Erica's Stitches

I'm going to make a biscornu to go inside my sewing basket.  That's the lid of the basket on top. I'm using the red and green in the basket as a starting point for the colors. The darker linen makes it difficult.  Mediums tend to blend right into the background.  The picture makes it easier to see how the colors work together. There are actually four reds and I only need three.  The lightest and the darkest I'll definitely use.  Right now I'm leaning towards the lightest medium. I've decided I like the rest of the colors so I'm ready to start stitching.

Note:  There's a blizzard outside.  There is no decent light for a picture.  So, I went wild with Photoshop trying different brightness/contrast and hue settings.  The colors are in no way accurate. It is so much fun to start a new project.  This one was my last spring project.  I stitched a small sample (above) and then started the fabric prep for the real project.  That involved withdrawing almost 400 threads from a large piece of small count linen.  I finished the withdrawing the day before the Colorado class started.  Both projects were going on the same stretcher bars so I put it aside and started Colorado.  I never suspected Colorado would take so long to finish. Yes, that means Colorado is done.  I removed it from the stretcher bars a few days ago and put the Naversom linen on. I savored the start of the project.  One night I turned the raw edges in.  The second night I put it on the bars....

I recently posted pictures of my Striped Heart and Purple Mountain Majesties. Both are made with strips of wool appliqued down with embroidery.  It seemed like a good idea, but I didn't know how it would turn out. I made the heart first and used some painted aida cloth and multi-colored floss.  Then I added beads to fill in the gaps.  The whole stitching process went smoothly. When I went to finish it the aida was difficult to work with - hearts are a difficult shape with both inward and outward points and aida doesn't ease well.  I had liked the idea of the paint showing through but when I finished you could barely see it. So, I tried something different the next time around. I used needlepoint canvas.  I managed to completely cover it so none of the canvas was visible.  I liked working on the stiffer fabric.  But, sometimes I wanted to split the thread and other times I didn't so I was constantly switching between a tapestry needle...