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.)

Threadpainting Progressions

I'm going through a sort of funk I think.  (Blame it on the weather.)  I am having trouble articulating ideas.  We have had about 5 hours of sunshine in the past few weeks which is very rare for the prairies.  It sure kicks the energy level!  I feel like I have nothing to say, and I've had no desire to head out with my camera either.  I don't have the blues, but I do have the blaahs.  The good news is that I have been quietly and steadily sewing.  I've created four new pieces since my show went up at the end of November!  I love them.  I'm kind of grateful I haven't been over-blogging.  Taking it slower in blogland leaves so much time to produce art.  So... here's my latest.  I'll start with the work in progress.  It's from the shots I took out on Floral Road in the springtime.

machine work done, hand stitching begun

Here's the back of the work.  You can see more easily what is done my machine, and what is done by hand.

the backside

I stitched in cat tails, grasses, tree trunks, a fence post, and TADA!  I even stitched the little Redwinged Blackbird from the original shoot.

bird on a wire

It's odd for me to be silent and not talk much.  I really enjoyed filling my quiet time with stitches instead of the internet.  Perhaps I'll continue on this route through the winter, posting a few times a week instead of daily.  Seriously - don't you agree that the web is a gigantic time sucker!?

signing my work in thread

Believe it or not, this piece is already done and popped into a little spare frame I had laying around from earlier this year.  I thought I'd experiment with a different approach of covering the edges of the art with the floating mat like a painting.  I haven't settled on this yet - I like things both ways.

Finished:  Floral Road, 2012  (available)

A guild member who saw my current exhibit wrote me a very sweet note, and suggested I try white frames.  I don't think I would all the time... but LOOK how pretty this particular thread painting turned out!  Thank you so much E. for the suggestion.  : )  Here it is on my wall, glare and all!  lol  You can see me blocking the reflection of the window behind me.

Floral Road all pretty in white.

Ahhh, it's nice to stare at all that spring green.  ; )  Stitching this out has kept me sane under these unusually grey skies.  I hope you enjoyed this post.  Thank you so much for stopping by and say hello anytime.  Linking to WIP Wednesday at The Needle & Thread Network.

Fulfillment

I had an episode.  It's a regular episode that I have often.  Does this happen to you?  Deadlines approach... commissions on the go... mothering and housewifery taking regular priority 24/7... creative juices flowing but no time for me to make them real.  I feel a sense of panic.  I get edgy.  In my teens I used to smoke.  This feels a lot like the same type of withdrawal, and I just need a 'hit' of fulfillment that my list of responsibilities simply cannot satisfy.  I try to resist the creative urge but my priorities become further and further out of reach.  I get testy and end up accomplishing nothing.  Finally, I drop everything, head outside and just start stitching - for me - with no particular goal in mind.

Aaahhh it feels good.  Gee, I love hand quilting!  I'm grounded again and easily managed to complete a couple of projects in one afternoon.  I wanted to believe that 'On Floral Road' was done, but I knew something was lacking in this piece.  Now it has a nice lush foreground.  It just popped to life with the right hand stitches.

hand stitching in the grasses of the forefront

I have to remember that when it comes to creativity and inner tension, I need to always take time to put me first, albeit briefly.  Now I'm back on track!  (A good run outside has the same results FYI).

Summer Ain't for Sissies

It's HOT.  Like - HOT to the point that the kids come back in at 9 am after five minutes outside because it is unbearable.  It's nearly 40C with the humidex for a week or more, and not a cloud in the sky.  If you can't find shade, you will fry.  I went for a drive to get slurpees, and there was no one on the sidewalks.  The parks and front yards were empty.  Only the super-tough would run or bike in this weather.  So... I'm enjoying the afternoon full-on shade trees and the sprinkler in the back yard... and the air conditioner of course.  But enough about the weather.  I have managed to get some work done over the weekend.  Here, I've added cream & purple seed stitches with a hand dyed silk.  I love the texture it gives!

stitch, stitch, stitch... lots of seed stitches done by hand

I like the variety of cotton, silk, and rayon. I can't tell you how liberating it is to have any color I need at my fingertips.   (Again... thanks to Margot & Jane!).

detail of "On Floral Road"

I've also been putting in hours and hours on my cousin's memory quilt.  It's made completely out of shirts and pants.  Nearly everything had to be interfaced with an iron (again - yay for air conditioning!).  And then nearly 150 blocks for this big queen sized quilt are being trimmed perfectly to size before we decide on a layout & I can piece it.

Arron's clothing on the way to becoming a quilt for his mother.

It's a much bigger and more time consuming project than I had anticipated.  I am used to pre-cut squares and speed-piecing.  This is different.  It took me three hours to trim half the squares.  I can't image 'the olden days' when this was done with a pair of scissors.  Then again... there didn't seem to be many perfectly intersecting seams back then.  Half of the squares for this memory quilt are black or charcoal.  I think this would look fabulous with big-stitch hand quilting... maybe that royal blue?  That will really pull it all together I think.

One more thing... If you would like to stop by The Needle & Thread Network, another fine Canadian Blogger has been featured.  Why not go have a read and leave her a hello!? : )  I'm linking to WIP wednesday there...

Have a great day!

Threadpainting - Loving Every Stitch

I went through a bit of a funk.  It lasted about 24 hrs, and it felt terrible.  (Blame it on the weather.)  I got up, dusted myself off and put together another new piece.  And WOAH do I ever love it!  I can't even explain my excitement when the right threads go in the right places.

7x9"  On Floral Road, 2012  (work in progress)

I worked a little differently on this one.  I did the land before the sky.  It doesn't much matter since the trees on the horizon will go on last.  I was interested in stitching out the grasses because two of my variegated spools were JUST the right color. My source photo has lots of wonderful reeds and white puffs to stitch into it by hand.  I will LOVE that. : )  (Do I use a lot of capitals??)

In the mean time, I got those Bird's Foot Trefoil flowers stitched in to the Lakewood Park scene.  I was feeling like another hundred French Knots would be quite lazy of me.  I can do them with my eyes closed after 5 flax fields and 3 Canola fields.  Plus - these buffalo-bean-looking flowers would not be well represented by spots or loops.  They have a funny, lumpy shape.  I decided to scroll back to my Saturday Stitches posts (see in tutorials at the top of my blog) to find the Sorbello Stitch that Margot taught me.  It is perfect!!  Check it out...

Lakewood, 2012 (4x6) in progress

I have just a few more little white details to stitch in and then this piece is done.  I am still so thrilled that I made the right choice for these flowers, I emailed Margot with a huge thank you!

The Sorbello Stitch : )

Happy, I am!  : )  Talk soon,