Erica's Stitches

After a slow start, the harebells have been giving a spectacular show this year. They have inspired me.  I've been photographing and drawing them. I've also been working on an appliqued harebell quilt. So far I've stitched four small samplers playing with different fabrics and stitching styles.  So far I'm happy with the results.  Even the backs are turning out nice. Now I'm working on some other flowers to applique.  And trying to decide how to put them all together.

Connecting Threads is having a fabric design contest so I decided to try designing fabric. It's easy to come up with ideas but hard for me to get them into the computer. The first design I used PCStitch, cross-stitch design software to come up with the jpeg.  It has a tiled appearance because of that but it is an interesting effect.  I can easily imagine a whole line of fabrics with this look.  This design is on page one of the Geometric/Decorative category . For my next design I experimented with Photoshop.   It is on page 3 of the Flowers category . It's been fun dreaming about being a fabric designer but there were so many beautiful designs submitted and they are all getting more votes then mine. I have more ideas and wish I could submit again knowing more about what to expect and how to generate the designs.  So, go out there and vote for your favorites so they will run the competition again.

chokecherry red barn and grass green harebell blue-violet and sunflower yellow

I have now completed my first Mug Rug swap through StitchMap.  Luckily I was 95% done when I hurt my hand. I waited till almost the last minute hoping for the best.  No such luck.  I taped my hand and finished the binding with no ill effects.  Still, I'm going back to not stitching for a while longer. Cathy seemed open to anything so I took the small stack of leftovers and one oops from my last quilt and started arranging.  There were too many for one mug rug but if I left one out I had just the right amount. I liked the S shape so that's the arrangement I chose.  I was going to do more embellishing, but there wasn't room.  I was expecting more margins.  So, I kept it simple with rick rack. The one left over flying goose did have margins, so for my mug rug (I couldn't mail it, it was too small to meet the swap requirements) I went crazy. Yep, two sizes of rick-rack and ribbons.  There will probably be more when it's do...