Country Garden Stitchery

My new design for February is called Spring Blues and it uses one color, or skein, of floss.  I used a hand dyed silk floss for more color. I made it into a table square using some of the Secret Garden fabrics from Sandi Henderson.     I made some needlecases today with some of my Spoonflower art fabrics. This one is made with my Feather Botanical fabric. I liked how the black and white turned out.  This is made with my Daisy Bouquet fabric.   Little watercolor bouquets of forget me not flowers so I called it Forget Me Not Bouquet and it has little pink dots and a purple bow to compliment  Little watercolor viola flowers in blue and purple and I called this one Ditsy Pansy because I entered it in to a ditsy fabric contest on Spoonflower.     Had a great time sewing today.

I made my second biscornu this week.  I want to make several to get familiar with the process of finishing them and to maybe have some holiday themed designs.  Plus they are just an addicting project.  They work up quickly and turn out so cute.  Quick little gifts, they look nice on display, and they are useful.  I'm shopping around for some lavender flowers to make my next one into a sachet.  I love lavender.      The other side has "Tea Time" words and flowers that are like what is on the teapot side.  I embroidered this one in all one color with a raspberry color for a redwork look.   

I've been wanting to make a biscornu for a while now and see some lovely cross stitch biscornu patterns, but wanted to try one in hand embroidery to see how it would work.  This is my first pattern with little bees and bee skeps.  The other side coordinates but is different, just a bee and flowers.  These are so fun to make and much easier than I thought they would be.  I'm working on some other design ideas to make more.      For a spring design I want to do a little rabbit.  I've been trying to do more animals lately and get out of my floral comfort zone.  I'm going to use hand dyed linen from Weeks Dye Works and Simply Wool floss from The Gentle Art.  Their wool is so soft and I love the muted colors, perfect for my design idea.    This is the progress on my Spring Blues design that uses just one skein of hand dyed floss. I am really enjoying this kind of project with just one skein, it is re...

I finished my bluebird hand embroidery pattern last evening and today I made a little banner and a pillow. I took just part of the main design and made a smaller project and used different colors to experiment a little. This is a small little banner. I like to hang these around my house and they are easy to change when I want something new. I used another part of the design and embroidered that onto a linen towel. I found a few of these at a quilt shop I visited a couple months ago. I wish I would have bought all she had. Hopefully I will find some more this year. I really like embroidery on tea towels, especially linen. I made the main design into a pillow using some complimentary fabric scrap strips I had. I usually use an envelop style closure in the back so I can easily change pillow covers when I want to and they are easy to store that way. The bluebirds were fun to do for spring. It seems like spring around here. I think it is in the upper 50s here today, people ...