Back to Basics and Learn a New Technique, Week Eight

Progress! The bottom half of the char is stitched and the top is basically outlined and some motifs are finished. It moved fast this week...

Back to Basics and Learn a New Technique, Week Seven

Nearly halfway there in the cross stitching! Only the two half-motifs in the top left and right, and scattered stitched in three shades of green that I missed in the Topiary motif and then I can turn the chart over! YAY!

Quilting Report

More fabric used for the  quilt guild "row of the month" challenge ( I decided to make two quilts from this pattern so if I do finish, I will be able to fulfill "donate two" requirement of belonging to the guild!). Still haven't found the courage to fire up the sewing machine and start stitching, though... Maybe today (she says, hopefully)!

Oh, and I purchased four different solids in hopes that ONE of them would go with my hoped-for Chinese Coin quilt, for the guild's Unstarted Quilt Project... All four will work so I now have material for sashing, borders *and* backing!  Woo Hoo! Now, to cut... and to piece.

Stash report:

Used this Week:  0.9yards
Used year to Date: 1.3 yards
Added this Week: 12 yards
Added Year to Date: 12 yards
Net Used for 2010:  -10.7 yards

Back to Basics and Learn a New Technique, Week Six

Some progress on "Garden Sampler". Not sure why this one is moving so slowly...

Bead Journal Project - my February page

Xīn...

This is the pinyin spelling for the Mandarin character for "heart"! My thought for this February is "Xīn", which is an emotional component, or radical, in many Chinese characters, like yearning, love, even forget!

Seemed appropriate since Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year (the first day of Spring festival) are on the same day this year! And one of the traditions for Chinese New Year, besides jiao zi, is a branch of cherry blossom... at least that is what I remember from Beijing, that and the couplets that decorated the front doors of each and every house. Kind of hard to portray a jiao zi in beads, I don't know characters well enough to embroider a couplet let alone bead one, and no way do I have the skill to do a tiger (this will be the year of the tiger). So...

So two pieces of fabric, one a pink batik which almost looks like cherry blossoms and a deep red Asian fabric with couplets printed in a lighter red; a branch of cherry blossoms in three shades of pink beads attached a matte blue-green metallic seed bead stem, and the character "Xīn", very stylized (apologies to those who can write characters!), in red seed beads. I had a preconceived idea of how I wanted the cherry blossom branch to go, but it did it's own thing and I decided to vary the blossoms according to background and to exend the beaded branches with Kreinik very fine braid. Thanks to Robin for advice on how to smooth out my backstiched lines, and to everyone on BJP Blog three for the example of letting the beading tell me what to do!

Gōng Xǐ Fā Cái (Congratulations and Prosperity) to all, especially those of you who are tigers (your birth year would be 1998, 1986, 1974, 1962, 1950, and, if you are like me, older than dirt, 1938!)

Back to Basics and Learn a New Technique, Week Five

Started a new piece, a kit that was in my project bag. Decided I needed to do something simple for a while to get my mind off quaker motifs before I dive right back in!

It's called "Garden Sampler", is a design by Nancy Rossi of the Kooler Design Studio and published by JanLynn. 14 ct Aida and DMC floss... 

I aso have pieced together two pieces of cotton that I think will be my February bead Journal project background. You can make out the basting for the felt I have put on the back --- it will be 5" x 5" finished and I THINK I will be offsetting it so that the pink will be no more than 1.5" of that. Beads are picked out --- WAY more than I need --- and I THINK I know what I want to stitch but as to what it ends up like, well, that no-one but the bead goddess knows!