Embroidery

This week has been all about embroidery. I've felt the need to stitch lately, so I'm working on a couple thread paintings. I also stitched a rainbow saber-toothed tiger skull that I'm feeling very underwhelmed over.

 This lovely smilodon skull is stitched in variegated embroidery floss from DMC that I thought was like the regular floss that you can separate into 6 different strands, but no, it's one big thread. I don't usually use more than maybe 3 strands max, and I'm typically using only one, so I have no idea what to do with this absolutely fun and terrific floss. I was thinking of doing a sunset type landscape background, but I think the skull will get lost. (That's why there's a circle in the mouth.) It's already tough to see what it is, according to the Husband and Child. I have no idea what I should do with this one. It's too pretty and was very fun to make to throw it out. Maybe I'll toss it in the shop. It might want to be a bag when it grows up.

 This is the thread painting I'm currently working on. It's in about a 4 inch hoop, so it's not terribly big. It's just the right size for an iron on patch. The circle symbol is a Vegvisir, or runic compass. It's supposed to help prevent getting lost.

I'm currently in the love-hate stage of working on this. I can see that it's going in the right direction, but I don't like how it looks now. I want to get past the sketchy, ugly part to the part where it's finished and I can put it in the shop.

This little fox is just a tad over 1 inch. It's leaning towards wanting to be a magnet, but it might end up as a necklace. Or a tiny iron on patch. In other words, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I like how it turned out though. This is another one that passed through the love-hate phase before the colors blended right and I started to really like it.

Yes, I do use that ugly green fabric for a lot of my embroidery. I have a giant gallon bag full of these squares. They were probably intended to be a quilt, but now they've been rescued from Goodwill and are little canvases for my threaded creations. It's a sturdy woven fabric that sits nicely in a hoop. It holds its shape and has enough body that I don't have to worry about reinforcing the finished product too much. It's great for thread painting, where I am filling up the whole stitched area. As much as I think the pattern is god awful ugly, I'm going to miss these squares when I've used them all up