Summer Is Heating Up!

Whew!  It's 101 degrees today in Cloverdale, CA.... and we're expecting hotter weather over the next few days.  I ran my errands this morning, so I have plenty of drinks, munchies, fruits and salad fixin's for the weekend ahead.  And I'm planning to camp out under the ceiling fan and stitch and/or read most all weekend.  Sounds good, huh?

Here's one of the "work" projects I'm planning to (hopefully) finish:

One of the very first patterns I created over 20 years ago is a classic called LONE STAR.  But the black and white graphs are awkward by my standards today, so I thought it would be fun to revamp the pattern, and recreate the graph in color... and as long as I was doing that, I'd tinker with the original design and jazz it up a bit.  I'm using the same Watercolours 018 - "Peacock" that I originally used, since the blues and browns still look well with this quilt design.  I'm thinking to call this new, revised pattern "NEW LONE STAR."

I have to say, it's been really fun to go back and just do simple straight stitches and diagonal stitches... a real no-brainer project that is just the thing for watching tv in the evenings when you don't want to think about what you are doing -- know what I mean?!?

For a more summery project, I'm going to be working on a "fun" project as well; it's a Sandra Gilmore "HYDRANGEA" canvas I purchased many years ago at a local ANG's auction. 

It's one of those painted canvases I've been staring at on and off over the past few years, and I finally decided to start to work on it this summer.  I'm planning to do more tent stitching of the flowers and watering can; then maybe satin stitch the leaf sections.  Nothing too difficult, so I can stay calm and cool when the outside temperature rises!

Have you got your projects planned for the coming weekend?  Is it going to be a scorcher in your neck of the woods, too?  Well, stay cool and stay stitching!   HAPPY FRIDAY!

Friday Flowers: Some Stitched Hydrangeas!

It's been ages and ages since I've done a blackwork piece. One popular blackwork pattern I released  many years ago was called JACOBEAN FLOWERS.  Here's what it looked like:

Basically, I wanted to see what a variegated thread would look like in a blackwork design, and I used a variegated dark pink thread throughout the whole design.  As you can see, this piece has lots of different areas to fill with lots of different blackwork patterns.  


I always wanted to do more long blackwork pieces, but somehow never got back to that format.  Until last year when I got obsessed with doing a long hydrangea piece.  There are so many more variegated threads to use now, and I really wanted to use a thread that had blues and greens for the flowers, and then a variegated green thread for the leaves.  Here's how it finally turned out:

I got halfway through the stitching on this one before I realized that there was no way I could outline each little hydrangea floret -- duh... The only way I could finish off the mophead hydrangeas was to outline the whole shape, and unfortunately, they rather DO look like big blue mopheads - grin!  


But up close, there are lots of beads (silver and crystal ones included in the pattern) that add fun sparkle and texture...plus I like using Kreinik Blending Filament in my blackwork because it adds even more sparkle:

Belatedly, I also realized that if I had added some center circles to each flower, they would make great sunflowers, or roses, or camellias, or peonies!  So I've added that option to the drawing in the pattern that you trace onto your fabric, so you have a broader choice of flowers to stitch:

See how different the design looks now?  (Can you imagine these flowers as sunflowers, with dark beaded centers? Or cottage roses with gold centers?)  Anyway, that gives even more color options for these flowers, and the instructions tell you how to stitch the centers as well.


[ASIDE: I might add here that the way I learned to do blackwork was to trace the drawing onto evenweave fabric, then just start stitching in each space, filling them with geometric blackwork patterns.  Since blackwork is essentially backstitching in a repetitive manner, once you know your pattern you just keep stitching it over and over until it fills the space.  I find this "fill in" method much more enjoyable and relaxing than working from a stitch-by-stitch graph -- I find it goes faster that way, so that's the way my blackwork instructions are written.]


So if any of you enjoy blackwork, like I do, or maybe would like to try creating your own blackwork flowers, please visit my website for more information on this new BLACKWORK HYDRANGEAS pattern....

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...)