Tag: embroidery

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More Little Bits of Stitches

Back on November 15, 2019, I posted about some little 4″ X 4″ squares I had completed.  I have a goal this year to make four of these squares a week.  We are halfway through the first month of the new year, here are my squares from the past two weeks:

Some of them are lovely little gems, others are not so hot.  I’m not redoing any of them, or throwing any away.  These are sort of a stitching journal, and a way to experiment with color and composition.  Not everything that we make will be a masterpiece, and that is part of the creative journey.

On a side note, I am only going to be posting once a week this year in an attempt to work on some other things that desperately need my attention (UFO pieces and the rest of this website, for starters).  Next week, I will share whatever progress that I have made over the upcoming three day weekend.

 

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Debating Daily Projects

I have been having a discussion with myself lately about all of these daily or weekly projects that I am working on now, or that I have attempted in the past.  Daily creative projects are great ways to discipline oneself into a creative habit, try new things, work out design problems and generate new ideas.  However, I have been taking much longer than I should to complete my daily efforts.  I get so wrapped up in the little daily things that I am not putting time into bigger projects that will be for sale or get entered into art shows.

The little daily stuff is just for me, which is still important, but not the only thing in my creative world.  I don’t want to give them up, as the index card challenge has been a great learning experience, and I want to complete the past years that I started – that was a goal I set for myself, and there are so many goals that I have not met.  I wonder how much more I would have grown creatively by now had I known about these little daily art doses in college or even high school.

Since I have not been stitching at all lately, I picked up the 4×4″ daily project again to get back into the needle and thread.  Here are all the squares that I have done since attempting the challenge back in September:

Some winners, some not, I have learned from them all.  Now I am behind again on the index card goal, and I managed to bring home five more books from the library to read.  I am very glad I have all of these things to do.

 

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Summer Meadows

I have really derailed over the last week and a half – with this blog, the index-card-a-day challenge, and more.  However, I was having a fabulous time indulging in a hobby that has consumed me for most of my life at BreyerFest– the collectors’ convention for model horses.

I’m still trying to ease back into my usual routine, so here’s a couple of images of the meadows that surround my home.

I look forward to seeing the vibrant orange butterfly weed flowers each July, and I have captured them in an ongoing series of fiber art pieces:

Take some time this week to study a landscape that you see frequently, make note of what you notice most in it, then find something that you haven’t noticed.  Does it inspire you creatively?

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Day by Day, Tantalizing Threads

A  very quick post today… I am more than halfway through my stitch out project of all the colors of House of Embroidery threads.

I don’t know yet how I am going to join all of the postcards that I am making in the course of this adventure.  I initially wanted to make them into a little fabric book, but I might make them into a flat wall hanging to put in my booth at quilt shows, as I have some of the colors available when I am on the road.

I’m enjoying seeing the colors stitched out, and I am looking forward to using these threads more in my collages when I get through this daily project.

 

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On Thursday, check back for my progress on yet another daily project that I just started, the annual Index Card a Day Challenge.

 

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Stitching in Circles

So much for getting an 8 X 10″ done quickly!  The fabric in the center of this little project has a pattern of various size circles woven into it, and I am highlighting those circles with stitching:

Of course, I am already running into a problem I encounter with nearly every art quilt I make: how and when do I quilt it?  The more embellishing that goes on the quilt, the more I have knots and  other thread mess on the back, but I have to add a backing and quilt through it at some point without destroying the embellishing or the sewing machine in the process.  Maybe through using these little quilts as experiments, I will finally come to a technique to solve my quilting issues.

I love this color combination, and I am thinking about making some Creative Kits with it soon.  It captures the aqua blue of the robin’s eggs that I always find this time of year, the purple of the wisteria blooms outside of my bedroom window and the bright greens of the springtime hayfields all around me.