Winter and Oranges

I've finished my stitching on one of Peggy Sue's winter themed blocks. A couple of different types of yarn to simulate swirling snow in the sky plus some snowflakes, a couple of different laces to simulate snow, snow drifts laced with silver thread, herringbone stitch with shimmery sequins and beads, a sequin flower that doesn't show up very well in lower right hand corner, drizzle stitch snow along the "ground" level and finally a big giant snowball made of spiral trellis stitch which I just learned to do.

This is my work on Toni's orange tone on tone block. We are to use nothing but orange for embellishments so I added bullion roses, orange ribbon, fly stitch leaves and a few french knots.

I also added some herringbone stitches, rick rack, eyelet lace with beads and some buttonhole stitches along the bottom, a crocheted butterfly (hey, it look like I stitched her feelers in the wrong place), and feather stitch with french knots.

I do not really like orange but with this RR have built up some orange embellishments and have a greater appreciation of what can be done with tone on tone.

Celebrate Life Challenge - My Grand Finale

I participated in a "Celebrate Life" challenge over on the CQ For Newbies Yahoo Group. Basically we learn new stitches or a different way to apply old ones. I've finally finished my 12 inch block I call Midnight Fantasy Garden.

To recap..week one was outline and and stem stitches.

Second week was buttonhole stitch.

Third week was cast-on stitch.

Fourth week was whipped spider wheel and whipped chain. I also challenged myself to make some angelina fiber leaves.

Fifth week was herringbone and...

...chevron stitch.

Sixth week was turkey work (or is it knot?) so I made some thistles with it.

Sixth week was also spiral trellis. I had a difficult time seeing where I was to put my needle for each stitch so you can see a few little holes where I missed a few stitches (or was that where I decreased stitches and shouldn't have?)

That was it for the required stitches but we also had to add two extra elements from a list of several. I did a spider and her web and it looks like the albino spider has a broken leg. There is a black spider hidden in there too. Both of them made the web but I think they were into the booze when they made it. The other element was a silk ribbon motif so I added some silk ribbon roses.

So that brings me to the finish of this block. The fairy body is painted with glow in the dark paint and I may also add stitches over the paint in glow in the dark thread. Or then again, I may not.

And that brings me to the end of this "Midnight Fantasy Garden". I have several others in the works, though.

TAST - Herringbone Stitch

This week's stitch for Sharon Boggon's "Take A Stitch Tuesday (TAST)" at Pin Tangle is the herringbone stitch which, even with a grid to follow, I see I messed up on the top line (sigh) but I now have another happy block to add to my lap quilt. 

The extra challenge this week was to combine the herringbone stitch with one of the previous stitches from TAST 2012. My leaf motif used buttonhole on the left leaf, herringbone in the middle and fly stitch on the right leaf. I found the motif as a freebie at Mary Corbet's Needle 'n Thread but mine doesn't even look as good as the pattern which I modified a tiny bit. (Sigh again). And, I can add another happy block to my pile. 

In case you don't know what a Happy Block quilt looks like you can see a previous post of mine consisting of summer themed Happy Blocks. My TAST quilt will have white borders around all my TAST samplers but there will be embroidery in the white borders too.