Wisteria Designs

After hard work on "Hearts" Sewing Set I wanted to take a few days off and to read a book and to stitch a little, something from my stash, something by Just Nan to be exact. But everything went a little different.

I started stitching a design but it was not a Just Nan and before I finished stitching it I was asked to make a design with Wisteria (Глициния - ru). Wisteria was very pretty this year here but it did not bloom long : heavy rains and cold killed the blossoms. So I had to look through my last year pictures for some inspiration and here is what I have designed: a little sampler/picture and a biscornu:

"Wisteria" Sampler/ Picture and "Wisteria " Biscornu

I tried to make the picture look delicate like a watercolor and the biscornu is a little brighter with some sparkle.

"Wisteria" Biscornu has Butterfly and Bee sides:

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If you are interested in buying any of my designs, please write an e-mail to me. My e-mail address is in my Profile.

And here is what I have stitchinged from my stash:

This is "Lavender Luminescence" by The Sweetheart Tree.

I also finished an ornament for Donna project "Stitching For A Cure":

You, probably, noticed that all my stitching is in purple this time but I did not plan this. Psychology can explain this, well I know what it means.

I also want to thank Yoyo for passing an award to me, it's a great honor to receive it from you. I really appreciate this.

And traditionally some garden pictures for you:

And again a bug... Why do they keep coming to my garden?!

I thought it is a leaf on the fence, when I realized that it is not, I again asked the bug to wait a second, brought my camera and took some pictures of it.

Thank you very much for your comments, it's a pleasure to read them.

Happy stitching to everyone!

"Crystalline Grapes"

Today I want to show to you another little finish. It is a The Sweetheart Tree design called "Crystalline Grapes". The pattern has much similarity with "Tranquil Moments" which I stitched and showed to you a little earlier. When I was buying these two patterns I already had an idea of their finishing and bought identical frames and mats for them.
I made a little modification in the second pattern: substituted one variegated floss to a white one in order to emphasize similarity of the two patterns and to get rid of a motley color effect. Here are some pictures of my "Crystalline Grapes":

I used the central part of the pattern and made another star ornament (front).

Fot the back of the ornament I stitched the same design, only instead of beads I stitched a grape cluster from the border. This design has a lot of over one stitching which I liked a lot.
And here are the pictures of what I made using two The Sweetheart Tree designs.
You probably want to know if I am satisfied with the result. Yes, very much! But it was a little irritating stitching the designs. If you remember after the first design I told you that the picture on the cover page is of very poor quality, you can barely see the design there. I can understand that this is kind of protection from piracy. OK, but why is the print of the designs so poor? There are so many places in the designs where you can't tell if it is a grid line or back stitch! Is this also kind of protection? from customers?
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I also wanted to thank Adriana r. , Donna, Yana (Яна) for passing me Blogger awards. Dear ladies, thank you very much for your appreciation of my work.
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And I 'd like to ask everyone to visit this Donna's blog where she has organized ornament stitching for an auction, November 2009, to raise money to help cancer patients. On Donna's blog you will find all necessary detail. I do hope every stitcher can find some time and make a couple of ornaments ( or more!) and this way help other people in their fight against this terrible disease.
Happy Stitching to everyone!

Tranquil Moments or 2 Olgas' SAL

My friend Olga in UK and I have had SAL this week.
For the SAL project we took "Tranquil Moments" by The Sweetheart Tree. We got interested in this design on different reasons but probably the main idea was to see what the design looks like in real life. If you saw the picture of the design in the ST booklet, you would understand what I mean: the ST picture is dark, you can hardly see the design in it.
I decided to trust the designer and used the colors of the fabric, floss and beads what the design calls for. Olga was experimenting with her own fabric and some other stuff, you can see the results of her SAL on her blog.
Here is the picture of "Tranquil Moments":

I liked these intricate stitches of the design, there are only a few full crosses there! That's the type of stitching I enjoy. In the picture you can see my framed piece.

The second stage of our SAL was to stitch the central part of the design, the star. I made this part into an ornament. A fragment from the outer border was stitchedon the back side of the ornament. Here is my ..."twinkle, twinkle little star" (гори, гори, моя звезда...-ru):

And here is the picture of my whole SAL:

I am satisfied with the results of our SAL. It was a great pleasure to stitch with Olga: we shared ideas and supported each other a lot. Thank you Olga for this wonderful experience.

I am a little sad because our 2 Olgas' SAL came to an end.

But! I am going to stitch another design by ST which is very similar to this one, everything is already ready to start on it.

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I also wanted to show you some pictures of another visitor we had yesterday: it is a tiny turtle which is as "huge" as two small acorns.

Isn't it cute? And I do not have to stitch Quaker turtles, I have real turtles in the yard.

Thank you for stopping by and special thank you for those who leave comments - I love to read them!

Happy stitching to everybody!

"B" Is For Bunny

After the garden tour I spend more time working in the garden than stitching. It was so inspiring to see nice gardens that I also took my husband to one of the gardens to show him some things that he likes: maple trees and pools. I did not take any garden pictures during the tour as I do not want to copy anybody's garden, a garden is a very private thing, at least for me.


We spoke to master gardeners and learned some new facts about plants and got some ideas. Almost all our free time last week we spent working in our garden. I will show you some pictures later.


Now I want to show you what I had been stitching all this time and managed to finish. The Bride's Tree task for April was to stitch a rabbit. I chose "B" Is For Bunny by The Sweetheart Tree. I was a little late with my piece but... I stitched 9 rabbits not one, lol! Is it an excuse?

After a lot of thinking I decided to make it into a needleroll but there was a little problem - not enough linen for it. For a long time I had been wondering if it is possible to add some more fabric to the piece that you are working on and how this is going to look like.
I like experimenting. So I sewed two pieces together, on both sides of the seam I stitched a band and added some more bands to the top and bottom parts, here is what I got:








I guess the piece of the fabric which I added makes the design look brighter. I also coffee dyed a piece of the ribbon for the bottom part for a better contrast and finished the needleroll.
Here are the pictures of the needleroll and its sides:

But this is not all. I have another bunny to show to you! Here it is:

This little rabbit lives in our garden and is not afraid of me at all. When I go out to work or walk in the garden, he ( I think it is "he") also goes out, sits somewhere close to me and eats the grass from the bed. I say he is the only one who helps me weed the beds. He takes grass from my hand but does he not like bread. He made his bed under the Azalea bush, in the morning I can see him there through the window and I begin to worry when I do not see him there: we have a hawk in the garden too. My pet rabbit has a Russian name Zika , pronunciation is Zi-kar. Isn't he adorable?







Thank you for stopping by and leaving your comments , I enjoy reading them!

Happy stitching to everybody!