Erica's Stitches

I made my first pattern based on a scanned photo with the help of software.  This hardy columbine was burned to the ground, quickly grew back and was flowering within a month. The first step was to crop the photograph and brighten the colors.  After importing into  PC Stitch , I spent hours tweaking the number of stitches and colors trying to come up with a stitchable pattern.   The software couldn't deal with the center of the flower (the yellow part) at all and I had to manually fix it.  Except for the yellow, the colors all came from the software and they are perfect.  Every shade of purple I have was used. With too few colors it was an unrecognizable blob and with too many colors the pattern was impossible.  I ended up manually reducing the colors until I thought I could handle stitching it.  I was tempted to give up, but I loved how the pattern was turning out so I kept at it. I think that there are still too many color cha...

Starting over means re-doing some of my projects.  A lot of the projects that I've done I don't want to do over.  Some turned out not to be the worth effort and others were not fun at all.  There's also a feeling of "been there, done that".    I've also discovered that I enjoy the act of creating more than the results sometimes. My first do over was this penstemon I designed a while ago.  It's small and simple and only 2 colors.  I'll eventually be restitching many of my own designs.  Luckily, I still have the charts even if I no longer have the item or pictures of the item. My second do over is actually actually stitching something for the third time! After the second stitching, I'd had enough.  But, I was given the 2010 Just Cross Stitch Ornament issue with the pattern and that was a sign that the reindeer needed to be stitched again.  Hopefully, that's it. My last do over represents all the EGA seminars that...

Kaffe Fassett started his autobiography "Dreaming in Color" like this: As I set in my studio surrounded by my creative material - fabrics, yarns, paper prints, shelves of books, and collections of decorative objects - I can't help but reflect on the path that led me here. In mid-June, after the Black Forest Fire, I was looking at the remains of almost everything and I've been following a different path ever since.  All the sudden the blog turned out to be unimportant.  But, it also turns out to be all I have left of some items.  My laptop survived, but none of the backups.  So I have some recent pictures. Because of amazingly generous family and friends (and friends of friends and strangers), I've started recollecting creative materials and I need to keep track of what I make.  So, here are some of my first steps after the fire. At first, I was too numb and shocked to do much, but slowly, I've started stitching and being creative.  I still don't ...

Another friend has a new kitchen so I had an excuse to make some more practice potholders. The kitchen is far away and the information I got is black appliances and a copper backsplash.  I didn't want to make potholders that looked like Halloween so I asked if turquoise was OK.  I planned on a few small patches but the turquoise took over. I'm now making the potholders 7 inches square.  The insulated batting is 22 inch wide and this uses the most of it.  I like fabric scraps, but there's not as much you can do with insulated batting scraps. This limits the patterns that can be used.  I found this pattern in a book and, after 2 blocks, I really like it.  I pulled out all my black, blackish, orange, coppery and peachy fabric.  I was really tempted to keep making more of these blocks with the same color scheme.  I resisted.  I have a feeling that if would have kept on going I would end up with 4 blocks that wou...

Here are some scraps from 2 different fabric projects I have going on.  They almost made it into the trash but they looked so good together.  I think they are going to be turned into a potholder. They need a tan background and I don't have any tan fabric.  White didn't work.  My lights were all too yellow or too blue.  I haven't made it to the fabric store. So, yesterday I made a batch of strong tea and dyed some muslin.  It's the perfect background color. These scraps are from a different project.  An unfortunate math error resulted in blocks being an inch too big and I had to trim.  These scraps are also to interesting to toss. I'm thinking of a modern looking potholder or smaller wall hanging, depending on how they sew up. These don't look as good on the dyed muslin.  But, white may work. Stay tuned to see if I actually turn them into something.

Ah, the joys of an assortment of bulbs.  As soon as one color tulip fades away, another starts blooming. Right now these red and yellow tulips are blooming and also some lemon yellow ones are just beginning to flower. For the Spring Garden SAL I've started stitching.  After doing the center motif about 3 times and not liking the result, I switched fabric.  The linen I originally chose isn't suited for blackwork. This fabric is more even and tightly woven and the stitches don't disappear.  I also changed the colors a bit.  I swapped out the bright red for a more subdued color (which coincidentally are about the same shade as the tulips now blooming).  I've also made a few tweaks to the pattern as I go along. I'm notorious for not liking hearts (sorry) and there are 2 hearts coming up.  I haven't decided if I'll stitch them or not.  The instructions include graph paper so I have a feeling I'll be doing some dood...

I've been dyeing things blue.  A t-shirt that I don't like (after all, I can't make it worse) and some T-shirt yarn  that I cut out over a year ago.  I've learned one thing.  It's easier to dye the shirts and then cut the yarn.  The yarn looks much nicer now, but it was a horrible tangled mess for a while. Since I had plenty of dye I also decided to dye some threads.  To make it easy, I left the thread on the card (no tangles).  When I took the thread off the card I love the way the card took the dye. The dye seeped underneath the threads leaving behind a wonderful pattern.  I'm looking forward to making blue things.