Erica's Stitches

A whole 10 years had passed since my original Prospector's and I wanted to do another flower sampler to mark the anniversary.  The theme of Prosepector's this year was "Trees" and the seminar was in Boise and called "Les Bois Adventure".  I wanted to stitch flowers and I wanted to follow the theme.  So, to make the design work, I came up with the title "Les Fleurs des Bois" - the flowers of the woods.  That settled, I needed to pick the flowers to include so I pulled out all my flower identification books and started doodling and sketching.  I had more flowers than I could use.  The flowers I ended up using are all bright and colorful: Shooting Star - This is a flower I saw first in flower books as a child.  It wasn't until I traveled to the right part of Colorado that I saw them.  Shooting Star has always been one of my favorites.  Unfortunately, it doesn't grow on the plains and foothills where I live.  It is in th...

The 2008 Region Seminar was in Denver and the theme was Colorado Collage.  I had been seeing numerous articles about quilted postcards and ATC (Artist Trading Cards) and collect old postcards from Colorado so that made the decision on what to do for this Prospectors an easy decision. I set myself a few rules: 1) It's OK to leave some canvas empty 2) Don't worry about raw edges 3) Don't repeat techniques And I set out to have some fun and use up some of the supplies I've been collecting.  I think this was my favorite Prospectors because I got to be really creative.  I started by sketching the designs and painting the canvas (so it wasn't just white canvas showing through) The first postcard was Colorado and featured Columbines.  I had some indigo dyed linen which formed the blue part of the flower.  It was very fragile and had to be couched down.   The rest of the petals are some white wool felt.  For the words I couched down some red wo...

Here's one of my favorite quilts. The blocks are all made from the same pattern, but by varying the placement of colors and values the appear entirely different. When I was trying to come up with a Prospector's idea I decided that I wanted to combine quilting and cross-stitch. I started with the same pattern and played with the colors in a different way.  I don't think this design has lived up to it's full potential and I have some ideas for re-doing it.  That's something for the future.

For this prospectors, I tried something different.  I had beeen working on a class, of various techniques, where my work was being evaluated.  The front needed to look as nice as the back and the stitches needed to be properly lined up. In response to that I went totally free form.  My cross stitches cross every which way.  Sometimes I go over 2, 3 or 4 threads depending on how I feel.  I picked and changed colors at random, keeping each window in it's own color scheme, with a touch of contrast. I added a quick quilted border and was done. This has become one of my favorite methods of designing - picking up needle and floss and stitching to see what happens.  It doesn't work all the time and I have come up with some different designs this way.

It's time to start my first design as part of the Prospector's challenge. The first decision is what to design.  I've always liked wildflowers, especially those from the the Rocky Mountains.  When I was growing up we'd trek from Ohio to Colorado and Wyoming.  For entertainment I was given a flower identification book.  I would research in the car and then look for some of the exotic flowers when we arrived at our campsite.  So, flowers would be my subject.  And band samplers, which consist of bands of patterns, where popular so that was my format. That's the easy part.  So, I set out with graph paper to come up with the flowers for the bands.  The Columbine that I stitched years ago was bigger than life.  Each flower was maybe 20 x 20 or 30 x 30 squares.  That's alot of detail to make up one flower. I was making smaller flowers, some remembered from those early trips - harebell, fireweed and indian paintbrush.  ...