Saturday stitching roundup

I have quite a few pieces of stitching to show this week, but first of all I want to show you the latest visitor to my garden.

I'm no expert on butterflies so I have no idea of his name (I mean, what type he is) but he is beautiful and he made my heart sing. He wasn't alone but this was the best photograph I managed to take. They and the bees are loving all the flowers in the garden and, for me at least, it makes having allowed the wildflowers and the nettles to have space to grow so worthwhile. Not sure that my neighbours with their neatly cut lawns and regimented flower beds agree with me though.

So ... on to the stitching ...

The point de gaze lace flower is coming along - slowly but surely. I was thinking this morning, whilst I was stitching this piece, that this probably represents around 60 hours 'work' and there's probably another four or five before it's finished. I'm now laying the cordonnette - i.e. laying extra threads around the outline and buttonholing over those to neaten up all the edges. It's quite a large flower - 5" (or around 12.5 cm) across, and I'm not at all sure that I would ever stitch such a large motif in such a fine thread again. Still, this is the point when it all starts to come 'to life' so to speak and I am very pleased with it.

I've finished two more pages of the sampler book - and cut the pages to size now. I'm not sure whether the blackwork page was complete last week, but it is now ...

 

and so is the Assissi work page. The next page is Hardanger, which I've never done before so this week's sampler might be a bit of a challenge.

I also, in a moment of enthusiasm following the last online class I did, signed up for SharonB's encrusted crazy quilting class. I've regretted it a bit since. I didn't need to learn how to do crazy quilting and I have no idea what I shall do with the two blocks I created when they're completed. However ... here they are.

The top one was the first one I made - too green and too bitty but I added lace and I stitched a lace butterfly to sit in the centre and now I think it has potential. We will see. The second block I made is far more in keeping with my usual colour palette and the composition is better, I think. Perhaps I'll make them into the covers of a book. Hmmm.

I also made a little shabby lace heart to hang on my pin board, but you'll have to wait until next week to see that as it's not quite finished. Quite a productive week this week! You can tell that I've not been making minis.