A Forced Hiatus

No posting on projects since July. What have I been doing? Well I’ve suffered from eye allergies since moving to Texas. It isn’t the eyes so much as the skin around the eyes. I tolerated it, used allergy medicine, tried cortisone like the doctor suggested and experienced some relief but then it became intolerable and infected. I could only focus on my close up work for brief periods. Finally I went to an eye doctor. She changed my prescription for eye pressure and gave me an antibiotic for clearing up the infection. My eyes became better but the antibiotic blurred my eyesight I could see okay to drive but still couldn’t do close up work. Then finally they were okay, I was back to normal. That is until it flared up again. Then my son requested prayer for me at a healing service and now I’m doing fine.

I did manage to help my daughter and her friend make some banners for a baby shower. That was a fun day and it reminded me how much I enjoy sharing my crafting knowledge with others.

Next it was getting busy for my grandson’s first birthday with a few more banners including a name one. Don’t the lions look cute!

And of course he had to have a birthday outfit. My daughter requested a onsie with a tie and suspenders. I used a pattern from WinterPeach to make it. Then I did a second one. Good thing too since the first one

got extremely dirty from the cake smashing!

Finally I got busy on the TAST 2012 stitches. Seems like I get caught up and then I’m behind by three. Sometimes they are done but I just haven’t photographed them. So here are the latest ones I’ve done. (I’m still behind by three and of course there is a new one this week so I really have four to do.)

Algerian Eye

This was a new stitch for me and a challenge as I wasn’t sure how I wanted to do it. If you’ve been following me you know I’m doing most of them using my continuous line scribble technique. But occasionally a stitch just doesn’t work in that mode. I had a piece of fabric that I had done a design on using the zentangle type concept. Outer borders plus strings were done but that was as far as I had gotten. Maybe I could do the Algerian Eye in those spaces. I did them with a black thread.

Then I tried to continue doing them with color but the black was being lost so I finally did the colors as a satin stitch. Using pearl cotton I did the yellow, blue, and then green. Oh that is color mixing! So I continued with that adding the red and purple. Now I needed a red-violet. It took a while to find the right red-violet color so that delayed the finishing. But I’m happy with the results.

Additional stitches completed:

Cast On

Drizzle

Pekinese

Linked Double Chain

Knotted Buttonhole

Sheaf

Pistil

Now off to try and catch up once again. I’ve enjoyed TAST2012 but I’m not sure if I’ll do all of 2013. It has introduced me to new stitches and gotten me to work with stitches I’ve known but not used very much in my work.

The intent was to expand my portfolio of stitches to use on my crazy quilts but now that project is way behind too! So I’d better get busy. I’ll keep you posted!

Happy Stitching!

Rose

Watercolors

While working on an online class assignment I had to mix watercolors. Now I’m not a watercolorist. I love watercolor and may someday take a class but for now it’s an inexpensive set of watercolors. I mixed my paints and got the colors I wanted for my samples to match my source.

When I later went to do some design work I had to mix the colors again. I realized I should have made some notes the first time. Problem was the set was not labeled. The color names were on the back of the label but they didn’t even seem to be in the same order as the paint colors. So here’s what I did:

 First a good photo of the paint set.

Then I loaded the photo into Photoshop, assigned a number to each color, and printed the results. (You could use any program that will allow you to type over the photo.)

Now as I mix I can make a notation such as 12+4+1. So the next time I need more of that color I know which ones to use. I also list the numbers in order of most used to least used. Now I know this isn’t exact and there are tools and books to guide you through all of this but I’m not at that stage yet.

Happy Stitching!   Rose ♥

Introducing My BFF …

Well in the workroom that is! It’s my IPhone! Sorry should have said best helper rather than friend. Here’s why:

The Alarm – if I only want or can only spend say ½ hour on my project I can set the alarm to alert me when my time’s up.

The Stopwatch – if I want to track how long it takes me to do something I can use this tool. This is good because if I get interrupted I can pause it and resume it when I’m back on task.

The Apps – oh yes the apps that are available, some are free and some you have to purchase. I’ve already mentioned the Thread Tracker app I use. Here’s another good app called aNote (Awesome Note) for capturing ideas, organizing information and tracking projects plus a whole lot more. There are many more apps maybe some even better than the ones I’ve found.

Voice Memos – can’t forget this either. I’ve used it to capture a recipe someone is sharing (and I don’t have paper or can’t write fast enough!), record notes to myself as I’m working. Wish I would have remembered this one last night when I was mixing watercolor paints – lol!

And of course you can have music, surf the web, Oh wait! I forgot I should be working in my workroom.

OK back to work. Hopefully I’ll be back tomorrow with an update on my projects, until then …

Happy Stitching!

Rose