Country Garden Stitchery

I took a bit of a break from designing embroidery over the holidays.  I hope your holidays were good.  I've been inspired by winter plants and natural linen tea towels.  A light box is definitely nice for transferring the pattern to natural linen tea towels since the fabric is a little thicker than the white linen.  It's a fun pattern with lots of lazy daisies (one of my favorite stitches) and the white oatmeal colored floss from The Gentle Art looks great on the linen. 

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 ...