BDEIG Round Robin & TAST 2010

I'm involved in a few things right now and I'll try to post the progress of all of them in my blog. As I've mentioned in a prior post, I'm involved in this year's BDEIG Round Robin.  I've shown you one of the projects that I've worked on....now I'll show you the second one that winged it's way to my doorstep. This one belonged to Kathie W.  She sent a denim vest that she'd apparently used as her RR project last year, too, because there was already some beautiful work done on it when I got it and I was only the second person to work on it this year.  Here are some of the things that had already been stitched on it.  What lovely work!

All of these flowers were done using pretty basic BDE stitches....It's fun seeing how these stitches are combined to make so many different flowers.  I especially loved the flowers on the left side of the picture.  Here is a little closer picture of them:

I later found our that they had been added the year beforeby Jan K. who comes before me in this year's RR.   She does lovely work.  If you click on the picture, you

will be able to see that beads are added into the stitches that make up the outer petals of the flower.  I loved that!  Her additon to the vest for this year was added to the left front of the vest.  Again, she added beads into the flowers....this time pearls.  What a wonderful look! 

I contacted her to find out the name of the flower and she told me it was "Dingle Berries".  She said she'd

learned it in a class at last year's BDEIG seminar while doing a design called "Spring Blossoms into Summer" by MBE Designs.  It sounded very familiar to me, so I looked through my patterns and (what are the chances) I had it and the instructions for the Dingle Berries!  I was so happy.  Now I can't wait to work up that design soon! 

I decided to add my addition on the opposite front side of Kathie's vest.  What could I add that would balance Jan's wonderful additon.  I started searching to see if I could find another flower with beads added to it.  I'm sure more experienced BDEer's could figure out how to add them to just about any flower they want to, but being rather new to this form of embroidery, I felt that I needed some direction in this effort.  Well, I found it.  The BDEIG sends out a wonderful newsletter to it's members called "The BE Wrap-Up" and there are several wonderful educational pages in it each month where designers offer patterns and instructions.  I look forward to getting my "Wrap-Up each month to see what new techniques have been offered.  Well, in the May 2009 issue, Patricia Carefoot of Patricia's Brazilian Beauties gave us the instructions for Pat's Flower.  At first, I thought it might look too similar to Jan's last year's addition on the back of the vest, but after a closer look, the flowers were different enough in the way they were made.  What fun I had making this spray of Pat's Flowers. The flowers were made using Iris rayon thread by EdMar Threads.  There were already a couple bullion roses in this area of the vest that had been made by a past RR participant, so I decided to use similar colors so they could blend. The stems and beaded leaves were made first and then the flowers were  made by adding several cast-on stitch petals around ivory bullion stemans.  Beads were added into the stitches on the outer petals.  You can probably see this better in the close-up picture.

I think that my "Pat's Flower" arrangement balanced the pazzazz of Jan's "Dingle Berries" on the other side, while still leaving room next to them for someone else to add their magic, too.   Don't you? 

I hope Kathie likes my addition to her vest.  I'm pleased with it.  I can't wait to see what everyone else adds.

I'm wondering what everyone is adding to mine, too!

I've joined the group participating in Sharon Boggon's TAST 2010.  This stands for Take A Stitch Tuesdays.

Sharon Boggon, who is a fantastic textile artist from Australia, who unselfishly shares her extraordinary talent with each of us on the net by way of her blog "Pin Tangles", her stitch dictionary, and by starting the online group, Stitchin Fingers......a message board for all types of textile artists...of all levels of expertise.

She offers some type of challenge on her blog each year to push and inspire all of us to "stretch" ourselves.  This is the second year she has offered the TAST.  Each Tuesday, she offers the instructions for a stitch and encourages those participating to work the stitch and then try using it in different ways....experiment with it.  She started her new TAST on the first Tuesday in March.  We were on vacation, so I'm just now playing catch up as she has just introduced the 3rd stitch.   I've decided that I will work each of the stitches from this month, try them a few different ways, and then at the end of each month show how I've used them on some project....probably a crazy quilting project.  The first stitch for week 1 was the Diamond Stitch.   I found it to not be a difficult stitch....once you got the hang of the looping the thread over and under your needle to make the knots.  I made my samples on 25 count linen with #12 Finca Pearl cotton. On the left, is the first row that I did.  Not very even, but I was just getting the hang of it.  I then tried it around the side of a small circle that I drew with an air erasable pen....that has some possabilies that I'll explore more.  I wanted to try it in a smaller scale....I liked it, so I tried it again, but increased the width of the stitches and then decreased them again...making a stylized diamond shape.  I can really see repeating this in a row to make an interesting crazy quilt seam treatment. 

Tonight, I'll try the Week 2 stitch and post my results tomorrow night, as well as one more BDEIG RR project addition.  I'm going to try to link this to Sharon's site, but if I can't figure it out, here is her blog address http://pintangle.com/