November, What I'm stitching on this Slow Stitching Sunday.

 

Here we are in a whole new month with endless possibilities. The weather here in north central Florida begins to change to cooler days dropping from the 90's to the low to mid 80's.  It may not seem like a big change but believe me when you have mid to upper 90's for nearly 7 months it's a welcome change, at least it is for me.  After 30 years living here you would think this northern transplant would be used to the weather and nearly non existent seasonal changes. 

I have stitched the November block of the Kathy Schmitz Woven Wreaths piece. The cornucopia, next month is the last block.  I love stitching up these little motifs, I have loved Kathy Schmitz designs for years and have enjoyed the Stitch Along, though I have changed the stitches for many of the motifs.

Progress on my autumn goddess piece is coming along, I have finished stitching everything down vertically and horizontally so I could cut her out, later today I will add her to some background fabric and begin to add embellishments with hand embroidery and some fussy cut bits and pieces I have.

She does look so much better once you can see her form after she is cut from all those bits of scrap fabrics.

I still have to stitch the pieces to the 2nd prompt of the Roxy's Journal of Stitchery. I finally had the

energy to iron the pieces flat getting out the fold lines of the fabrics. later I will work on this as part of Slow Sunday Stitching.  The last prompt for Autumn is autumn birds, I have no idea what bird or birds I will choose and I still have to layout my mossy forest prompt.  Time does have a way of flying by. For today I have my stitching lined up and I'll link to Kathy's Quilts here   https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/2024/11/october-flosstube.html

I put in the last pieces of my slow stitched background block and plan to work on this first today for

Slow Sunday Stitching.  

The hibiscus plant I purchased back in February has been blooming on a near daily basis with no signs of stopping.  

I have always had great success with hibiscus plants but this one is by far the best.  I purchased this at Bob Wine's Camellia Gardens nursery along with several other plants.  The azalea and the jasmine bloom spring and summer. The milkweed keeps coming back after the caterpillars munch them down and one of the azalea plants I believe is a early winter bloomer.  These need to be transplanted in the next few weeks once I decide if I should plant them in ground or just larger pots.  

Slow Stitching Sunday: The Summer Goddess in Progress

 I can't believe we are halfway through the month of April, this month is just flying by.  We have had some crazy weather here in north central Florida, from hot sunny days that feel like the middle of summer to wicked rain storms and tornado warnings to cold mornings and glorious afternoons.

The Solar eclipse came and went without much fanfare here, though I will say the sun appeared extra bright and the birds were quiet for a while.  For the K3n.clothtales SAL our weekly prompt was the Sun which seemed right with the star and moon prompts the previous weeks.  The weekly prompt included the eclipse.  Here is my piece for week 15 along with the moon with wolf and friendship star pieces. I am coming to embrace the wonkiness of my pieces, I love the raw edges and the layering of fabrics. I have always admired the work of others yet never imagined I would love the process as much as I do.

I have been working on several goddess pieces in the slow stitch style, I am currently working on the Summer goddess.  First, I pulled out lots of yellow fabrics, many scraps from my stash. Then I cut or tore them into strips. I traced the template onto muslin then began to randomly stitch them on where you can see a vague figure.

Once each piece is stitched onto the fabric I stitch vertical lines of running stitch down the length of the entire piece, once that is done I stitch around the traced line of the template.  Once all the stitching is completed I cut out the goddess shape and then mount her onto a background fabric. 

Then I just build onto the piece with some fussy cut pieces, hand embroidery, other embellishments as I work. 

The fussy cut piece I added is from In the Beginning, Sun Moon and Stars by Jason Yenter.

I have also mounted the purple goddess onto the background fabric and will begin work soon, I have autumn and winter in the planning stages.

I finished the Kathy Schmitz Woven Wreath's SAL block piece for April and March which I didn't post. 

I changed a few of the stitches on both the bee and the bunny, preferring the back stitch over the stem stitch.

I began the stitching on the Stitchdoodles SAL last week, the SAL began on April 3 and post each Wednesday.

