Tagged

I have been tagged by the very talented doll artist, Jenny, of Wonders of Whimsy. Thank you Jenny!
I am to list 5 things that keep my mind healthy and my life balanced. Well, I hate to really do that because people usually get so offended by religion, especially orthodox religion. But my faith is the thing that keeps me balanced. I won't go into my daily norms of the faith, I will just say that I make a sincere effort to keep God at the center of my life throughout the day. It is not easy, and very often I fail, but I get up and try again every single day!
I am not going to tag anyone, if you would like to play along please just send me a reply and I would love to go and read your answer. Happy day everyone!!~Annie
Here is my progress on Sharon Cohen's "Her Majesty's Glove":

My new focus piece

Now that I have finished The Marriage of Minds, I am focusing on 2 pieces. Toccata 1, which I started over the weekend, and The Golden Age Sampler.I have been a little stumped on the GAS because I have to do detached buttonhole stitch, and it is tricky. I got some good advice at my sampler guild on Sunday. A lady there suggested I look up the stitch in several different sources, because when you read how to do it from different explanations, sometimes it suddenly becomes clear. So I did that. I looked it up in 2 different books, and 2 online sources.There is a wonderful tutorial on Jeanne's blog here, and another one from Sharon B. here. So I plunged forward and got quite a bit done. I found that my biggest problem was being able to see. So I will be doing the rest of this by daylight, and with the highest magnification I have, which I think is 4.0. I wish I could find reading glasses with a higher magnification. I don't like to use those mag-eyes, but I may have to break down and get some.

So here is my progress on Toccata 1. I planned to do 2 motifs a night, thinking I could finish this in a month. But surprise surprize!! I finished 5 the first night and 6 1/2 the next!!So hopefully I will continue to zip through this piece. It is really great fun, I am enjoying it very much!



And here is Golden Age from Sharon Cohen:

And as for my bread and butter work, this is a crazy quilt heart pillow which will be up for sale at ebay very soon! LOVE these surface stitches!!

TAST week 2

Buttonhole stitch. Check out this gorgeous hand dyed perle #5 from Stef Francis-it is delectable!!! There are so many scrumptious threads here at Joggles, do check it out.

Whoopie!! Happy dance with me!!

I'm finished!!!




The Marriage Of Minds
Drawn Thread
125 wide by 415 long
32ct Natural Linen Silk by Wichelt
Needlepoint Inc. silk and Gloriana

Take a Stitch Tuesday

Here is my progress after week 1 of the TAST challenge. This is a challenge from a few years ago, so I am just doing this on my own. I hope to end up with a sampler(or several) of many different stitches to refer to when I design. Week 1 was herringbone stitch, and all of these rows are variations on that one stitch. I used Watercolors, Desert Sunset on 32 count Belfast linen.

January goals

I haven't posted any goals for a long time, so I will start out the new year with some goals for January.

1. complete Marriage of the Minds by Drawn Thread(my WIP focus piece)
2. complete model stitching on pink-brown silk sampler(new design)
3. begin Toccata 1(this was going to be my New Years Day start but I decided to finish MotM first since I am so close)
4. At least 3 more stitch examples of my Take a Stitch Tuesday sampler
5. Do finishing on pinkeep design for February release
6. Do a daily strand on Golden Age sampler by Sharon Cohen as new WIP focus piece
7. gather supplies for Grateful Heart sampler by Sharon Cohen(in Jan/Feb JCS issue)
8. work on Child of Spring sampler as time allows
9. stitch biscornu design for guild by 10th

I'm sure these goals are too lofty as usual, but one can dream! Of course this is all worked around my regular dollmaking job which is tons of hand stitching too!

Here is my progress on Marriage of the Minds, almost done!!!

And here is a peek at the silk flowers I did for the back of Hannah's hair! She is at auction for one more day.

Hannah and her heart!

This is Hannah. She is my newest doll creation. I have been just obsessed with embroidery in all its forms lately,(well not just lately, actually for years!) but I HAVE to continue to make dolls, because that it the majority of my business and I don't want to loose everything I have worked so hard for, for the past 10 years. SO, I have decided the solution is to work my embroidery into my dollmaking in a more obvious fashion.

So here is my first attempt to that end. Hannah has actually been sitting on my work table for almost 2 months while I was stumped as to what to actually do with her. I didn't really have a vision for her for a long time. But then I began reading Sharon B.'s blog and decided to do the Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge on my own. I began a little sampler and I am working through all of the stitches, and eventually I will have a great long sampler of stitches to refer to-such a cool idea! Thank you Sharon B.!

Anyhow I began looking around Sharon' site, which is called Pyn Tangle, but used to be called In a Minute Ago, and I became really inspired by all of the crazy quilt stuff! And I realized that even though it is only Jan.2, dollmakers are already doing St.Valentine's Day, so there I finally had my theme for Hannah. I had GREAT fun embroidering her little heart pillow, and I will certainly be doing more of these. I can think of all kinds of ways to incorporate crazy quilting into dollmaking, and I will be trying them all in the near future. Yay! Its great to have a new direction!

Hannah is going on Ebay tonight in a 3 day only auction. So if she steals your heart don't hesitate, she'll be gone in a flash!