Long Time No Post

Hope everyone enjoyed your holidays. Ours were filled with family and friends which is the best way to spend them.

I finished a project I been mulling about for quite a while. It is a Silk Ribbon Embroidery Book. It started out with 10 pages grouped by stitches depicting floral bouquets. I got the idea from the beautiful floral bouquets on Judith Green's blog, but ended with 6 pages - 2 covers, 3 seasonal landscapes and a page of roses. Here is the front cover, which I did first but looking back, I think I should have waited until the inner pages were done so I could have repeated more of the flowers. The book is done on a soft shade of celedon green dupioni. I used 2mm, 4mm, 7mm and 13mm hand dyed silk ribbon. I also dyed the lace borders.

This is the spring page. The flowers here are Hollyhock, daffodil, tulips, and hyacinth.

Summer page with Sunflowers, Cosmos, Irises, and daisies.

Autumn page with spider mums, cat tails, goldenrod, and Zinnea.

Roses with Spider web, twisted, french knot, chain stitch and stem stitch roses.

I am going to send this out for a 4 day class proposal. Here is the back cover. I burned the silk for all the titles and stitched them down with french knots in metallic thread. I tried to keep it simple using the most common stitches so it could be completed in a reasonable amount of time. Still it took me about 5 days but I kept changing the design as I went along. The whole book is finished with a blanket stitch. I think I would prefer a palastrina knot or knotted blanket stitch to add a little texture to the edge. I made 2 class proposals for the 2009 EGA Metro Regional Conference and this is the one that wasn't accepted. A CQ doll was!! Will post pics of that later.

Have to post a pic of my little darling Diamond. Here she is in her New Year's outfit--our theme at this year's party was Tropical. She is sitting next to a hostess gift we received. I can't believe it will be 1 year on January 17th since we adopted her. She has brought us such joy! That's her in her Halloween Witch's Costume in the pic. She'll do just about anything for a treat and a belly rub.