Heart for Trade

This little heart is ready for trade. It's late now so it will get posted on the Chains of Hearts tomorrow.

I spent the day being nurse maid for Jesse. He was doing something he shouldn't have and ended up with a bruised and swollen paw. He is hobbling around and can't make it up or down the stairs without my help.

This heart is Finished

Well it's finished! I stitched on it off and on for several days. The heart and butterfly were from tracings the rest was done free hand. I'm not comfortable with bead work yet I need more time to play with it.

I joined the Chain of Hearts group and got the pattern for the hearts. The hearts that I have been working on are about an inch bigger. So I cut down my backing material and sewed this little heart this morning.


I'll use my bigger hearts to try out new stitches and different techniques then use them in some of my other projects.

Crazy Patch Heart

Larger version

I laid the red heart aside until I got some ideas on how to embellish it. I found some purple material in my stash and stitched this heart. There is still more to do and I wish I had made the butterfly bigger but I like it so far. I need to practice doing the feather stitch; I took it out three times before I was satisfied with it. The scanner doesn't do it justice it changes the material to much.

Ribbonwiz and Chloe gave me some great ideas for the red heart. Thank you both. I don't have much lace to work with; I'll have to check some of my other craft boxes. I'll play with it a while and see what happens.

Crazy Patch Hearts

I need some advise today. I love all of the beautiful hearts that Ribbonwiz, Chloe and others are doing and I have tried making a few myself. My problem is that after going through my entire material stash all I have are cotton prints. Can anyone give me advise on how to embellish on prints?

The hearts are so much fun to do. I would love to join the Chain of Hearts swap group, but I need to improve my embellishing first. Fabric shopping is on my list of things to do too.

Redwork Iris

Yes, this is the same pattern as the tiny iris. The pattern is saved on the computer and I insert it into a word document where it can be made any size needed. Doing it that way comes in very handy.

The stands are done with a variegated floss. I like the effect but the color changes to quickly. In my floss stash there is some older J & P Coats embroidery floss where the variegation is much better, but there were no reds in the stash.

This is another project I've been working on...

This is part of my inheritance. I have my mother's embroidery floss and her transfer patterns. Back in the days when beds, sheets and pillow slips only came in standard size my mother always embroidered pillow slips for wedding presents. I remember going to white sales at Montgomery Ward (department store, out of business now I think) where Mom stocked up on pillow slips and sheet sets. I found this pattern among her Aunt Martha's transfers, she paid 60 cents for it at Ben Franklin's (a 5 and 10 cent store). The pillow slips are from Mom's stash too.

Larger version

Mr. Jesse

This is Jesse, he and I are constant companions. I can't do anything around the house without him by my side. Jesse is an English Springer Spaniel but the only birds he knows are the turkey vultures that like to lay on the air currents that flow up over the hill behind the house.

We have been together for 12 years and he has me well trained so we do mostly what he wants us to. Jesse has quite the following nearly everyone that knows me knows Jesse and they all ask about him.

The picture as taken in my front yard, there is a hay field next to the house and a pasture field across the road. Both belong to my brother who owns the family farm now.

Tiny Iris

It is 1 and 3/4 inches by 3 inches. I wanted to copy colors from my favorite Iris (Supreme Sultan). For the falls I blended a red and a brown floss to get the color I needed. I received Schreiner's iris catalog in the mail the other day and it inspired me to try this miniature project.

Redwork Flowers

This is my second redwork project. I love flowers and when I saw a set of them at Ladies in Red I knew I wanted to stitch all of them. This flower is so dainty that I did it with a back stitch and one strand of embroidery floss. I have decided that I want the flowers to be 6x6 inches or under and I drew them on 8x8 inch panels. There are 12 flowers all together so I'm thinking when I get them all done I may set them in a quilt. That is quite ambitious for me so we'll see what happens.

Redwork

This is my first attempt at redwork I didn't really know what I was doing and it shows. The pattern came from Needlecrafter.com it's called Scarecrow and Two Little Birds. It can be found under Designs and the pattern is in the Other category. The scarecrow is done with two strands of floss and the birds with one and I did nearly all of it with a stem stitch. The block is scanned which is why the picture quality isn't what it should be. I really hadn't thought about doing redwork before and I've been doing embroidery off and on for years. I decided to do it after visiting several other bloggers that shared their redwork. I wasn't paying close enough attention, you know just surfing, or I would share links to their work.

The Cabin

This pic of the cabin was taken last summer. Jessie and I have been here for three years. I'll post a pic of Jesse soon. We live in eagle creek valley in southern Ohio along the Ohio river. Our place is part of the orginal family farm and the farm has been in the family since 1916.
You are right there aren't any iris's around the cabin at least not yet! But that will change with time.