Green Garden Round Robin

Well here it is the middle of February and I have not done much of anything lately. I am not as sick as I was, but still seem to have a nagging cough and tire out so easy.

At any rate, just wanted to post a quick note about the green garden round robin I am in through my Yahoo group. I am getting Karen's block ready to mail off so snapped a photo of my part of the wardrobe, so to speak, for her nakid block. I do hope she likes what I did. This round robin is called a color study. It is both challenging and frustrating. Challenging because it has to all be done in green, trying new stitches and techniques as well. Frustrating because it has to all be done in green, trying new stitches and techniques. It is so hard to find the supplies I want, when I want them. I have been to several craft shops in town and have finally gathered together a bit of a working stash. Not the most ideal, but an acceptable one. Especially after being very disappointed to find that the rather large collection of what I thought was silk ribbon is actually organza ribbon. I worked with some of it anyway however to make a rose out of, believe you would call it a spider web rose. I wasn't thrown in to orbit by the results, but am mildly pleased.

The patch or motif that I stitched is supposed to look like an archway in a garden. Beads were used to make the arch. It seems that at least locally, only two shades of green are used to make beads. Christmas green, and a bit darker green. The leaves on the arch are made of silk ribbon and done using a ribbon stitch. My first use of this (besides the practice piece) and I probably should have added a few more. One set of flowers was done using a looped straight stitch, another first for me, and french knots done in floss worked in the middles. I really liked the way these turned out, but they were very time extensive. Here is closer look, although for some reason the camera lost some green along the way.

One thing that I really do like is the little flying critter. Supposed to be a butterfly, not really quite there. Is definately not a bird, but I really do like it and will make this more. The wings are just a large chain stitch with a smaller one inside, straight stitched body, legs and antanea, french knot head. In person he is what you would call a kelly green. If I ever get this camera situation worked out, there will be better photos in time.

First, my new little camera takes great over all shots, very good color. Just don't even think about a close up. I just can't figure out how to focus the thing. Hubby's camera takes good close up shots, but lousy color, and now the batteries have died. I even thought about scanning the block, but of course for some reason I cannot make my new printer scan anything. Pretty much the story of my life actually. If I could get a better close up, the wider seam treatment turned out just awesome. It is a series of straight stitches and stem stitches along with chain stitched flowers. The last seam treatment is a butterfly done with chain stitches on either end of a line of angels.

The next color in the study is purple. I am all stoked up for that one, as I have learned alot from the green. Purple is my second favorite color, right next to blue. Like the green however, I can already forsee a problem with supplies, but have actually figured a way to work around that. Like I said, I learned a lot from the green study already. Lots of ideas would come to mind for seam treatments, motifs, and such but unless you can use different colors to off set them they just don't work. Oh how I struggled with my huge craving to insert some yellow and red centers in to those flowers and seams. I did however emerge triumphant and stayed all green. Have also discovered a few online sources that I will be ordering from this weekend as well. I may grumble a bit about the challenge of only working in one color, but I am getting a lot out of it. I love to do one color embroidery, also known as redwork, and am thinking of doing more of that for these color study groups. Redwork has a fascinating history by the way, which will not be explored in this post, but highly recommend you doing your own research in to that subject.

The group is also doing a swap called Food Fight and I am going to work on that one this weekend. This will be a bit different as it is a centralized swap and I complete the block, so get to do all the dressing up for it. The block is to reflect a food and we include the recipe as well. Think I mentioned it in an earlier post. At least with it I can feed my need for color, all colors. Okay, I know I was headed somewhere with all this, just totally lost where, so know it is time to call it a night.