Grapes

Last night I put this piece away until after vacation. Hopefully it won't take me 3 years to pick it up again, like it did after the last time I put it away. I don't think so, though, it is really flowing now.

This is the outermost border on the NW side. Here too, there are 2 different variegated threads for the leaves, another for the stem, and the grapes themselves are queen stitch.



Here's a picture of the whole thing as of last Monday. I got a good start on the NE corner; I could have gotten more done, but I've misplaced my NPI #675, a dark gray. As soon as I buy another skein, this one will show up; I know that, because I had misplaced the white, and it showed up as well. (That is, unless my dog ate it, which is possible. :-(



If you click on the picture and go look at it in Flickr, you will see notes that locate the details I've talked about.

I won't be posting regularly again until May; I'm going on vacation to Arizona. I'm so excited, I feel like a kid! I hope to post once or twice while I'm gone, but it will be hit or miss. See you then!

Trellis

There are 2 details on this picture that I want to talk about. The first one is the metallic trellis, stitched over the foliage. The shape of these is very pleasing, and it stitches up so nice and quick! There are four of them along each edge; it is too bad the foliage takes so long to stitch.



The second detail is the Rhodes stitch in the border; there is back-stitching around each one. The fiber used for this is petite pearl, in silk. I can get 7 Rhodes from each strand; there are 50, so you can see that I needed 3 (!) skeins. The silk is lovely to stitch with. It tends to knot because of the twist in the thread, but not tightly. It is very smooth and "silky." This actually goes quite quickly as well, and the color adds a golden glow to the whole piece.

Grains

I'm sorry all these pictures are a little out of focus. They are really enlarged quite a bit.

This detail shows what is in the inner corner; to me it looks like a stalk of grain, appropriate for autumn. You can see 7 of 8 satin stitched maroon leaves, and a lot of empty squares that will eventually hold beads (the small ones) and specialty stitches (the large ones).



These stitches are so simple, and still, so effective.

detail

This picture shows two details of the project. The cartouche has an oak leaf on a ground of sky and grass colors. The leaf is (again) formed of 2 different variegated colors, so again, all 8 of these on the piece are different and beautiful. The only improvement might be to back-stitch the leaf, but I'm not sure that wouldn't be too much. I'm still thinking about that.



The border that is below the leaf is recently finished, and has changed the look of the whole piece a lot, lightening it up. The back-stitching/top-stitching is over 3 to 4 threads. The eyelets and the triangles are over different (very slightly) maroon colors; that difference is so subtle that I'm not really seeing it. The two maroons show up again in the curlicues around the corners, but I think the difference will be more noticeable there.

Details from Indian Summer Reflections

Since I'm working so exclusively on this design, and since you cannot see the details that make it so beautiful, I decided to crop my picture and show some of the details. This is from the 2nd border. The foliage is made up of 2 different variegated threads, and the flowers from a third. Then to add the finishing touch, the leaves are back-stitched with a green shiny Marlitt rayon floss. Since it was with just one strand, the stitching was not difficult. The Marlitt behaves very nicely when you give it a good stretch before you stitch. At the bottom of this border there is a row of beads, anchoring the stitching.




Martina's designing always amazes me. She cannot know how the two different variegated flosses are going to interact, but the combination gives a level of complexity that is amazing. And it looks so good!

DD visited this weekend, and (finally) brought some of her pottery to show off. I got this piece because she is not happy with it. Isn't it beautiful? The shape is real, and the colors, the turquoise, green and copper, are beautiful. (She is not happy with it because there is a flaw in the glaze.)



I am so happy she is taking this opportunity to take a pottery class, she has wanted to since she experimented with pottery in art class in high school.