Ta-da! Lesage piece finish....

This is my "ta-da!!!" moment.  My Lesage piece of tambour embroidery on black silk organza that was started in February is finished.  My husband took this picture in our living room so don't mind the mess that can be seen through it.   I only wish I had worked it faster, but life kinda gets in the way.

It's snipped off the frame now and is drying because once a piece like this is complete, a glue solution must be lightly added to the back to prevent threads from coming undone or fraying.  It seals the piece.  The bottom squiggles and doodles on the piece are practice areas that were unworked before I started the main portion.  Since I already knew the basics of tambour embroidery before I went to embroidery school at Lesage in Paris, we left them mostly blank.  Now I plan to cut them off and use them in smaller pieces.

Tuesday mid-day I am flying from Richmond to Sarasota, Florida, to visit my parents and their sweet little dog for a week.  I'm so excited to be going!  Here is the beach near my parent's house.  This was taken when I went with my husband to visit them over Christmas.  It is considerably hotter there now!
Another part of my trip is taking my finished tambour embroidery pieces to the art centers in the area, to try and generate interest in forming a beginner's class I can teach later this year.  Wish me luck!

Ahhh, clear water, sand dollars, white sand beaches, dophins, manatees, plus spend a week with my folks searching out the thrift shops and used bookstores!  I can't wait to get back to one of my favorite spots on earth.

My favorite flower, the hibiscus, taken in my dad's back yard, Christmas day 2011.  Beautiful!  

bumble bee rooster & other wip updates

A few months ago I got this little rug hook kit from Lori Brechlin's shop in Amherst.  I'm sorry to not give credit to the designer but typically enough, I can't find the bag it came in or my receipt.   Anyway, got it home and finally took it out of the stash pile a few weeks ago.  Rug hooking is pretty new to me and I've never hooked on wool before, which this is, and my rug hook needle turned out to be one for fine rug hooking.  Another obstacle that made me put it back in the box for a while was the fact that there was no photo to guide me with colors.  The kit included wool strips that were wrapped in a bundle-- one for background, one for rooster, but there wasn't a photo for the finished rooster so I am guessing, and now, tossing colors I didn't like and using cut strips from my wool stash.  A new primitive rug hook I got at VA Rugfest a few weeks ago has made me pick up the project again but I am still stymied with color decisions.  Agh!  This shouldn't be hard, right?

Since my previous hook didn't do anything but pull the wool background and shred the wool strips, I switched to the rug punch.  So the outline and rooster head are made with punching but the strips were too wide for the punch so with an outline to guide me, I turned it over and am now hooking.  I've looked at a bunch of rooster photos online and thought yellow would look good in the tail.  Maybe not, as my husband proclaimed it the "bumble bee rooster".  What do I know, I've never lived on a farm.

But I really like how the head turned out, except for one strip that popped out on top.  Whoops.  And I like the green tail but the bumble bee yellow/black has to go.

Possibilities for colors are above.  More mixes of green for the tail?  Orange in the tail?  Orange breast?  Hmmm...  orange feet, maybe.   Going with the flow is not my strong suit...  Stay tuned on this one.

More up my alley- progress on the Lesage tambour piece.  I've gone crazy pants on this piece in the last day and it is almost done.  This is a side view looking down on my frame from where I sit.  All the chenille leaves are completed except for one (you can kind of see it on the far right, the one that still needs stitched) and all goldwork & tube beads are finito.  The end is in sight in a day or two on this piece and then it's coming off the frame and something else is going in.  I'm anxious for my "Ta-da!!" moment here.  It has many tiny parts that needed stitched, and is fairly equal measure tambour and straight embroidery, plus I had the challenge of finding a suitable metallic gold thread that is a different brand that what I got in Paris, after I ran out of the Parisian metallic gold.  That thread I have to order and shipping is 23 euros, just for shipping!  So a wait is in order and after a city-wide search for the perfect color match and durability test, I found it in the most unexpected thread-- Coats & Clark.  Inexpensive and perfect and super strong.   With this thread, I finished up the stems and one gold leaf.  I can't tell the difference, so I am excited to have discovered this.  They had a number of metallic colors, too, at Joann Fabric.

Back to the rooster, though.  I really want to get this one finished.

A rose is a rose...

This rose was the June 2011 class tambour embroidery piece when I studied with Bob Haven at the University of Kentucky.  Several pieces of the rose and one rose leaf were constructed independent of the main embroidery. In other words, it was all stitched with the tambour hook and then several parts were cut out of the fabric, web fused and stitched down to create a three dimensional look to the piece.  Unfortunately I did not document that process of the piece.  The leaf on the top right has a small line of green jewels tambour stitched down.  During this class is when I learned the infamous pulled stitch.  The green cotton thread just under the flower  and the light red cotton above the pink sequins on the rose are all pulled stitch- easy once it is mastered but difficult to learn at first.

A close up of the bud.

 A close up of one of the leaves.  This was quite fun to stitch up.  Bob's class is again in June for master class but I am not sure I am going to be able to go since the Royal School of Needlework has a class in illuminated lettering in goldwork and silk shading that I have my eye on quite seriously.  What to do...

Here is a lovely shot from our apartment window of the lovely trees in full Springtime blossom.  We love walking our beautiful neighborhood this time of year, even though it is unseasonably warm, like everywhere else, but the flowers!  A house near our building has my favorite daffodil and I don't know if they are subspecies or what but the blossoms are HUGE.  It's all I can do to keep myself under control to pick some and run home with them.  Next week I hope to have alot more progress to show on my Lesage piece. I got quite a bit done last night.  Also I will show a finish on another of my favorites- rug punch needle- finished into a needlebook.  Not enough hours in the day...