Planets Triptych

This week, I've been finishing another UFO.  It's a piece that I started in the summer.  I started working on it after seeing a piece that my friend Diana did based on Carol Ann Waugh's Stupendous Stitching. Later, after signing up for Carol's online class, I had set this aside and I did the large colourful piece called Spirals, Lines & Serendipity.

In an attempt to finish up yet another of the unfinished pieces that I have lying around (thanks Tracey for your challenge!), I pulled this out and got back to it.

Each of the individual panels are mounted on 8" X 8" canvas squares, and the intension is to hang them vertically as shown here.

I've called it Planets because of the various spheres and the batik patterns on them.

I'm Putting On My Own Spin...

...or should I say spiral to Carol Ann Waugh's idea for a 'stupendous stitch' piece.  As I mentioned in a previous post (see here) I signed up for the Stupendous Stitching online class and created my stitch bible.  The next step was to start playing...

I started to couch various cords and ribbons onto a wonderfully bright piece of batik. I love spirals, so I just had to add some of them to this piece.  Not following the instructions of having lines going from one edge to the other, but that's just the way I am.  When I play with line spirals just seem to appear...

Here's another picture after I've added a variety of the fancy stitches that my machine is capable of.  Notice that even more spirals seem to have appeared.  :o)

And this is where I start to really have fun...

I'm taking this in a much different direction than what Carol Ann Waugh does since although it's a fun idea, I have to make it truly my own piece.  It may take me a while to finish, but I'm really excited about the direction I'm going with this.  Stay tuned to see the finished piece...I will post it when done, but that won't be for a while...

Have an ARTfully great day and thanks for visiting!

Stitch Bible

For the last week or so, I've been stitching out all of the decorative stitches on my two sewing machines.  This is something I had planned to do when I got each machine.  But, best intensions being what they are, there were always more fun things to work on in the studio.  It took the inspiration of seeing a beautiful piece of fibre art done by my friend Diana to finally get me working on this.  Diana had made her piece following an online workshop called Stupendous Stitching by Carol Ann Waugh.

I decided to sign up for the online class and the first thing Carol suggests you do is make a stitch bible.  It really is a good idea because it is surprising how different the stitches actually look compared to their little drawings on the machine.

I stitched all of the stitches for my Husqvarna Lily 555 using purple variegated thread.  As I stitched, I labelled each with the corresponding number on the machine for easy reference later.  I used a fine point Sharpie and just hand wrote them.

I used a variety of background 'page colours' just to keep it interesting as I stitched.  These 'pages' are stabilized so that the decorative stitches come out properly.

I then switched to pink thread for my Husqvarna Sapphire 750.  The funny thing is that I decided to use the purple and pink because they really aren't my colours.  The ironic thing, however, is that whenever I refer to this stitch bible I'll be looking at those colours.  'sigh'


Once I finished all of the stitches, I put two pages back to back and did a simple zig zag stitch around the outside to secure the pages (and hide the bobbin stitches).

For the cover, I decided to use some fun lettering from my Letter Love class back in February (look familiar Joanne?). Here's one link to a post with similar lettering if you're interested.  I love how well these lend themselves to machine applique and stitch!

To be able to quickly find the stitches for each machine, I put ribbon tabs on the first page of each section, using the same colour as the stitching.

While I was over at the sewing machine doing all of this, our cat was enjoying her new favourite spot on my new desk.  She's loving that spot in front of the window as much as I do!

I still need to get some grommets so I can 'bind' the pages with a couple of binder rings and then it'll be finished and ready to use.