Red work Monogram

One of my interests is calligraphy, and another is embroidery.  I also like cushions.  What better than to combine the three in one project!

I have a soft, red, knitted rectangle that I had intended for a cushion cover.  I was using yarn left over from another project so I had only enough to make one side of a cushion.

I also had on hand some thick, tea towel cotton that has quite a pronounced weave to it that I decided to use for the other side.  

With a rather nebulous idea, I started to draw on the fabric using a blue, water soluble ink pen.  ( I love that pen, it has come in handy for so many things)

To draw a circle, I have various sizes of inexpensive embroidery hoops, 

This is what I started with,

After I had those lines embroidered,

I decided to fill in the rest by just repeating the flowers and leaves.

The stitches used are mainly 

      backstitching, to outline all the lines inside the two circles

      Chain stitch to make a heavier line for the circles

      French Knots to add accents on the flowers

I thought about stitching a pattern on the H, but I am pretty much out of this thread.

Time to sew up the cushion now! 

Block 8 whirligig

This is block eight of the sticks and stones color way of our Saturday surprise Sampler program. It is called Whirligig:

I mentioned yesterday that I was doing some backstitching on the cotton linen blend that is new at the stoRe.  I  Did make some hexagon frames for the two birds that I stitched.  now I need to decide which background to use, the gray or the blue. Right now I am prewashing them to see what they look like washed.   I backstitch around the edges so they won't fray in the wash.

I was sorry that I had to cover up a little bit of the owls tail. I suppose I should have made the frame first and then made the stitching to fit within it.  Oh well, I'll know for next time.

Enjoy the process

Have you ever heard that saying "he went riding off in all directions."?  That describes me the last couple days.  I have been working on all sorts of different projects. However I have finished a couple of small gifts for Christmas. Remember the lavender sachets?

Remember the Dottie quilt top?

I put the borders on, and was preparing the backing fabric, (that's the zigzag fabric in the photo above), when I realized I could make small pieced border for the quilt as well. It's not on the pattern, but I think it would be nice edging for it. I was thinking of just some gray and white half square triangles all around the perimeter.

I'm up to four blocks done for the Swoon quilt:

And I decided to try some simple embroidery on one of the cotton linen fabrics:

I traced a couple of black and white images of birds on to  6 inch squares on the fabric and I am backstitching the outlines.   

So far I have done a sparrow, and have started on a screech owl

I'm thinking that I might make papers pieced frames to put around the birds.

Not quite too sure about this project, where it's going.  I guess it's one of those that evolve. I'm not sure if I'll use just the linen fabrics or maybe use one of them as a background and use printed fabrics for the hexagons.....

Well I hope you are getting some Christmas projects done, just enjoy the process!