Work in Progress

Following the embellisher play day we had at the beginning of the month with Serendipity I finally found the time to put some stitches into a couple of pieces. The challenge was to use no more than three colours but these could be monochromatic colours. I chose blue, yellow and purple with the yellow fading from pale lemon to lime green. I know, I know a bit of a cheat.

This was the piece I liked the best and have, I think, almost finished it. I'm leaving it lying around to see if anything strikes me as needing adding. The tree is 3D, I layed a large mound of fibres and overlaid them with more in the same colour to form a ball shape. When I got it home I twisted threads to form a trunk and branches and sewed them down taking stitches into the ball to shape the tree. Later I embroidered more branches and leaves in greens. I've used cretan, fly, scroll, buttonhole, stem, chain stitches plus french knots and bullions on the piece together with beading.

The second piece is one I've started to embroider for the StitchedTextileDesign group. Its final size will be 12cm x 12cm and fit into a CD box. At the moment its much larger than that but I can't decide which bit I like the most so some of it might become atc's.

On Friday its the annual Embroiderers' Guild (North East Region) Spring School at Ushaw College. Ushaw College is a firm favourite and one I look forward to each year. This year I'm doing a course with Toni Handley called "Indian Inspirations". On the requirements list it said threads in 'spicy' colours. Naturally I didn't have many so I persuaded Keith to take me to Embsay Mills (taken over by Samuel Taylors now) to buy some. This is my hoard and I don't feel one bit guilty over spending so much. I keep drooling over them and can't wait to use them this weekend. Roll-on Ushaw. All I have to do now if collect all the rest of the requirements list.