, I lose interest in stitching the rest of it.

So...I was pleasantly surprised when I pulled this project out again this summer and continued working on it and realized how much fun it was to stitch. It was one of those projects where I enjoyed stitching each and every border - they were not too hard, not too tedious, and not too slow. IT WAS JUST RIGHT FOR A FUN SUMMER PROJECT.

Then I sat down and drew the center basket of blue hydrangeas so I could stitch them in the middle of the design. I waffled a bit between drawing a whole basket of flowers or just one individual mophead flower. (The basket version won, since it made a nice companion piece to my earlier PINK CYCLAMEN.) Here's the center basket, done in fresh blues and greens, with a tiny bit of periwinkle/purple:


And even though these flowers were tent stitched with 2 ply of DMC floss, it wasn't as tedious as I imagined. I just stitched them while watching tv and the time passed wonderfully....

So - TA DA! - here's the finished project, called BLUE HYDRANGEAS:


It's stitched on 24 ct. eggshell Congress Cloth, and the finished size is 10.5" by 10.5". It uses #8 pearl cotton for all the borders (with two fine metallics used sparingly), and then floss for the central picture. There's even a sprinkling of beads in a few of the borders.

So, happily, this pattern is now available on my website.
(And I'm on to finishing my next project. WOO HOO!....)

Ever-Changing Hydrangeas

I have a couple of hydrangea bushes in the front of my house. When they began blooming in the spring, they were all pink...




And then they began turning into pale lavender blossoms...




And then they decided to turn blue...




until I had overflowing waves of blue and purple hydrangeas with scarcely any green leaves to be seen.....


What an incredible flower show these hydrangeas have performed for me this year Needless to say, I've enjoyed every single color they've displayed.... How inspiring is THAT?!?!?

(Actually, they've been incredibly inspiring for me....stay tuned for my next exciting post - featuring a new hydrangea design...)

Friday Flowers - Soft Pinks

Happy Friday!

Anatomy of a Project: Color Palettes

One of the fun things I like to do when looking through magazines is see if I can find interesting and new color palettes that might be fun to try in stitchery projects. As we all know, every season colors are combined in the latest and "trendiest" colors and the powers that be decide which colors will be HOT for the upcoming year.

Here are some photos I've pulled from magazines that had color palettes that caught my eye.




Oh, YUM! Each of these color palettes gets my creative juices flowing...

Once I've found an intriguing color combination, I'll save it and then decide where I want you use it: in a floral collage?... a quilt design?.... a contemporary geometric abstract?.... a bargello pattern? (You can see how many possibilities there are, once you start playing around with color palettes.)

Then I'll look through my thread stash, or maybe take a trip to the local stitchery store to see if I can find a variegated thread that matches the color palette I've decided to work with. After I have the right variegated thread in hand, I'll start pulling the solid color threads, as well as a variety of metallics to try.

With my thread palette picked out, and my inspiration photo close by, it's time to start stitching!