progress comes slowly

I've begun doing the quilting on this piece (the color in this quickie photo from my cell phone is terrible, but you can see the stitching!)

I decided that just two colors of thread were enough -- the black that I used to stitch on each side of all of the black pieces -- and gray which I am using to do a very close cross hatch stitching all around the edges of the blocks

this piece is still in the hand stitching stage -- I've been building up layers of hand appliqued foliage there along the bottom under the telephone lines

as soon as I get those finished I'll move on to doing the birds on the wires and in the sky

so far this piece has been very loose in terms of planning -- while I usually have a specific pattern I follow after several modifications of drawing, all of these plants have just been free form cut and stitched down

just another experiment of technique, and so far I've very pleased with this one

this piece came home this week

it had hung in a small works show in Denver, then in a local store's gallery, and last week it was entered in another small works show where it did not make the cut

now that it is back in my possession, I've listed it in my Etsy store, so if you're interested in having a small (affordable) piece of my work in your collection, you can use the link there at the top right of my blog to go check it out

this piece is finished!

I created a whole new (for me) approach to the "chain" -- it is almost more a beaded ribbon and the clasp is more like a button hole with a barrel button

sometime later today I'll take some really good shots so I can enter this in a competition (watch for the opening of voting soon)

I already have a new piece of bead work in the works -- it's been in the back of my head for a lot of the time I've been working on this
 

another finished hat!  I'm working on a matching pair of mittens now

it snowed again last night -- I shoveled out to get the paper, to clear the front walkway and then to clear the patio for the dog -- we're supposed to get more snow this afternoon, so we're not planning to go anywhere today

time to get to those projects