I also have a hand embroidery started a moon gazing hare I just started it on Friday night using the DMC Etoile floss for the moon

The purple goddess is also on her background piece and I will start adding bits and pieces in the coming weeks ahead.

I'm adding my post over at Kathy's Quilts here https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/2024/04/slow-sunday-stitching_0587940416.html

Here are the links for the 

Kathy Schmitz SAL https://www.youtube.com/c/TothePointwithKathySchmitz/videos

K3n.clothtales:https://www.youtube.com/@k3n.clothtales/featured

Stitchdoodles:https://www.stitchdoodles.com/

Garden surprises, slow stitching a goddess and a wonderful book to end off March

The flowers on the Milkweed are nearly devoured by very hungry caterpillars. I was hoping to get caterpillars this year and I was not disappointed. 

I finally have the name for the little purple wildflower its a lyre-leaf sage.

The Lantana along the driveway is doing quite well after the rains we had this week. It sprouted out a few weeks ago where the Holly tree used to be. I'm going to cut a piece to see if I can root it and plant some in another area. I would love to have some along the fence. 

I finished week 13 piece for the K3n.clothtales SAL it is a Friendship Star. I was reminded how much I love hand piecing.

I am working on another slow stitched Goddess this one in shades of purple fabrics

She is almost ready to be cut out along her template lines so I can put her on a backing fabric to continue working.

The Spring goddess is waiting for me to decide how I want to continue with the piece.  I'm so glad I ventured into slow stitching in this way. I feel more creative with each piece I make.

The Untamed Thread by Fleur Woods arrived a few days ago while I only had time to browse through the pages I will be taking the time to read over the weekend.  

The full color photos are breathtaking to say the least, the fiber art among the pages are so beautiful I ache to run my hands over them.

If you were thinking of buying a copy and haven't taken the plunge yet do it you will be so glad you did. It's a great addition to your fiber art and needlework library.

If you aren't familiar with Fleur Woods her Instagram and Website links are below:

https://www.instagram.com/fleurwoodsart/?hl=en

https://www.fleurwoodsart.com/

A quick update, about 5 hours after I snapped the photos of the caterpillars I found them starting to spin a cocoon.

Nature is amazing.

Marching Along With Some Slow Sunday Stitching

Here we are on the 1st Sunday in March so I'm going to post a few stitching projects I have in mind for the month and beyond.

I purchased this cute little wool applique kit from Through the Needle's Eye.  It includes everything

you need to complete the 3 Potstickers plus the bonus egg pattern below.  Also, a package of sunflower seeds which I will start this week.

Yesterday I began to craft a new Goddess piece this time using the slow stitch approach, much like the way I made the K3n.clothtales week 7 heart.

I chose the green template for my first piece, traced it onto a piece of muslin fabric, loaded my needles with random pieces of floss too long for my Orts jar.

I always save the longer threads from my stitches in a little bag so when I am making a little stitchery I can pull pieces from it.

I began stitching random bits of  mostly floral scrap fabrics onto the base of the goddess, moving them about until I liked the direction they were going.

Then midway through, I switched the direction of the scraps.

                                                         

I changed the way I placed the scraps again and then proceeded up her arms.  I just need to do the head.

Once all the fabric scraps are placed I will start some random stitching and add in some hand embroidery stitching as well.  Once all the stitching is completed I will place the original template on top, cut out the goddess and put her on a background fabric.  Here is the heart I mentioned above, when the heart began it was just a traced heart onto muslin than I added the scraps and did the stitching, added the heart and button, placed the original template on top and cut it out resulting in the heart below.

I will be working on the goddess piece today for my slow Sunday stitching and linking this post up at Kathy's Quilts here:https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/2024/03/slow-sunday-stitching.html

Also this month I will work on the Kathy Schmitz Woven Wreaths SAL piece for March, it's a cute little bee.  Tomorrow is week 10 of the k3n.clothtales SAL and Week 4 of the Woolie Friends Dancing Tulips SAL.  If interested here are the links 

https://www.youtube.com/@k3n.clothtales

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0BqAW2n4To

https://www.facebook.com/groups/woolenoak