progress on Art Nouveau Iris

Finished the flower and now will do the leaves.....edge of flower still a bit fuzzy from cutting it out but that will disappear when I applique it to the block....... It looks great on the block....

I confess I'm addicted......

Yes, I've been totally addicted to type ever since I was in grade school... Do any of you remember as a child writing and embellishing your name in as many fancy ways you could think of.... Well I'm still doing it.... When I was going to graphic design school I loved every typography class and there were a lot of them.... Now type design is almost all done with typography software and if I had it I'd get nothing else done.... Even still I spend way too much time looking at type fonts at http://dafont.com. Almost all the fonts are free to download and there are thousands.. Most are done by students... Tip: set for 50 a page and sort by popularity...Then you only have to see the first 5-6 pages in a category...



I was thinking I wanted to liven up my header and went looking for a fun font....well now I have to choose from about seven I downloaded last night... I already have almost 400 fonts on my computer (I said I was addicted). One day when my hands are too sore to stitch I'll make a choice... In the meantime this font is called "blossom."

The long and short of it......

On the Crazy Adventure Yahoo Group we have been talking about shading with thread. I have been easing myself into doing more and more... I'm just starting on the iris for Cathy's art nouveau block.. One nice thing about having about 50 year's of cotton floss collection is I have any amount of colors to choose from... Doesn't the dress on the silkie look like an iris?

Challenge Block 2010 - progress

Last night I tried to print the silkie and the printer kept jamming and chewing up the photo transfer sheets...five of them. I was tired and it has been a hectic day so I just gave up.... But tonight I tried again and it printed first try. It must have been all the good karma with Wil working today... I framed it with some ticky-tacky antique gold braid...the kind you see bins of after Christmas.. Tip: Always stitch down the outside edge first and then you can ease in the inner edge..



Here you see the beaded fan and one of the peacocks pinned in place...Now I can start doing the branches and the cherry blossoms... I'm glad the peacock blends in with the block and doesn't detract from the silkie...





With the magic of a paint brush in photo editing you can get an idea what it's going to look like once I get the branches and blossoms around the frame... The gold braid will show but not much.....

I got far enough on this that it is just a matter of dyeing some ribbon for the blossoms and I can work on it in bits now for awhile... I've stopped working on my BJP for a while because my hands are sore.... I really expect Cathy's Art Nouveau blocks to be in the mail either tomorrow or Tuesday and I will start right away.

Meet Wil!

Wil fills my bill for both "hired help" and "handy man." Wil and I are a match made in heaven.... he is eager to earn money for a car... and I have enough work to help him meet his goal.. He is polite, hardworking and, best of all, intelligent. He only lives about 1 1/2 miles away and is going into his senior year of high school on a career track to become a fireman. His hobby is magic. He and a friend perform at parties, malls etc. No tattoos or body piercings. He would probably be embarrassed if I called him delightful...but he is..

The last large greenhouse was badly damaged with all the snow in 08/09 and today he and I started the repairs... He's already helped twice before tearing down the lath sales area and building 2 new feeding stations for the sheep... I'll just hold my breath he doesn't find a better job....

By the way did I mention that Wil's last name is Powers....