seeing the forest from a different vantage point

last night I stitched down the last of the aspen leaves

the entire time I've worked on this piece I've never taken a picture of it other than laying it on the floor and taking "spot shots", which of course means every photo is distorted from reality

this morning it occurred to me that I should make use of the curtain rod in my studio to get a better shot of the entire piece

so here we have it

and I am amazed

it looks so -- real

when I was going through the folder I discovered about half a dozen leaves that didn't get pinned on before the great stitch in, and I probably will stitch those on, but other wise the aspens are done until I put on the 61 free floating ones

so now it's time to think redwoods

I've been thinking about how to do the back layer of color on these that will be the equivalent of the layer on the aspen side that I did by stamping with bubble wrap

last night the DH suggested I cut a stamp and use it to create some of that background , so today I plan to sit down with my stamp cutting supplies and cut a couple of different stamps to do that background with -- we'll see how that all goes

the quilting on the Hawaii piece is going well

I've done the quilting in that white band that runs all the way across the piece and in the blue and purple areas right below it

so far I'm pretty pleased with the way this piece is going

and it is moving along pretty quickly too

work on the blue necklace continues

yesterday I started working on the narrower tube on one end, where I'm using a smaller embellishment

today I'm going to go through my bead stash again and look for some more pieces that I can use in the center section to add some more -- there are still some places where I can see the base tube and I'd like to change that, but I'll need to search for some usable embellishment pieces



progress is also being made on the Christmas knitting project -- last night I finished the body of the sweater and bound off the ribbing, then started on one of the sleeves -- yippee!!

if you've been reading along here for a while, you may remember this project

after considerable experimentation with techniques I have decided that my idea of being able to "paint" the sunset sky behind the animals is not going to work

along the way I've had plenty of time to think about where I really want to do with this, and I'm starting to think that in a mat isn't it -- at least not in the traditional sense -- and I don't think it will end up being rectangular either -- I'm thinking about running the tree branches up and out

obviously this is still morphing

time to go get some breakfast and make a quick trip to the store for a couple of things then its back into the studio!