Butterfly Heart

Butterfly Heart
Originally uploaded by Iris Susan.

This heart is truly an experiment with color contrast. I used the main colors of the print (shades of pink to dark maroon and shades of yellow) to make a very bold heart. The threads are all perl cottons which adds to the boldness. The Fargo roses at the top have seed beads in between them.

I like doing this kind of heart every now and then. It's like singing really loud and maybe off-key but you don't care because it makes you feel soooo good. I'm afraid the scanned photos just doesn't do it justice I think it much prettier in person.

The Sail Boat Heart

I really like this sail boat image and wanted to try it on a heart. I guess I didn't have a plan for the stitching so it has a little of this and a little of that. The interlocking circles motif and the motif on the right are from Carole Samples "Treasure of Crazy Quilt Stitches".

Now that I can actually do Fargo roses I added them at the bottom along with ribbon stitch and lazy daisy stitch leaves. The spiderweb rose at the top is very eclectic...I like changing things up a bit. It's done with olive green and orange 7mm ribbon that I dyed myself. The two-ribbon technique I learned from Bear...she's planning on doing a tutorial soon so please watch for it.

The bead trails on either side of the spiderweb rose are my very first attempt at them. It was fun to pick the beads then decide which should lay against each other. I can see myself doing a lot more bead trails now.

The little anchor at the bottom is done in satin stitch. It wasn't easy to get the details to show, I would have liked to make it bigger but I didn't want it to over power.

Here is a larger view if anyone cares to see the details.

Under the Sea

Under the Sea
Originally uploaded by Iris Susan.

This is my first attempt at a Seascape Heart. It was fun but I just don't have any sea theme charms or buttons so I stitched the beaded star fish. The pattern for the sea horse came from Needlecrafter.com. All of the fancy threads are couched down with beads and on the left I used a feather stitch with beads for more sea grass.

Busy...Busy...Busy

I haven't had time to embroider lately...I've had other sewing projects to keep me busy. My niece is getting married tomorrow and she ask if I would do some alterations for her and two of her attendants. It was interesting for me... the attendants dresses were much easier to work on then the bride's dress. The work has me very curious about doing alterations on other projects...I would love to watch someone that does wedding gown alterations for a living to see just how it's done. All that I did was make the dress a little more comfortable for the bride...I shortened the shoulder straps and took up some fullness under the arms.

I wanted a new dress for myself for the wedding and thought I would make it....what an adventure! It is so difficult for me to know how to adjust patterns to fit. Like most women I'm narrower through the shoulders than the waist and hips...so I have to make several alterations to the pattern. Well needless to say the first dress was way to big through the neck and shoulders...Luckily I had other fabric and a pattern that fit better and I ended up using both patterns... made several adjustments and now I have a dress that I'm happy with.

Has anyone been watching "Project Runway"? I usually wouldn't watch shows like this but this one fascinates me. Maybe because of seeing the creative process at work. I never wanted to sew my own cloths before but this show has made me want to do more sewing. I just wish I knew more about fitting patterns!

I have two garden pictures to share. The first one is one of my Lemon Boy tomatoes and the other is a pumpkin. The pumpkins have vined their way all over the garden!