All Tied Up

Yesterday, I looked at this piece and thought, "I can finish it tomorrow if I work on it exclusively." So I did just that, and instead of finishing it today, I finished it last night. We were going to put the years (they've been married 50 in April), but when we put it up in the mats, there just wasn't room for them below the names. I hope the in-laws like this. It's not my best stitching because well - I wasn't emotionally engaged in the project. Nothing new to learn, nothing exciting to do in it.

Bars and Swirls

The ribbon floss in the background of the music bars kept shredding as I used it. Even with very short lengths of about twelve inches, a full third of it shredded. Not my favorite floss. More whipped outline stitch with the swirls. I'll be filling them in during this week. For some reason, I thought this would go faster. I'm also still not at all pleased with the directions.

It's a Carnation!

Outside of the inner satin stitches, I have the first band of this piece done. Hopefully I'll be starting band two before we meet on Wednesday to work on this. I like the color choices I've made so far and hope they keep looking good for the rest.

Fiddling Around the Edges

When I got this block to add to, I was intimidated by the beautiful work of the previous person. She did such a lovely rose bouquet and her seam treatments were excellent. So was her butterfly. So I decided to embellish the doily. Figured that was a safe thing to do. You can see close ups of the areas I worked on in the next few photos.

After I did the doily, I put a little flower next to it. The larger flower is spiderweb, and the second one is just straight stitches in a circle. They look pretty good, I think.

Since there was so much lace on the other side of the block, I decided to balance it out with some more on the lower left. I crocheted the edging with some thread I had around with sparkly in it, then added the two daisies.

In this picture you really see the nice work done by Jill. What I did is barely visible. I added beads and bullion roses to the lace in the upper left and some sequins to the seam by the doily. I know the next person will do some wonderful things with this.

Closing the Circle

I'm now three-quarters done with the little jessicas on this band. I'm glad this isn't my only project. Stitching all those circles crosses your eyes after a while! It's coming alone well since I started it back in the rotation.

Lettering Done

The lettering's done, except for the names and dates on the bottom. And I'd guess the lower knot is at least halfway done now. I'm getting there. My hope is to have this done by next weekend.

Filling in the Blanks Again

The second "garden" is almost done! Actually, it is done, since this picture was taken last Friday. You can see that I've started in pretty heavily on the third corner, and that there's really not much left to fill in. Despite all the partial stitches, the silks are a joy to work with. I'm finally feeling like I'm making real progress again, even if the group as a whole is on to the sixth or seventh part.