Skiving Off Today

Actually I spent the morning weeding out the tomatoes and feeding them, then I planted some squash.  But the rest of the day I have been resting. 

Found this book on paperback swap and looked it up on Amazon.  Amazing book on embroidery.  One project looks like a bulletin board and has embroidered plants and flowers, seeds and fish and animals must make one of these.  This has a Look Inside feature if you are interested.  Would have bought it but is $55.95 used.  Wish listed it on paperback swap but 13 people are ahead of me.

http://www.paperbackswap.com/Embroidered-Flora-Fauna-Three-Dimensional/book/184448341X/

Paper Folded Jewelry
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568363680?SubscriptionId=0QCHRJVSKG6F3BRGBNG2&tag=pbs_00004-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1568363680


The Art of Annemieke Mein: Wildlife Artist in Textiles.  Worth a look at her style of embroidery and stumpwork.

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Annemieke-Mein-Wildlife-Textiles/dp/0855329777/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372957219&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Art+Of+Annemieke+Mein

Megan's Sacrifice

Megan the orchid was loosing a flower so I picked it and drew a template from her sacrifice.  At first I was going to make a stumpwork pattern but instead decided to start with a needle painting.  Maybe this will go into the embroidered quilt.  The biggest job is finding the right colors, DMC's colors don't seem to ever have the right shades of purple!  The colors I picked out are pretty but not accurate.  The truth is that I keep changing the colors and perhaps I need to shop for some more floss!

I have been working on the needle painted yellow poppy.  I am still having a hard time with the shadows on the petals.  To little and the depth is wrong to much and the petals blend into each other.  This is a bit harder on a poppy because the petals don't overlap as much as other flowers.  So there is just a small but important amount of shadow to work.  Needle painting seems to be a type of embroidery that takes a bit more creative thought and is unique to each needleworker.  Makes be long for a painted canvas!  Not a lot of decisions to make just a lot of fun stitching!

Yesterday I started several projects.  Not exactly a great idea to start more embroideries but sometimes I have to take advantage of being able to iron the fabric.  So I started working on a Jacobean style embroidery using the wool and some natural colored linen fabric.  The other day I was trying to come up with a Jacobean design when I received yet another book from www.paperbackswap.com.  The book was "The Margaret Boyles Book of Needle Art.  There are several designs in the book that I really like and it saved me having to make up my own Jacobean designs.

Interesting Slashing Technique

Yesterday I was watching some videos on youtube and ran into this sewing technique.  The artists calls this a modern slashing technique.  She took the idea from a Renaissance clothing technique of slashing a garment so that the cloth beneath shows.  Her technique is a lot more freeform.  She layers scraps of fabric between two solid layers of cloth and then sews lines and circles all over the piece.  Then she slashes inside the sewing lines, exposing the under layers.  Here are a couple of tutorials.  Wish I had a working sewing machine!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaPsMLE2FQ8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiL19t56Xgk