Secret Garden - Uh Oh - Now you get to see my "expert" tracing equipment.

I dream of a light pad that I see on some of the other blogs. What a cool thing to have. But, since I have nothing like that, I went searching my house to find something that would work. Taping it to a window might have worked when I was young but not now.

This is what I came up with. My faithful cutting board from the kitchen. It was wide enough and let just enough light through to be helpful.

Then I had to find something that would hold the fabric still while I traced. Cloths pins sort of worked but was sticking out in my way when I held the project. So I went with my office clippys. The cutting board was just thin enough for these to grab hold.

And so I taped the page from the Secret Garden book to the cutting board. Just the 4 corners worked fine. (Yes, I had to take the page out of the book, and I hate to do that.)

Then I stretched the fabric over top and clipped it all around. I used a regular pencil and a light hand and set in my comfy chair. I was extra careful tracing this and I think it took me about 3 hours.

Ta Da - all traced and ready to put on the stretcher bars. Here it is still on my pretend light pad.

 
I got some stretcher bars for this project. I have never used anything but hoops before but I want to see the whole project as I go along and not have to keep moving a hoop.

Make sure to drop by Mary Corbet's Needle N Thread  http://www.needlenthread.com/  
Mary is the one that started this beautiful project and is nice enough to help us all follow along with her. (Thanks Mary)  She has also set up a group on Flickr.


Thank you for dropping by.
Smiles to you;
Linda

Purple stripe Needle Book with embroidery

Finished up a needle book I had  started a while back. The heart is made with DMC embroidery floss. Laced chain stitch. The purple and green along the right side is plaited feather stitch.

Inside is 4 felt pages to hold lots of needles and pins.

Sorry - The light is not very good today because it's rainy here, so I got lots of shadows in the photo.

Thanks for dropping by.
Smiles to you.
Linda

Gathering my project stuff.

I'm gathering the final supplies for a couple projects that I'm starting.

One is from The Secret Garden coloring book. I'm following along with Mary Corbet's  Needles N Thread.     http://www.needlenthread.com/  

I been eagerly looking forward to getting started on this for weeks and I finally am able to start.  There are several pictures in the book that I want to do. I'm starting with the one she is showing on her blog with the humming birds.  If you have never been to Mary's blog, pop over and look at the wonderful embroidery she does.  I'm getting a late start, but she has it set up with a project index so you can start it any time.

I got my copy of the book at Barn and Noble book store. It is not expensive.  The picture are wonderful for embroidery. Vines and flowers and birds and hidden in each picture is little animals like insects or butterflies or snails.

It's starting to thunder here so I'm shutting this off now.
Thanks for dropping by.
Smiles to you.
Linda

Blue needle book with little pink flowers.

I'm getting the stuff together for a couple of BIG projects, that I will start telling you about soon. Meanwhile - I had a small scrap of this fabric, and now it's a needle book.

Thanks for dropping by.
Smiles to you.
Linda