Pink!

I mentioned a while ago that I had joined an ATC swop group on Facebook - well the Feb/March swop fell apart but a new volunteer has come forward so we are trying again, the theme this time is My Favourite Colour. Now, my favourite colour is pink - not the nice pastel shades but the glorious and outrageous bright pinks. It doesn't often appear in my pieces because it is too...well...pink but I have been hoarding a fragment of rather lurid spandex that called to me one day from a remnants basket so this seemed the time to use it. I backed it with pelmet vilene and free machined with about 10 shades of pink following the pattern on the fabric, leaving some of the sparkly bits showing through. The photo shows the ATC on top of the original fabric - people with a nervous disposition look away now (although I am not sure the camera does it justice).

Spring Cleaning

We have had a couple of lovely bright days over Easter which has inspired me to start decamping to my summer workspace -

a table in the store room over the garage. This is how it looks after cleaning up - imagine how bad it was before. The midday sun is just about high enough now to shine in the windows and give a bit of warmth (and dry out the damp) so I can leave my stuff there instead of moving boxes and sewing machines around the kitchen and hallway as I have been doing over the winter. It also gave me a chance to sort out all my bits of loose coursework and see where I am. Now just waiting for school holidays to finish so I can sit down to some work for a few hours. (It occurs to me that I seem to say that rather a lot - I do love spending time with my family really!)

Stitch Explorer - March

The challenge for March was to explore the style of Assisi work. This is usually seen in cross stitch, where the background is filled in around a shape outlined in back stitch. The actual motif is left unstitched. You can find details of the challenge and links for more information here. I decided to try long stitches around a cog shape using variegated quilting threads and a piece of hand dyed cotton for the background.