Gone Green

Today is the last Rainbow Scrap Challenge link party for the month of May. I made a handful of blocks early in the month and thought I would surely be making more. I have plenty of green scraps after all! These are the only ones I made all month however.

Oh well, maybe I'll get back to piecing in June. In the meantime, I'm linking up with these few blocks for the RSC this one time in May.

Most of my efforts in green this month have involved digging out the buttercups and other weeds from my flower bed and planting the rose bushes I'd ordered from David Austin Roses. It took us two days to get the bed cleared and a third to move plants I wanted keep and put the roses in their new home. This will give you some idea of what we were up against:

We dug out a couple clumps of day lilies and set them aside for a friend's new flower bed. Two other clumps were simply relocated within our bed. We also moved lavender and a little low growing flower whose name I've forgotten. Whether it survives or not remains to be seen.

This is where the lavender was originally.

The bed sure looked naked once we'd cleared out the weeds! The rose bushes looked even smaller than they did in their pots too.

One of the rose bushes is in the middle of this bed, to the left of the day lily leaves.

I want to add some annuals to fill in the bare spots a bit and then mulch the bed thoroughly. Unfortunately, there's more smoke in the air than my body will tolerate. I don't know if it's drifting over from a neighbor's property (burning brush) or if folks have begun grilling outdoors prior to our holiday weekend. In either case I can't get back outside to finish the job until it rains well or we get some good breezes to clear the air around us. {sigh}

I've been making steady progress on the images I transferred to muslin a few days ago. The bluebird at the top of this section was all stitched in back stitch.

Well, except for that bit of his breast. That was mostly split stitch. I'm thinking I will put '2017' in the banner eventually.

The Virgin received gold braid (cross stitches) on her deep purple robe.

After I outlined her dress in pink I went back and did some detached buttonhole stitches in an attempt to give her a lacy collar and cuffs.

They're not very lacy but I'm content with the results. Now I'm considering options for decorating her dress a bit more.

I've had an interesting experience since picking up embroidery again. Some time ago I gave up on the stem or outline stitch when I couldn't get it to look the way I thought it ought to. So I've been doing a lot of back stitch to outline things. This week I acquired a copy of Christen Brown's book The Embroidery Book, a Visual Resource of Color & Design. It's a feast of inspiration.

More to the point, her directions for doing the stem stitch have made it possible for me to get the results I longed for in my work. I don't understand why exactly. They aren't that much different from other representations of the stitch process. Just enough so, I guess, for me to make the necessary connection or corrections. Now I can use that stitch more confidently and enjoy it more. :- )

Happy Memorial Day to my readers in the USA!