Orange Rug Yarn Musings

I finished my Beginning Drawn Thread GCC today. The third band was really challenging, actually, the whole piece was challenging. I'm glad my group got an extension because as we were getting close to the deadline, I thought I could get it done on time if I had to, but the third band took a lot longer than I'd expected. I'm really happy with how this turned out and how much I learned.

These are actually scans, so if you follow the links, you can actually look at them in life size. It continues to amaze me how well scanning needlework can work. You can see my other post on this project here.

Although I am planning to work the color scheme each month because I think that will help me grow more as an artist, I am inspired by this month's theme of "What are you old enough to remember." In a fiber arts sense, the thing that comes to mind is how fabric and embroidery materials were available at (an ever decreasing number of) department stores and variety stores. Now, even Walmart is cutting out it's fabric and craft section and places like JoAnn fabrics are focusing on crafts and framing. At any rate, for the February Take It Further challenge piece, I want to do an iron-on embroidery pattern (or more likely a tracing of one.) But I'm having a very hard time deciding what I want to do. I have some transfers I like, but there are also so many great ones on the web. Such as the ones at Vintage Transfer Finds. I also like some of the images used as challenges at Hand Embroidery Group Projects. Of course, I need to find one that fits with my color scheme too. Anyway, I haven't started stitching, I'm just taking too much time looking at different possible designs on the web and in my stash.d

I don't think I've blogged about it, but my travel project since October as been Winterspring, a Hardanger EGA GCC (Group Correspondence Course) by Judith D. Gulick. I finished it tonight. My camera batteries need to charge, so this is a picture I took with my cell phone of the nametag adapted to a dog tag for Hero. For the course you have to do the nametag or scissors fob (in addition to the needle book, thimble keep and scissors keep.) I choose the scissors fob, but then when I got Hero, I realized that the color I was using was a good match for his nose (it's DMC 778.) Plus, this is a very fun project, so I made the nametag for him. Anyway, it's done! Even the finishing. I'll get photos or a scan of the finished project tomorrow (or something!)

It's February in Australia, so the colors for this month's challenge are announced! I printed them and stopped at Joann on my errands tonight to match them to DMC colors. The closest matches (per my printer and the horrible lights at Joann) are DMC 162, 926, 3770, 3799, and 436.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet, but hey, it's still January here!