Alphabet Stitch Pages

 Our stitchery guild's program for the year is to make our own alphabet stitch book in whatever stitches we want.  I'm doing Blackwork for B...

 cross stitch for the letter C ( I had made this years ago and it had been pinned to my bulletin board),

 free motion for F on a piece of eco dyed fabric,

 and wheatear stitches for the letter W also on a piece of eco-dyed fabric.  I haven't finished the edges yet or backed them as I'm still mulling over that detail.

 Sharon Boggon's Take A Stitch Tuesday (TAST) on her Pintangle site is moving right along and since my last post I've added french knots and wheatear stitches, neither of which I thought would be good for a beak.  Hope next weeks stitch will be.

A couple of days ago when my daughter and I were doing the dishes, she noticed that a coyote was walking through the garden and into the yard.  Hubby went onto the deck and took some photos and it didn't run away but stopped and looked at him and then continued to walk through the yard.  It looked in pretty good condition but on closer inspection of the picture we could see that something was the matter with its one eye.  Hope it will recover and be okay.

Sending you all joy and bushels full of creativity :)

Herringbone, Running & Satin Stitches

 Our stitchery guild began a program last month to make an alphabet book with stitches.  We can use any material or stitches or sewing we want.  I decided to use my rust and eco dyed material and began with the letter H and Herringbone stitches.  This piece of fabric was rust and loose tea dyed.

 The letter R for running stitches as well as for the rust and rose leaves.

 I've been working on this embellished purse for months and the end is in sight. Various yarns, cheese cloth, wool roving and organza was first "sewn" down using an embellishing machine onto a piece of denim.  I've added seed, feather, herringbone, cross stitches and beads and just have blue wooden beads to add to the tassels.  Not sure if I'll ever really use it and think of it more as an art purse rather than a functional one. 

 Caught up with Sharon's Take A Stitch Tuesday and this week added satin stitches.  Don't know what next week's stitch will be yet but I'm hoping it's one that I'll like for the beak.

 We don't often see a Blue Jay in the yard but this one showed up the other day.  Today we enjoyed his antics at getting the peanuts out of the coil and watching him fly back and forth to hide them all.  The wiley Magpies were watching of course and more than likely ate them all.

Finally, finally dug up the rest of the carrots today so that's it for another bountiful garden year.

Wishing everyone a fabulous Fall day :)

Eco Dyeing & Experimental Machine Sewing Workshop

 I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a Stitch Extreme Combo workshop with Arlee Barr & Karin Millson.  We eco dyed and practiced sewing samples adjusting the upper and lower tensions, using different thread thicknesses and adjusting out stitch lengths and widths.  Here I laid out maple, oak, willow and dogwood leaves.

 Rolled up on 2 wooden dowels which I then bound up tightly.

 Arlee placed all of our bundles in the pot to gently "cook" for an hour.

 The dogwood and oak came out with nice distinctive shapes, the maple and willow leaves were quite pale.

 Onion skins snipped and laid out.  I folded the other half of the cotton over, rolled it on the dowels, bundled it up and put it in the pot for an hour.

 I was so surprised at how good a print the onion skins made!  This will be a fun piece to stitch :)

 I took a lot of notes and here are 2 cransebill leaves with loose tea sprinkled around it.  Arlee gave us some madder root powder to use as well.

 Cranesbill gives a very good print for eco dyeing and as you can see the madder root and loose tea give off good colour as well.

 Here are a few of my sewing samples as we played with adjusting our top and bottom tensions on our sewing machines as well as experimenting with different kinds of threads and stitch widths and lengths.

 While our bundles were eco dyeing Karin had us try all manner of different things most of which I did not know my sewing machine could even do!

 More tea and madder root eco dyeing on silk using oak leaves.

 One of my favourite peices - a rust dyed piece of cotton with raspberry leaves.

 Karin and Arlee were an excellent team and we learned A LOT from them.

Taking a leaf image from one of my dyed pieces I tried to replicate it using some of the sewing techniques we learned.

Eco dyeing and using my sewing machine are definitely in my future.
Have a terrific week everyone :D