Country Garden Stitchery

Today I was inspired to make a patchwork table cloth out of a stack of my Spoonflower fabric collection and I cut up twenty samples and made forty blocks to put together. I bought a little postcard pattern at a quilt show earlier in the year and used that for my pattern. I had a lot of pinks, mostly pinks and some blue/purples so I arranged them all in rows of eight with five rows total. I tried to put the blues and purples here and there to break up the pink a bit. Some of the fabrics have more white than others and I did the same with those. Most of the pinks were a similar tone so that helped with the color coordination. It is a bright and lively table cloth! and it makes me happy. I had a few yellow fabrics and some with bugs so I broke up the flower theme a bit with those. I decided to take it outside in my backyard to see how the colors looked out there and I liked that too. I just wish I had more pretty flowers in my garden to compliment the ta...

I started a new embroidery pattern for Halloween. It has three ghosts, a witch with her little black cat hiding behind her all in the pumpkin patch on the night of the full moon. I'm using Gentle Art Sampler flosses and picked up some bright autumn fabrics at the quilting store in town over the weekend. All the characters in this pattern make it fun to stitch, can't wait to get back to it. This is a little blue chickadee type bird in cross stitch. She's sitting in a tangle of tree branches with blooming pink flowers. I'll make her into a little ornament. I like having little cross stitch ornaments around the house. Adds lots of color here and there. While I was hunting for autumn fabrics I found some bright cherry red holiday fabrics so I'm hoping they will inspire a new holiday embroidery design. I really liked the red and turquoise colors together.

I've been making more placemats and used some of my Spoonflower fabric for the centers again. I matched them with complimentary commercial fabrics. Above is my Cosmos Key fabric where I drew some other treasures along with my white cosmos flowers. This fabric was from one of my journal pages and I called it Pink Petunia and Domino . It has a domino, an old broken purple bottle and ladybugs among the flowers. I loved the way it turned out. Really bright and pretty. This was an early garden sketch when the cosmos was at it's brightest and the parsley had nice large green leaves, I call it Cosmos Nature Journal Page . Now everything has faded a bit in the August heat so I like having this on my table. And my zinnia flowers from last year with a little yellow moth. I love the yellow moths that flutter around the garden. I called this one Red Zinnias Hope you have a great week!

I was working with greens the other day making greeting cards for women family and friends. I added one of my hydrangea drawings and I liked how the green in the leaf blended with the background scrolls. I found myself in a mood to sew and made this tulip garden hand embroidery design into a table runner with some really bright summery fabrics. I like using several colors in my embroidery designs so when I add fabrics it picks up most of the colors and makes the whole project really interesting to look at, grabs your attention!

I'm happy to have my new butterflies design done finally. I found some nice and bright fabric to frame it with. It's a fun design to stitch with a little back stitching and French knots for textile interest. I really like doing French knots, like them better than attaching beads. Here's one of my new angel greeting cards I've been working on. She has a similar colorway as my cross stitch design so I wanted to include her in this post. Plus she's really happy. Hope you have a good week!

I selected four of my fabric samples to make a set of placemats with the sample in the center. I used commercial fabrics built up around it to make a placemat. This sample is Blue Lilacs and Columbines and I scalloped the edges with a rotary cutter. This sample is Forget Me Not which is from a watercolor painting and has similar values of blue on a white background. This is one of my first fabric samples Purple Pansy Watercolor and it prints really well with deep royal purple flowers and a light watercolor wash behind the flowers. This is a drawing study of a white windflower in different stages of growth with watercolor wash. The whole set goes together pretty well I thought and I tried to find fabrics of the same value of blue with green accents of similar shades. I set these on the table during the day and take them off before our meals so I can save them for a while, the family can eat on older stained ones :)

This is a post about pink things, even though it's Fourth of July weekend, I'm feeling pink. I used several paintings and drawings in this note card to make it a collage style. It's fun to be able to use art I did years ago in new ways and new projects. When Spoonflower had free shipping last week I took advantage of that and ordered thirty more fabrics that I had been working on. This is part of my pink collection in my shop . This is a photo of them outside. I took it at the wrong time of day, but I still thought the colors looked nice and vibrant. And this photo was taken inside. I'm still deciding what I want to make, most likely a quilt runner or finish a pink needlework design in a runner. Haven't been in the mood to sew lately with these hot days. I would rather be outside at the lake in my kayak... Hope you have a great 4th of July weekend.