Spring Flowers in a blizzard

 Progress on my Scenes of Country Life, or Rural Pursuits Casket

If a person was to have a look at my ort box, they would think there was massive progress on this tiny little casket... but not really! Everything is just so tiny...I really have to make grand efforts to scale down my threads in order for things to still look delicate like I want, and not huge and clunky

 It is somewhat disappointing how long it takes to stitch such a little thing. Maybe I'm just a super slow stitcher? I am working the flowers around the scenes now. Most are long and short stitch with either just one or two plies of Soie Ovale...or a micro fraction of a strand of Soie Perlee.  One must get inventive with the tools available...see Soie Perlee is made from flat filament silk like Ovale...it is a twist of three 'plies'...but if you look further once you get those apart, you will note that each of those three plies, is each made up of three plies...it can be maddening really.

 Here is a peek at what I have named the Devil's Tulip. I had to work four of them on the two panels I'm stitching now, and have another three I am very much not looking forward to doing on the front panel when I get that far... I have several sizes of gimp on my table to pick from, but sadly the smallest size that would have been perfect was not made in the colours I wanted to use...so I had to use a larger size, much too big for the scale of the flower but I used it anyways. There was a million starts and stops, they are really just an absolute nightmare to stitch.

After the Devil's work, I had to redeem my spirit with a couple of regular pretty little happy pink tulips

Last night I worked this little iris. I like it. It's tiny, fits under my thumb, and no, I don't think I have very large thumbs. I am saving all the foliage for last. I have one more iris to work today, I can't decide if it should be peaches or purples...I keep going back and forth. I have the corresponding friezes drawn on above each panel, so I am able to make sure the colours below will complement the colours that will sit above it. It's currently blizzarding in southern Colorado, for us, really the first measurable impactful snow other than a dusting, of this whole fall/winter season. I don't really care for snow anymore, it gives me great anxiety, so its the perfect day to concentrate on spring flowers and NOT look out the window

Happy Stitching!

Happy New Year!

 Details ....Matter!

I hope you had a wonderful Holiday season! My surgery went well and I am ready to bid adieu! to 2022 tomorrow. Life has been a rollercoaster for me this year, but it did not fling me off entirely, and I hope that I can now get on to happier times in 2023. I wish EVERYONE happier times in 2023. I think often of my friends in Ukraine~ Oleksii & his family in Kiev, and Marina in Kharkiv. Oleksii is a marvelous shoemaker, he can make you anything that will fit like a GLOVE~ he made my 17th c shoes for me. Marina is a dollmaker and sells on eBay, in this horrible wartime post from there can take about a month to reach the US, but the wait is well worth it, and they really need our support. It is horrific what they have to live thru each day, and I hope you will visit the links I have provided. 

One of my goals for 2022 was to finish my Scenes of Country Life casket. That did not happen by a longshot, but I am more than thrilled to be able to say it is a goal for this next year. I have managed a little work on it though, if you want to follow more closely, do check my Instagram, as it is easy to post daily pictures there of when I get something done!

Anyways, on to what I want to talk about today, and that is details. If you wish your work to come out neat and tidy in the end, it must start with neat and tidy lines in the beginning. I chose to work this casket all in flat work for a few reasons. While I really love the look of it, I absolutely hate satin stitch. This casket is smaller, so I figured it would be perfect...less stitching. Well truth be told, the simpler something is, the harder it is to hide mistakes. The smaller something is, the more challenging it is to execute well. I gave myself a double whammie and didn't even realize it. Everything about this casket is challenging, very challenging.

So, back to details....check out the grouping of leaves in the first photo. I have finished the satin stitching. 

 

Now check out the same with the addition of tiny veins being added. It makes so much of a difference!

These little scenes are tiny....2x3" roughly...for the entire scene. I am using near microscopic threads to work near microscopic motifs. Behind the head of this pencil, is a dove!

In the original 17th inspiration piece, the foul was a duck. When I was drawing out this panel, I really wanted a grouse here, as we hunted grouse a lot when I was growing up. But, the space was just too tiny. I certainly could have drawn in a grouse, but I wouldn't have been able to stitch it so that it resembled a grouse afterwards, so a dove it became. 

Flat silk work is usually the base layer of stitching on a stumpwork composition. All the fun bits then get stitched on over it. (Some folks skip this step altogether and do not work the shadow stitching depicted on 17th pieces.) The detached needlelace pieces and other fun bits can be used to cover up any areas that got out of hand, or we as a stitcher, just plain dont like. NOT SO if one is working a flat silk piece. It is not entirely satin stitch as I had first planned. I did want some interest and have given myself permission to use a select few stitches that are not satin stitch, but they still must all remain flat to the surface. If you study 17th c pieces, you will actually notice that background, even in a satin stitch piece, is many times long & short stitch. Above is my hunting panel after all the ground work has been finished. It still does not look finished though...

For a proper finish, there must be gimps applied! It is easy to go hog wild and want to put them everywhere, so one must pick and choose carefully. What do you want to accentuate or draw the eye to? That is where the gimp does its job best. I didn't want my strawberries to get lost in the hillock, so I chose a light pink gimp to line them with. They bring back memories of finding a sunny spot on the top of a mountain to eat lunch at after a morning of hunting...and picking the wild strawberries at my feet

Happy Stitching, & I wish Everyone a Happy & Blessed New Year