I gave myself permission to play with FMQ yesterday on a piece of hand-dye that I used for the previous piece. Partly inspired by Bonnie McCaffery's vidcast of Larkin Van Horn, I let my stitching waffle about where it wanted. First separating the larger areas of colour division, then infilling with what seemed a good idea. I did garnet stitch in 3 different threads, and prefer the flat, darker thread top left to the variegated and the lighter one bottom left of right pansy. I did a candle flame fill on the light area to the left bottom, and that worked well. Had some problems with a 30 wt cotton thread. Did not do well with a 90 topstitch needle, but better with a microtex. Also bottom line in the bobbin was too fine and a cheap linty white thread worked better. After I did a few amoeba in some green areas, I 'saw' some pansies in the lighter yellow, so did them with a few lines of straight stitch and then zigzag in two colours and widths. They are quite puffy, like they want some trapunto. I didn't like the large blobs of light grey, so mixed up some shiva paintsticks and daubed very lightly with various greens. Shadowed in some stems. Not sure that was a good idea, but hard to undo. So now what? Add some sheer ribbon for the stems? Add some French knots for the centres? Beads? Or just file it as a learning piece?
I have Shirley Goodwin and Lyn Winter coming to meet each other at coffee time. They are both tutors from Rangiora going to Symposium in March. Very different styles and different ladies. Wonder how they will get on?
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