Saturday stitching roundup

I've decided that I need to get a little more organised - what again?! I hear you cry. I know - it's an ongoing battle, what can I say? So, the plan is that in future I'll post about my stitching projects on Saturdays. Miniatures will go in a separate post and I'd like to say that I'll do that on Mondays (Miniature Monday does make sense) but Mondays are always spent with friends making lace or at the Embroiderers Guild meeting so maybe it will have to be a case of Tuesday's Tinies instead.

Anyhow, here's what I've been working on recently.

As you know, I'm doing an online Sumptuous Surface embroidery course with SharonB and we've now moved onto working in colour, as opposed to the monochrome piece we did during the first three weeks of the course. First, we had to work out a colour scheme. We did this by clipping small squares of images from magazines and from the internet in our chosen colours and putting them together. Then I wrapped threads around a piece of card and stuck these into my workbook along with the magazine snippets. My printer has finally died so I've been a bit hampered in this process and will need to catch up once  the new one is delivered next week so the second of my designs has no images yet other than the photograph of lichen that I included.

I really wanted to use those threads that my friend gave me for my birthday so my first design was of flames so that I could use all those gorgeous reds and yellows.

My second design is inspired by lichen on rocks found on holidays in Scotland - which are just begging to be worked in textured stitches. This design will use the greens and golds and just a hint of orangey-red.

This is probably going to be a series of pieces eventually - earth, fire, air and water and this is the one I decided to begin with. So ... here is the outline for my 'earth' picture already stitched in a lovely hand dyed silk boucle thread.

My regular readers will know that I'm also stitching pieces which are destined for an exhibition of 17th century style embroidery which my branch of the Embroiderers Guild is planning for next year. I love doing Blackwork, so that's what I started with.

Blackwork was first found as early as the 15th and 16th centuries but was still popular in the 17th and I'm working on a very popular 17th century design - the tree of life. The ground beneath the lion isn't quite finished yet, as you can see, but it will be by the end of this weekend.

And here's another snail. I have no idea why snails were so popular in the 17th century! They're certainly not popular in my garden as, yet again, they've munched their way through all my delphinium stems (though I do enjoy stitching them).