Stitching Away

Here is a look at some of the items I have been stitching over the last few days. The few small hand embroidery pieces were made as practice pieces for reasons I posted about in previous post.

The stitching on the blue Celtic knot was completed on Christmas day, the green on was completed on New Years day. A learning task for sure, tracing on the green fabric was a challenge even using the light box, though stitching it was about the same.  No matter how steady I think my hands are while tracing the end result reveals all, it is one of the reasons I like hand embroidery it looks hand stitched, at least mine does.

A few days ago I joined a new group Joyful Embellishments presented by Valerie Bothell on Facebook, for 2015 Monday-Friday she will post a new embroidery stitch each day then we stitch it.
Here is my first 3 stitches not in order.

The first stitches is a feather lazy daisy stitch which is in the center, the second stitch is curving the feather stitch with the lazy daisy, the 3rd stitch is the feather-lazy daisy and the french knot.  I put mine in a curve mid-way for practice, I have never done a feather stitch that I can recall and I will say my french knots are looking much better.

The other 2 stitches for the week will be a feather stitch combo using beads, I opted not to use silk ribbon, it's something I haven't ventured into yet, the final stitch for the week is variation of feather stitch-maidenhair.  This is going to be quite a stitching adventure, I plan to stitch my samples are small pieces of fabric and use them for a future project.

Speaking of which I have drawn a Greenman on my fabric and it sits patiently waiting for me to begin stitching.

I love the Greenman, for me he is the perfect symbol for Spring, I have made several stoneware pieces of him in the past so I thought now is the time to put him in stitchery.  In one of my sketch notes I have a Greenman quilt partially planned. This one uses some oak leaves among the sycamore leaves which are ever scattered in my backyard.

This little gem above from Keepsake fabrics will be used as a center piece for a crazy quilt block.  I have purchased many of the fabric blocks offered if you are curious here is a link to the ebay store
http://stores.ebay.com/Keepsake-Fabrics-and-Needle-Arts

My issue of Inspirations magazine arrived in the mail a few day ago, in my opinion it's the best magazine for hand embroidery available today.

It is chock full of lovelies to stitch and includes full size patterns for many of the projects you will find among its pages.

I am making every effort to make 2015 a year of creativity for me and with patterns like these it just makes me want to stitch all day, since I won't be planting a garden this year I will have more time for stitching.

I made my first trip of the new year to the library a few days ago and stopped in the bookstore to see if I could find a used book or two.

I think I hit the mother load, the quilting books above are like new, the crazy quilt stitches books will be well used. These beading books don't look as if a page was ever turned and now for the best part, I

purchase all six books for under ten dollars.