Red Clover

After stitching on the book cover (another WIP), I decided to stitch on a postcard. This was much easier to make holes in. It was one of a set I picked up on my travels; this one is by Jane Rushby, done in Gouache, not a medium that I’ve tried (yet).

It’s not quite realistic and not quite abstract, but somewhat stylised. I love the colours and shape of the leaves.

I started by making holes around some of the leaves and petals. They can barely be seen on the right side, but helpfully show up on the back.

They actually show up more on the photo than when I was working on it.

I used pistal stitch with a variegated floss for the clover and some French knots. I’m not sure what the green threads are (picked up off a sales table somewhere), but they are the right tones for the leaves.

Detail of the clover.

The back isn’t the neatest.

I used the heaviest weight green for the lighter coloured leaves….

….. and the finer greens for the smaller leaves. I decided to leave some of the flowers and leaves unstitched to show the painting. The edge of the postcard is white, not the pink it looks below. A strange winter afternoon light as the sun was starting to go down is my only explanation.

Wessex Stitchery 2

I’d put my Wessex Stitchery away in a plastic wallet with another project and couldn’t find it, which did prompt me to do a little tidying up as I looked. I found a few other things I couldn’t find either. However, it meant that I finished my crazy patchwork and attached it to my jacket, together with the sacred geometry heart which I worked directly on to the jacket. This of course meant that I couldn’t wear it until the hoop was removed.

I’d really enjoyed the Seata workshop with Ruth a few weeks ago, and was keen to continue with the piece. I’d already done three more rows before I thought to take a photo. The first two were vertical straight stitches, again starting with regular stitches following the pattern from below on the left hand side, and then going off piste from more or less the middle out to the right side. I’ve kept the stitches the same size along each row, the dark green ones are slightly longer. Then there are individual fly stitches ……

……. and a forest of them on the right, some touching each other.

I’ve done pistal stitches in a brighter green thicker perlé. It’s growing slowly, and I’m enjoying working on it. The overall effect is very much like a landscape, which is what I was aiming for once I’d ‘seen’ mountains in the first row. The problem is that in a landscape the mountains would be distant, not in the foreground, but I do like the pattern. I’m now choosing my thread for colour, so it’s a mixture of perlé and stranded.

Dala horses

Today has been the Seata AGM and first meeting of the new programme.

For many years the group has decorated a Christmas Tree at Scunthorpe Festival of Christmas Trees, which has very much become an annual event. Ruth has booked the spot and decorated the tree for several years now, and this year she had booked within 5 minutes of receiving the booking form! If only I could be so organised!

Ruth had brought a box of goodies for us to use for our Dala horses, or to add to our own bits and pieces: felt, patterns, templates, trims, and a whole herd of horsey samples which were passed round as examples of what we might do. These two finished ones are hers.

After rummaging through the pile of assorted coloured pieces of threads, I opted to work in a bright green for the body, and two shades of sage green for the saddle and mane. A suggestion of not cutting out the horses until they were stitched was soon passed on around the group. Once the template had been drawn round and the mane and saddle cut out, I started blanket stitching them on with a single strand of orange.

Once I’d done that I used a rusty red rayon thread for fly stitching down the legs.

Then some orange lazy daisy stiches on the saddle …….

……. and mane, with pistal stitches in between in the rayon thread. This is as far as I’d got by the time we packed up; both sides are the same. It needs eyes at least before I cut them out , stitch them together and stuff it. I deliberately chose colours that are not Christmassy, as I don’t want to think about Christmas just yet!

Thank you for all your hard work , Ruth, it’s been a good start to the new programme. This is another one of hers that was on our table as inspiration.