Spring Stitches

Last spring, my friend Patti called me up when the first few crocuses appeared.  I drove out and we walked around a local cow pasture snapping photos of the first blooms of the year.  It's always a celebration when you spot crocuses after the prairie winter melts away.  One photo in particular was a keeper.

There was this blue blue water in the distance.  We were up on a hill.  The grass was all blonde and dry, trampled from the snowfall.  When I looked closer at the picture, I noticed that the distant horizon appeared the same pale purple as the crocuses.  Can you see that?  I really liked the way it tied the whole scene together.  I ended up making a small one she bought right away.  Since the crocus is Manitoba's flower, I fully intend to bring some crocus pieces to my show there in May.

this is about as far as I get with sketching... if I sketch it at all

Sometimes I sketch.  Usually I don't.  Often that first reproduction by sight is the art itself.  I like the thrill of stitching something out for the first time and seeing if I can overcome the challenge of that preliminary 'sketch' being the final piece.  I did sketch this out the other night.  It's from the same series of photos I took that day.  In this case, sketching was VERY helpful.  It made me look closer at the patterns and lines so that now I know exactly how I plan to stitch it out.

'Spring Rolls' (pardon the pun)

As for the first piece, the only practice run I did here was to figure out how to stitch the crocuses.  I decided on silk ribbon.  I didn't have a lot of purple ribbon, so I grabbed a color I wouldn't use much of and began practicing.  Here's some of my samples.

with crocus pictures nearby, I try my hand at reproducing them with silk ribbon

Finally, around midnight I took out some of my Jaquard dyes and dyed some of the pre-colored ribbons.  I added some watered down periwinkle dye to the pink ribbons and they ended up just the perfect match!  Once they dried, I slid the ribbons under a warm iron to smooth them out. I added them within the dry spring grasses.

work in progress - Spring Crocuses #2

Next I'll add more threads by hand.  So far so good!  I made smaller masses of crocuses into the foreground because I figured it would look very strange to have one huge flower in stitch.  I like the perspective of this one.  I think it works well.

Old camera photo...  sigh.  I can't wait to see them again!  : )

This year will be a very wet spring.  It will be interesting to see how that affects the color and abundance of flowers this spring & summer.  Last year, things were very sparse for some native flowers.

That's all for now folks...  have a great week!