Easter Weekend

Happy Easter to all of you who celebrate. I took the opportunity to do lots of stitching. I had some vacation days that I needed to take before the end of April and decided to make the long weekend a little longer. I spent all that time on Fandango.

As you can see I got all my squares done. I still have a lot of satin stitching to do, most of what is left involves a lot of what I call stop and go (which I dislike) and my fingers have started to itch to work on something else. What? I don't know, cause I certainly didn't take out any of my WIPs for a change of pace. I felt like starting something new but felt terrible about it. So instead, I spent Saturday night shopping for beads and Sunday lazing around with my tablet.

I booked another long weekend and I'm hoping to get more done. But really, what I'm hoping for is good weather to spend it outside. I'm starting to get stir crazy. There are 48 days left till my vacation.

WIPocalypse 2016 – March

This month's theme is: Do you use hoops, stretcher bars, lap stands or Q snap frames and why? (viaCathieJ) I've tried them all including canvas stretcher frames that are meant for painters. I use whatever is convenient based on the project. I do confess that I prefer my table/lap stand and q-snaps as they don't mark the fabric. I've learned to tolerate hoops, but still don't like to use them.

It didn't go well for my WIPs this month. I've been trying to work as much as I can to prepare for the EAC seminar class I will be taking in May. So all my WIPs have pretty much suffered for it.

	No Update
Ink Circles - The Bramble and the Rose

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Teresa Wentzler - Tracery Dragons

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Satin Stitches - Donna's Fantasy Lace

On the other hand, the pre-work on Fandango is going great.

And I've finished my name tag for seminar.

The Case of the Blahs

No post last week. Right after my last one, I suffered from a case of the blahs that lasted a whole week. I don't think I picked up a needle even once. Instead I spent it on this:

It's not stitching, but it's the closest thing to it. The pattern looks like a cross stitch pattern printed on some sort of thick fabric that is covered with a sticky layer. It's then covered with little square crystals that actually match to a DMC color. It was almost a shame covering up the pattern. I would have like to stitch it.

This is one of two kits I bought from the Creative Festival last year, but you can get something very similar off Ali express. They call it diamond painting cross stitch. I'm tempted to order another one. The ones on Ali express come with a handy pen to pick up the crystals instead of tweezers (my fingers are sore lol). But I still have one kit left and will be way to busy in the coming months to get distracted with this. So I'll pass for now.

Once I finished this little kitty, I was quickly over my case of blahs. I actually managed to make and finish two pieces I was planning on making for a gift. You'll have to wait to see them in May :) but it's such a relief to know that I will be ahead of schedule.

Now I really need to get back to Fandango as it's been sorely neglected.

EAC Name Tag

I've been working on this name tag for a long while. I think I started back in December. As a guild member, I am always supposed to wear a name tag at meetings and such. So I was given a packet with guidelines and a scrap of Aida and needle. I obviously ditched the Aida for some evenweave linen.

I didn't want to spend too much time on this project, so I decided to use an existing pattern by the Victorian Sampler for a name tag. I converted all the specialty threads for DMC and I decided I wanted to do drawn threads instead of specialty stitches at the top of the design.

That was me "saving" time. Now here is me over-complicating a name tag. I decided since I belong to two guilds it wouldn't be fair if both weren't represented. I decided I wanted to stitch the EAC logo at the center, with the logos of my two guilds on either side with the year I joined. This piece would go on the back of my name tag.

I kept with the purple theme and I decided to backstitch the maple leaf and then whip stitch it. I then padded the letters with stem stitch in #8 DMC perle cotton. This was then covered with a satin stitched using 1 strand of white DMC thread. This part took a while since it requires good eye sight and I tried to only work on it when I was feeling rested.

For the needle and thimble, I back stitched using Kreinik #4 in some silver I had left over. The logos on either side were backstitched. The Lakeshore guild provided me with a pattern of the logo, but Virtual Threads doesn't have one. A member is working on creating a pattern for Seminar 2018 which will be hosted by the guild, but I obviously didn't want to wait. So I improvised.

Since I decided to do drawn thread, I needed to cover the open space. I bought some satin fabric in this really nice silver blue/grey/green (no idea what color it is really but it matches one of the threads I used).

I used the same technique I learned in Kathryn Drummond's classes to attach the fabric to the back of my work using #8 DMC perl cotton.

Now that the stitching was finally done, I trimmed the excess fabric and started whip stitching them together. I placed a piece of cardboard I had that I cut to size. It's actually from Le centre des textiles contemporains de Montréal business card, which is very apropos as they also offer embroidery classes :)

I could have done a better job whip stitching, the sides are not very even, but I'm glad it's finally done. I'm now ready for Seminar :)

What I learned from this project: Satin stitched Monograms are not for me. It is very hard on the eyes and not relaxing which is not the point of this hobby. I'm glad I tried it all the same.

March TUSAL

This month's TUSAL is really nice and full. I had to take a different pose than usual, otherwise you wouldn't be able to see anything except fabric scarps. There are lots of purples in there but not sure where they are all from. I don't remember stitching that much with that color. Lots of white as well from Fandango which is progressing very nicely. I have 66 days left to finish the pre-work :)