Snake, Pink Garden, Jedi

Oh, how can it be a whole week gone by since I returned from visiting my daughter's family in Maine. Daughter and her husband were very busy with work, so I mostly hung out with my 6-year old granddaughter, Lorelei. What a pleasure. She is an enthusiastic Star Wars fan at the moment. Here she is in Jedi costume. I put a video of her singing "My, my, this here Anakin guy" on facebook if you're inclined to view it.

While there, I finished this crocheted snake for my great-grand nephew Kyan. Crochet is such an easy traveling project compared to cq embroidery. The snake is about a foot (30.5 cm) long.

I have also worked on my Pink Garden wall hanging. The light pink flowers on the left are from instructions in J. Marsha Michler's Motifs for Crazy Quilting; the button flowers above them are vintage buttons from Accessories of Old (now in Frederick, Maryland) and the darker pink flowers on the right are from instructions on Honey Bee Bliss website by Mellissa.

Now this project is not easy to work on while traveling. I need to get some portable ones in progress. I have an idea to make an ABC book on values. For instance, "A is for All of Us. Aren't we awesome!" I have some fabrics cut into 10 inch squares for this and a few ideas sketched in a notebook, but it's not ready for traveling yet.

I have a fair amount of travel on my plate this summer, including a train trip to California for the Embroidery Guild of America National Seminar in San Francisco. That begins September 5, but I'm leaving in August to visit a friend near San Diego and spend a few days in Long Beach, California beforehand. I love traveling by train, especially in a sleeper. Lots of needleworking gets done. At seminar, I'm taking two 2-day workshops in stumpwork by Lynn Payette. One is on a variety of techniques and the second is "California Poppies." There is a picture and discription of it on page 26 of the seminar brochure. I'm looking forward to this. Somehow my interest is tending toward 3-dimensional work as evidenced by the Pink Garden.

Design Breakthrough: Pink Garden Wallhanging

This design has been in my head for probably two years and I've been collecting things to use on it. It will be a wall hanging for the wall beside my big picture window where I have no drapes. I intend it to be "encrusted"  with 3-D pink flowers to blend colors with my sofa upholstery. I was having trouble with placing a garden path in the design. I couldn't find a route for it I liked. Here's the breakthrough: there will be no path! I like my vision of it now. I've pieced the background. It doesn't look very pink yet. Wait for the flowers.

The piece measures 24x48 inches. As I look at the picture. I see the background is skewed, but I think that will be corrected by the encrusting. The dark part on the upper right and top is mean to indicate a tree branch which will support dangling wisteria. The brown garden bed on the right is smocked, American style. That took a very long time to do. I used a pattern from Artistic Quiltmaker, 1999 by David K Small. (His books are self-published and are no longer in print as his interest has moved on to art quilting and drawing.) And, yes, the bottom of the Pink Garden is not straight. I intend to make a beaded fringe which will be longer on the left to make a straight bottom of the fringe.

I'm currently blessed with a snowstorm yesterday providing two days of free time during which I've made progress on some of the flowers. More on that later.