Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Stair Steps on Bargello

Well, I have about half of section six done now, of the eight there are. It's getting there, but I don't think I'll finish it before I leave for Richmond on Sunday.It'll be close. Each time my daughter sees progress, she oooohs over it, which is a good thing. She's planning on helping her father design the frame and then painting it herself.

Monday, October 16, 2006

Real Gold

As you can see, I finally got some real gold on my real piece. It was really fussy to do. Just before I posted this, I finished the crescent moon area in gold kid too. Now on to learn something else new for this. I believe they want me to do the stems next. I'm finding this quick going when I do it so far, but not as quick as crewel. It's definitely another tool in my box, though. I could see some applications in regular counted stitch pieces.

Panda Plods Along

As you can see, I finished that really large black area - finally. It's the shoulder and one of the larger panda's front legs. Now I'm working on the visible back leg and the back end. Should be done with that by the end of the week. I'm beginning to get tired of black. It's looking pretty good, though.

Elizabethan Rose Framed

The picture here was a Cyber Workshop I took through the American Needlepoint Guild earlier this year. My husband just finished framing it yesterday. The focus of the workshop was compensation - we were to use compensation to cover all the areas and not use lines to outline anything. I really didn't like the pattern much, but Timothy did a great job framing it. It will be our Christmas present to the in laws this year.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Mystery Ornament Finished!

I got all the stitching done on the Mystery Ornament! I'll be finishing it as a banner in the next day or so and then sending it to be sold for diabetes research funds. It came out pretty nice and I'm going to try to make another to keep in between all my other projects.

Bead Bracelets

On Monday night my daughter and I went to the local EGA meeting. The program that night was beaded memory wire bracelets from LizTech. They spread about six or seven five gallon buckets of beads and let us play. We had an hour and a half. I made these six. The yellow one's for Lynne. The rest, I haven't decided on. I'll probably keep the blue and copper. My daughter made five bracelets, and the record that night was twelve. My daughter had a lot of fun and didn't think all us old ladies were dull.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Kid Leather Goldwork


The shiny circle is my very first attempt at "real" goldwork. It's on the "sampler" for the course, which is basically a doodle cloth. The circle has three layers of felt underneath, graded to have a smooth buildup of padding. The real goldwork flower was started - how they expected us to go from simple circle to these shapes I don't know, but they did. So it has, in this picture, its layers of felt built up. I finished sewing on the leather with a size 12 between last night. Argh, that needle's eye is small and is hard to catch the leather on. Anyway, it's at least progressing and I'm learning a completely new technique.