Harvest Time!

Here in Sonoma County, while the afternoon heat warms the land, grapes are being harvested in the vineyards, and the roads rumble with big trucks carrying bins of just-picked grapes as they head off to be crushed for wine.  And it occurred to me that it's a perfect time to offer an "encore presentation" of one of my most popular cyber classes: HARVEST TIME.

HARVEST TIME really is the perfect project for this time of year, because it has lovely autumn colors, plus lots of small, medium and large grapes on it!  And with just three emailed lessons, it's a short and sweet class that you can easily finish in a very short time...

It's a 7.5" x 7.5" piece stitched on 18 ct. sandstone mono canvas with one Watercolours (047 - Camouflage) and a handful of #5 pearl cottons (in greens and burgundys) plus two different metallic ribbons (burgundy and gold). Here's a peek at it up-close, so you can see the different sizes of grapes in the piece:

If you want to read more about HARVEST TIME and sign up for this popular class, please visit my website and click on the LJP CYBER CLASSES tab. (And if it makes you want to pour a glass of wine and contemplate the changing of the seasons, you can go right ahead and do that too!)

Wait! There's More...

Quite a while ago, in a previous post, I showed you the borderwork on a small California Poppy piece that I use as a teaching/class project. Now, I want to show you how I've slightly modified that border for a companion piece. Same pattern, different flower, -- and a different colorway.

This time I stitched up some lilacs:


Unlike the poppies, where both borders were stitched with the same dark green, I stitched the inner border with the lighter green and the outer border with the darker green. It creates a bit more drama and dimension - just by changing the colors slightly. Keep that in mind.... next time you want to add a border (or repeat one) think about altering the color just a bit, to create extra richness.

While we're on the subject... I also stitched this pattern in a wine country version, called GRAPE HARVEST, using an autumnal color palette:


In this teaching design, I took the lilac flowers of the upper design, turned them upside down and altered them slightly to turn them into grape clusters.

Same design composition, just different botanicals and very different color palettes. And what a different "feel" each design has!

(And oh yes, in case you were wondering, I've already started yet ANOTHER variation of this design, using soft pastel colors for a sweet summertime flower..... but you'll just have to be patient and wait and see what I come up with!!)