This is Sooooooo Your Fault!

Okay, listen up, all you organizational stitchy divas out there (and ahem, that especially means YOU, Miss Coni J.!)

I was planning to spend the weekend serenely stitching on a variety of projects, but Noooooo... after reading the blogs of stitchers reorganizing their stitching spaces, I got bit by the reorganizing bug too. Maybe it's this time of year, when the seasons are changing, and that cool nip in the air gets us all restless to cozy up our nests before winter sets in....(Or maybe it's watching the squirrels in the neigboring trees scurrying around burying their stash of nuts in the ground).... whatever it is, I got caught up in the frenzy.

I decided my solid color stash needed a bit of reorganizing:


So I sat on the floor, watching Ken Burns' National Park series, and organized all my colors into color bouquets, so that now my thread drawers look like this:


The next morning, I decided to tackle my variegated pearl cottons so that they too would be organized in color bouquets.... like this:


Okay, before you start jumping up and down and hyperventilating about ALL the threads I have in my stash, let me explain. Every summer for the past 14+ years, I've dyed a bunch of thread - mostly #5 pearl cottons, but I've branched out into #8, #12, and #20 pearl cottons too. I learned how to do it from a fiber guild up in the Gold Country. (They were interested in dying yarns for weaving and knitting -- I was interested in dying threads for stitching.) I started by dyeing multi-colored threads, but at the end of the process there would be dyes left over and I would play around with solid color batches, just to see what fun colors I could create - hence the assorted bunches of solid colors.

My justification for doing all this was: at the time I was going to craft and quilt shows to sell my stitchery patterns, and I wanted to have all the materials to get people hooked on stitching. Well, it worked! But I also got hooked on hand-painting my own threads, and have done it every year, including this year. I don't travel to those kinds of shows any more, but sometimes I take threads to the local guilds when I teach there.

In any event, you can see that I've accumulated A LOT of thread to do A LOT of stitching projects... Oh yeah, and after sitting on the floor for many, many hours of fascinating thread organizing, my back was just a tad sore the next day (ouch) but man, it was worth it! Now my threads are organized by color and I should be able to find what I need. But did I stop there? No. Stay tuned for my next installment of organizational frenzy...

[NOTE TO THOSE OF YOU INTERESTED IN DYEING THREADS: Please visit Yarn Barn of Kansas for their excellent assortment of pearl cottons, Procion dyes, and various books on how to dye yarn.]

My Morning Glory

Oh, and just for a little stitchy color comparison...
here's my quilt version, called MORNING GLORY:


Can you see all the colors of the different morning glories in there?!?

HAPPY FRIDAY and HAPPY WEEKEND!

Friday Flowers: Morning Glories

I've been collecting photos of local morning glories all summer long, and I thought today would be the perfect time to share them with you. So have fun soaking up these luscious colors -- they are TRULY amazing!












OH, GLORY!!!

Summer Sunflowers

Sunflowers are such a summery flower. They evoke pure sunshine and blazing blue skies, don't they? Even here in Healdsburg, there are sunflowers all around town, popping up in yards and along roadsides.

Which reminds me of one of my quilt designs, SUNFLOWER STAR. I named it that because I thought the star block looked like a sunflower.


And a cluster of these blocks looks like a bunch of sunflowers -


especially when you back up and see the whole design:


I imagine this design would look TOTALLY different using another color combination, but frankly, I can't even see anything but bright yellow sunflowers when I look at this design!

Have You Visited the Land of Enchantment?

As long as I was thinking about turquoise projects, I thought I'd share this one with you too:


It's my NEW MEXICO STAR quilt design. (Another one of my favorite turquoise patterns.) And yes, this traditional quilt block really is called "New Mexico Star" and that's why I couldn't resist designing a quilt using it.


It features a Southwestern color palette, including Overture V65, "Tahoe" (which I also used in the TURQUOISE BEAR COLLAGE). Unfortunately, Rainbow Gallery no longer makes the #5 pearl cotton version, but this particular color is still available in a slightly finer thread, Encore, which can be doubled up to match a #5 pearl cotton.

My favorite part of this design is the variegated checkerboard border on the outer edge; and also the crisp zig zag border that was quite fun to stitch as well.


And really, this is such a classic quilt design, it would look equally elegant in lots of other color combinations (can you picture it in a modern red, black and white scheme?!?)....And if I were to stitch this pattern again, I think I'd sneak in some metallic ribbon floss somewhere, to give it even more enchantment...

My Little House

After seeing this pattern on SPINSTER STITCHER'S blog a few weeks ago, I was totally smitten and had to track down the pattern and then stitch it up as fast as I could. (It's "Needlework Shop" by Country Cottage Needleworks.)

I stitched my version on 24 ct. Congress Cloth - light green - with 2 ply of DMC floss and a few variegated threads. Since I actually live in a pale green house with lots of pink flowers around it - and I sit in the front bay window and stitch - it was definitely something I just had to stitch!

(Oh, and of course I changed the text to "I Love Needlework" - which also seemed more appropriate to my little house...)

Anyway, here's a close-up of part of the design and my stitch switcheroos:


To speed up the stitching process, I used a half-cross stitch thruout (instead of a full cross stitch). Then I snuck in various canvaswork stitches, wherever possible, to make the stitching go faster. Like diagonal satin stitching the roof, the steps and the clapboard house; satin stitching all the little leaves; substituting an elongated tied cross for the shutters; whipping up little improvised flowerpots; and using a variegated thread for the brick foundation.

I pass these little substitution ideas on to you, in case you'd like to try your own versions of these sweet little cross stitch patterns. After all, we all know how many wonderful patterns and projects there are out there for us to stitch, and the faster we learn how to stitch them, the MORE projects we can finish! WOO HOO! ON TO THE NEXT!!

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!