Goldwork redux, and flowers and vases. Also some plants.

Here is where I've gotten on my Benton and Johnson Lily kit. Actually, all I have left is some detail on the flowers and filling in the leaves with bright check "beads". Bright check is wire that has been bent into a square spring shape, and it is flat on the outside, so it really reflects light marvelously well.

Here is a picture from before I finished sewing down the leather flowers, with the check wire on top of the piece. That wiggly, squirmy thing is absolutely wonderful stuff. My daughter says it is very fun to hold it in the air and gently jiggle it, as it transmits a buzzing feeling to your fingers, so of course I had to try that. Plus, it absolutely multiplies light, sending sparkles everywhere. And sadly, what you do with it is to cut it into short lengths and sew it down like beads. Well, that actually gets us to why I stopped where I did. I thought I had my wire cutters with me, but I didn't, so got stalled yesterday, as I will not use my good embroidery scissors to cut wire. I was down at my sister's house, and she gave me a beech tree for my yard, and has promised a sassafras tree once she figures out where her colony of them is. I'm starting her a couple of trees from my yard, including the native persimmon tree, of which I have a female in the yard, so usually have a zillion seedlings to choose from.

I have moved my tropical trees outside now, as we should no longer be in danger of getting frost. Here are their pictures...

This is Granny Weatherwax. She is about eighteen inches tall, and her leaves are about six inches long. She had a little trouble with Marie the cat again, after I took her off the bookshelf she was on. Marie loves avocado leaves. Weird.

 This is the pink plumeria. The flower buds survived the winter, and I have moved her to the porch and given her some water.

Lastly, here is the lemon tree. Nero, in complete contrast to the normal run of cats, who allegedly dislike citrus intensely, liked the chew on her leaves. In front of her, in the two boxes, are dormant blueberry bushes. Not quite sure exactly where they are going to go, probably in what I call the "Way Back Yard, which is up a very steep hill with a staircase from the rest of the back yard. I also have a pair of raspberry bushes that I have not yet placed. One of them has flowers, so the raspberry loving daughter will be very happy.

 These are the vases that I have done for the quilt. They fabric is a square around 10 inches to a side, some a bit taller, some a bit narrower, but all will be trimmed to the same dimensions when I am ready to sew the quilt together. Three of them are from a chart titled Vase Row, only I have been stitching them separately so that I could use them with the flowers.

This vase is one of three I am doing that came from Mary Hickmott's New Stitches magazine. Being roughly the same dimensions as the other vases, I decided to incorporate them to make the numbers a bit more even. Stylistically, they are both different and similar, and I think they look nice together.

 

Another vase. This is the first vase I stitched. Not sure why I remember that, but I do.

Blue and white vase. The one I am working on now has more blue and white, and also has a spray of flowers in the vase. The other two from Vase Row are a turquoise vase with a coral pink flower and a black vase with a white flower.

 This is one of the fabrics I am using as sashing. this print is going around the vases. The oranges and golds of the flowers look very nice with the vases, and echo the golden brown in some of the vases.

 Tree Peony. And yes, it does kind of look like there is a bit missing from one side of the flower, but that is the way the designer did it. Um. Yes, several people have mentioned that to me, why do you ask?

Lotus. This is one I finished recently, and when I was doing it I was very unsure about the greens, mostly whether they would look nice together. One was more blue green the other tended toward olive. They worked well together though.

This one is Tiger Lily. My brother's in-laws went to Taiwan, and sent me a birthday card that they got there. The picture on the card is very similar to this one, which is why I started collecting the kits in the first place. Also, they are drop dead gorgeous, so there are two reasons.

 This is Chrysanthemum. The photo with the kit is much lighter yellow than it ended up being, which I was happy about. I love the spider mums, which is what these look like, because of the long curly petals they have.

 This one it titled Clematis, and I think I have done all the yellow flowers now. This is the one I was working when I took a very long break from cross stitching.

 Iris, and the only one of these which I varied from the kit contents. I really hated the change from the darkest purple to the next color, so I added an intermediate color. The top iris has the darkest purple with my intermediate and the next purple, for the two bottom flowers the darkest color is the intermediate.

This is Wisteria. Everyone likes this one the best, and it is the second flower I did. It really turned out well, but the metallic gold backstitching on it was tricky. I did a lot of what I learned is called Holbein or double running stitch, but which I call Bilbo stitch, and fans of The Hobbit will, I hope, get a giggle when I explain that it is because you go there and back again. This is all the flowers I have done, I still have Morning glory (blue violet), Quince, (orange), Poppy (red), Magnolia (pink), and Camellia (dark pink-red). I also have five vases left, and yes, I did that on purpose, so I can alternate flowers and vases. I am working on a blue and white vase right now, but have not yet taken a picture.

This is the fabric I am using for the sashing for the flowers. I think it looks like Gingko leaves, or maybe cilantro. One of those. It also looks absolutely fabulous with the flowers, so I have high hopes that the quilt will turn out well. Maybe I'll take a page from my sister's book, and get Mum to sew the top together in stages...

THE Magpie

Picture of beaded bead and Granny Weatherwax

Here is a picture of the beaded bead I am working on.

 I thought at first that it looked kind of like a frog's eyes, but later started thinking it looked a bit like a corset, at this point. Um. A friend of mine calls me terminally naive, and she may be right, but I'm getting better. Anyway, the little bumps are going to go all the way round, and then a row of slightly bigger bumps round the middle, and a second row of the small bumps for the last row. Then I add crystals between the bumps, and work some rows to tighten the ends, and I'll be finished. Appearances to the contrary, the yellowish beads are actually ceylon white pearl.

 Here is the little pot of beads I am using to stitch the bead up with. Pretty, no? Ceylon white pearl, Delica 24 kt Rose Gold, iris blue Charlottes, Capri blue 4mm Swarovski bicones, capri blue luster size 11 seed beads and three cut size 12 capri blue AB seed beads.

Here are two pictures of my avocado tree. I started her in August, and in November noticed that she had sent up a shoot, but that something had happened to it. So I brought her out from under the table, where I had placed her so that she could grow undisturbed, and added some water in hopes that she was still alive, She responded by sending up a second shoot, which got to six inches tall, and which one of the cats promptly bit off. I figured the tree had possibly gone to that big forest in the sky, but on the off chance she hadn't I put a glass chimney over her, to protect her from voracious herbivorous felines. Well, about a week later, I noticed leaflets poking out from the chopped off stems, and so she acquired a name, Granny Weatherwax, who had a sign she would hold when she was out borrowing animal minds, "I Aten't Dead Yet", so that no one would bury her by mistake. Well, the avocado tree "Aten't Dead Yet".

THE Magpie