English Garden DYB

Connie's English Garden DYB (Do Your Block) RR.

I wasn't sure if the lady was picking apples or peaches but since the block contained peachy colors I decided it was peaches. Connie didn't want any large motifs or I would have embroidered a botanical pic of a peach. Anyway, I extended the tree out into the block with a strand of gold metallic and brown dmc. Then I added some lazy daisy leaves and a few french knot peaches. I also extended what I think are forget-me-nots along the bottom - again in variegated DMC. Then there are a variety of roses since I think every English garden has to have lots of roses.

In case you are wondering...this round robin took place over on CQI (Crazy Quilt International) Yahoo Group.  In the DYB RRs everyone sends around six 6 inch blocks. Each participant picks one to stitch on and then sends them around to the next person. At the end of 5 months (more or less) you receive back all of your embellished blocks. One is left for the owner to stitch on. It's a lot of fun and a great way to practice new stitches, see lovely work of others close up and make friends.

I was the last to stitch on Connie's blocks and after I get to the P.O. today they will be on their way home to her.

English Garden Block

This is Gayle's English Garden block. I embellished wisteria around the silkie she had attached and did a gold metallic chain stitch around the frame since there was already a dark line around it. Then I added some silk ribbon roses, some blue silk ribbon larkspur, pink silk ribbon tulips, purple silk ribbon cone flower and some white #8 perle cotton daisies. Of course they don't all flower at the same time in a real garden but in a silk ribbon garden whatever you can imagine blooms all at the same time.

Finding My Voice (Literally, In Creative Writing and in Creative Stitching)

With my latest bout with a chest cold my voice has come and gone. That got me to thinking more about voice.

I have been taking a creative writing workshop a couple of times a year for the last few years. I'm going to start adding those stories to my creative writing blog "To My Children's Children". I have lots of stories...I just haven't posted them yet. I've been putting them in a journal for my descendants to discover someday.

I've struggled during those workshops to find my "voice". At the last workshop I think I finally figured out what was meant by "voice". All the workshop participants (5 of us) had a different voice and a different style. I think an author's particular voice emerges with practice.

And then I started wondering if creative stitchers have a "voice" just as authors do. I'm not sure I have one yet. I participate in crazy quilting round robins that have different themes and different people from all over the globe. I try new things. Yet, I don't think I have yet found my creative stitching voice. I'll have to think more about that. Will it come with practice as it has with my writing?

What follows are my latest endeavors in re creative quilting.

For the Birds for Connie. I added a wavy blanket stitch with some variegated thread grapes and another bunch of silk ribbon grapes at top. I crocheted some leaves and made some leaves from some textured ribbon and stitched some raised leaves. There's a circular fantasy vine on the side and some kiko flower stitch flowers and the circular patch. Somewhere on here I used DMC "Antique Effects" metallic thread for the first time and found it easy to work with and when I combined it on anothr block with regular DMC it gave a very prettey antique effect indeed.

This is another of Connie's blocks that all participants in the RR stitched on. The upper right corner was black velvet so I thought it called for some silk ribbon to raise above the pile. I added light blue stem and flowers. My other addition was the silk thread flowers under the bird near the button cluster. I just love the color of blue on that bird.

This is my work on Nicki's Lucious Lace block. It's really not a very good picture but there are lots of different laces on this block. I have a hard time figuring out how to embellish over lace.

This is Laurie's English Garden block that she wanted stitched as a child's garden. The fabrics are all flannel. I let this sit for a while before I took up stitching on it in order to figure out what to do on it. I was  first going to cover it all with lots of fabric leaves one could pick up and look under to find bugs or other jewels. For some reason I didn't go with that idea. I started by embellishing all seams with perle number 5 in feather stitch. I normally use perle 8 but felt flannel called for a little thicker thread. Anyway...after I added all the feather stitches I tried to add to all of them in a different way. Then, my grandkids just love butterflies in the garden so I added a big one at top and a tatted one at bottom. Then I added some other bugs, bees, insects and a spider. Joy.

Where is Spring?

 English Garden. My stitching on one of my own extra blocks.

I had to stitch spring since it's not around here yet. Maybe I should have stitched in some Easter eggs into her basket along with the roses.  And, darn it...the trellis with rose buds is stitched too close to the little girl. If it were real life she would be stuck in the thorns.

English Garden

This is my stitching for an English Garden RR. Laurie N pieced the lovely background with the adorable little girl and I added daffodils, forget-me-nots, violets, larkspur, roses and rosebuds. Most of the flowers are done in silk ribbon but some are done in perle cotton #8. The violets in the foreground don't show up too well in the photo. I overstitched the photo too but not sure that shows up too well either. What a delight this was to work on!