Plenty of Progress

I'm working on it!  After one year as a member of the embroiderer's guild, I finally made my required name tag!  Sheesh.  It took me long enough.  Everyone in that guild has the prettiest name tags with the most perfect and intricate formal embroidery.  I don't have those skills.  I enjoyed the silk ribbon stitching on my last piece so much that I decided I'd use that in my name tag.  It's not perfect, but I think this little tag is really me.

It's on a little piece of linen with raw edges & neutral coloured machine stitching, so it's kind of rustic looking.  It has nature in it, sewing threads, French Knots, and the ribbons were hand dyed.  I think it suits me.

I was lucky enough to finally find an online ribbon source.  I got twenty metres yards? mailed to me for $12 plus a dollar postage.  That is SUPER cheap, especially after wasting a 1/4 tank of gas driving around the city looking for silk ribbon.  sigh

The rest of my many, many days away from the blog have been spent stitching that field of dandelion puffs.  WOOO!  I'm still NOT DONE.  It's been days and days.  I'm doing good though.  I'm certainly proud of it as it's one of my biggest pieces ever - 30 cm across / 12 inches.  (Funny how most embroidery is metric and quilting is all still the old imperial.)

Here is a sideways view of it so far:

blooming dandelions (in progress)

How many now?  I completely lost count.  I have no idea.  My guess based on past work is 2000-ish.

Wait!  There's more...

I finished off a piece that I had started a while back.  I didn't show you because I didn't love it.  I wasn't feeling like it was 'singing'.  Then it hit me - a few touches here and there and the whole scene just sprang to life!  It's finished now and awaiting the framer's.

Fields at Floral Road, 2013

As for my 'news' - oh there's so much piling up that I don't know where to begin.  I'm teaching and getting booked up for public speaking in a couple different cities in 2 provinces.  It's quite overwhelming but terribly exciting!  I'm getting more and more requests for things like this.  I bet if I wanted to, I could actually book up 2014 and just travel travel travel.  Motherly guilt will keep me fairly close to home however.  Still - it's nice to know I have a wide-open world just waiting for me.  Exciting indeed!  Have a great week.  : )

P.S.  I'm linking to The Needle and Thread Network if you would like to go see what other 'penniless' Canucks are up to.  Haha.  (That's a private pun that has nothing to do with poverty, FYI.)