New Design To Share

In between changing my garden over from winter to spring/summer I've been working on a new design. This is a piece that will look perfect in my daughters bedroom. Well that is IF you could see her bed! Neat she is not, which is odd considering I'm such a neat freak. Anyway the colors are hot pinks for the letters "L-O-V-E" and then three shades of green for the leopard print. It's called Wild Love. I painted it on 13 count canvas and the design measures 12 x 12 inches in size. It's the perfect size for a pillow if only she had room on her bed. Hope you like it as much as she did.

Getting Ready to Stitch

I've just started working on my St. Claire piece. I haven't finished much, just the face and a bit of the white around her face. Then I realized that I didn't have the treads in my stash that were just the right shade.....can you believe it? We all have a stash box or in my case a rather embarrassingly large basket. The idea that I wouldn't have every know thread and in every color was inconceivable, but there you have it. Well there was nothing to do but make yet another trip to the nearby thread shop. It's a very nice cross stitch shop and the owner does keep a good selection of threads. More importantly it keeps me from driving all the way into big, bad Houston. I do hate the Houston traffic. As you can see from the picture I picked up some Splendor, Impressions, Sparkle Rays and a small skein of Kreinik. Hopefully this will do the trick and I'll get some stitching done this weekend. It's hard to say though, our weather has been absolutely perfect for gardening....and I do love to garden

Patron Saint of Needleworkers

I didn't even know there was one until Judy Harper, http://www.elegantwhimsies.com/ ,

told me about her. It seems we have our own "gardian angel" to watch over us, help us make the right thread/stitch choices and to give us some much needed patience. Meet Saint Claire: Patron Saint of Needleworkers. I'm hoping she will help designers as they rack their brains to come up with new designs, travel to and from trade shows, deal with shop owners and send off stitched models to be finished. I know I can use all the help I can get. This lovely, serene lady is holding a small, golden monstrace, which is all part of her story. She is only 2.5 x 5.5 inches in size and painted on 18 count canvas. I plan to stitch mine up as a small stand up so that I can place her on the shelf above my work table. From there she can survey my studio, keeping me and all my project under her protection.

PS: Be sure to visit Judy's new website. Great job Judy, all those hours of hair pulling have really paid off!

Check out my Slide Show!

The Dog Lives.....Barely!

Yesterday I finished working on my Skating Santa. As I put in the final stitches I realized it was time for me to pick my daughter up from her work. When I returned 20 minutes later I found the chewed up remains of my pen that I had use to make stitch guide notes in the bedroom. Not a good sign.... I had left the door to my studio open. I dashed into my studio and glanced around, everything looked alright but then the dog was acting rather guilty. When I inspected my just finished needlepoint I saw that the dog, bad thing that she will forever more be, had indeed enhansed my work. It was my own fault so I couldn't really yell at the dog. Word to the wise, never leave needlepoint on the floor with a sign on it that says "Eat Me".

Fortunately Santa only required minor surgery to be good as new.

You can see that I worked his beard and moustach in a couching stitch. I used one strand of Matte 18 #MO19. Couching goes really fast (I use two needles) and is one of my favorite ways to stitch beards or long hair.

The trim on his hat is done with Fancy Fur #FN62. I just made a series of straight stitches and then went back and fuzzed the thread up a bit.

All that is left now is to order the music box for his insides and then have it finished as a small stand up.

Happy Easter

Easter is such a fun holiday. I have bunnies all over the house, bowls of yummy candies and wooden eggs in the yard. And thanks to a rather mild winter my yard is a riot of color with everything blooming. I've even seen my first hummingbird. When I was young my mom would make up beautiful Easter baskets for all of us, then we would race through her garden filling them with the eggs she had hidden earlier. Some years we would get a baby chick or a bunny. I doubt the poor animal thought it was such a good thing. The picture shows one in my Two of Us Series, #74, Easter Time. In this one I've used lots of the Just Another Button Company's buttons in the border and the girls hair. I have a total of seven in this series covering most of the holidays and there is even one for a wedding. Happy Easter everyone.

Is Max Really A Cannibal?

One of my daughter's favorite books as a child was Max and The Chocolate Bunny, written by Rosemary Wells. I was reminded of this when I designed and stitched Max, #108. He is one in a group of five bunny egg's. Each egg is 4 x 5 inches in size. The first year I took the finished Max to the TNNA show I had a shop owner confide in me that she thought it seemed slightly cannibalistic, a bunny eating another (chocolate) bunny. I'd never thought of it that way.