Take a Stitch Tuesday 2012 - Week Fifty

Here is my take on the berry stitch --- I made up a few "forget-me-not" type flowers in perle cotton:

"Birds of a Feather"

"Birds of a Feather" is complete! I was beginning to think it was going to drag on forever (I checked and the first stitches were put in in July!).

So here it is, a design by Yvonne Horn of Papillon Creations, puclished in "The Gift of Stitching", Issue 57, October, 2010! And with the exception of some fudging for miscounting and switching out beads from my stash for the ones called for, this is stitched as instructed... Stitched on Wichelt's Permin of Copenhagen 32 count linen ("French Lace"), which might have been a mistake since I think some of the colors would have shown better on a pure white or even an antique white, but I didn't have any 32 count large enough in those colors; bad enough that I didn't have Q-snaps long enough either! ... Finished stitched area is 16 1/3" by 9 2/3 ". 

It was the specialty stitching and the beading that really slowed me down... Here's a close-up of one of the border corners so you can see what that entailed:

I don't know if you can see the gold and peacock blue beads easily - I know the light yellow star stitches and the gold braid couching doesn't show up at all... But there are nine specialty stitches in the border: Rhodes Squares, Ray stitches, Diamond Eyelets, Lazy Daisies, Rhodes Diamonds, Herringbone stitch, Fan stitches, Couching and backstitch in addition to the beading. In the center, there are large Queen stitched (if you consider over six threads large!), Tied Windmill stitches, Diagonal Fly stitches, and Star stitches as well as straight stitches on the birds' heads and backstitching on the feathers and paisley motifs.  A sampler more than a picture, I think.

Mittens & Mini-Socks --- Sea and Sky!

A study in how thread choice and thread color can change the look of a simple wave bargello pattern...

and 

I used DMC 4230 for the "sky" and DMC 909, 930 and 3756 for the "sea"...

2012 - A Year of Challenges - Week Forty-Nine

This week, in addition to the TAST already posted, I concentrated on Birds of a Feather and the December color palette/crazy quilt journal/bead journal project square. Given that the color palette challenge this month didn't quite "fit" with my other eleven squares (see yesterday's post) , I decided to do an alternate, based on the block 6 grid form from the "I dropped the Button Box Quilt" and six colors that were used more than once in the previous eleven blocks... Here is that alternate:

The rest of my stitching time was dedicated to the backstitching on "Birds of a Feather". That is almost done:

although I will have to make some modifications to the backstitching on the paislies since I miscounted two of them and they are too close to the feathers to do as graphed. There are a few confetti speciality stitches in the body of the piece and a lot of beads in the border to do yet...

The latest Mittens & Mini-Socks arrived yesterday so that will take precedence over "Birds" for a few days. Drat... I had hoped to have "Birds" done this weekend but it doesn't look good...

Color Palette/Crazy Quilt Journal/Bead Journal Project Challenges, December 2012

The Color Palette Challenge threw a curve ball this month --- mono chromatic! It doesn't FIT with all the other eleven challenges and so I'm thinking I won't count it in my Quilt Journal or Bead Journal Project Challenges. Instead, I will search out fabrics and trims used in the past eleven Color Palette Challenges and make a "composite" block that does fit...

Anyway, here is my monochromatic block, using the block 12 grid from the "I dropped the button box" crazy quilt on PinTangle:

I have to say, I really enjoyed working with this one --- it was fun getting a set of fabrics, threads, trims and beads that were of the same color --- although I did cheat a little (that checkered fabric had as much ecru in it as green and so I added ecru lace and a touch of gold in the threads, beads and buttons... (gold isn't a color, right? It's an accent! LOL).

Hmmmm, maybe, in 2013, I can do monochromatic blocks for the Crazy Quilt Journal Project challenge... I'm thinking greens, blues and maybe a touch of violet? Aaargh! What AM I thinking --- I got so sick of that color set in "Kimono - Revisited" and "Birds of a Feather" this year. So maybe this block will be a stand-alone and I'll move to the other end of the color spectrum and go with reds, oranges and yellows... Bright and cheerful and totally different!

Take a Stitch Tuesday 2012 - Week Forty-Nine

Buttonhole Eyelet Flower... NOT something I will come back to willingly. I just don't do stitches where my hands feel like they are ten times too large for the needle and the stitches come out all wonky like this:

Besides, I can't think of a single use I would put it to...

I'm beginning to think that freehand embroidery is NOT my medium.

2012 - A Year of Challenges - Week Forty-Eight

I pretty much spent this past week working on the Michael Powell "Home Sampler" although I did take a day off to do Color Through the Ages, another day off to do TAST and last night off to go see New York Polyphony in concert at the university (if you like medieval music and male a capella quartets, this is a MUST SEE!). Anyway, here is where "Home" stands at this minute: