It was a big milestone in our home this weekend.  My husband turned the big 4 0!

I threw him a party this weekend.  So needless to say not a lot of stitching went on last week.  But, I did spend the day “recovering” on Sunday.  I enjoyed a wonderful day of stitching and watching movies.  Even though I feel like I spent most of the day searching through Netflix, Hulu and Amazon trying to find something watch. LOL!

I’ve been working on one of the new canvases from Leigh’s “Gateways to Paradise” series that debuted at the January show.

I don’t often show my works in progress.  But I think this is an interesting one to show you my process.

When I first looked at the piece I was so attracted to the colors.  And before you ask about how I can stitch on the black canvas  . . .I don’t plan on it.  That’s right . . .NO BACKGROUND!  The horrors! But even so, I still have young eyes (close up anyway), so black and dark colors don’t bother me.

I usually find Leigh pieces really challenging.  But I just looked at this piece and knew exactly what I wanted to do.  Or what needed to be done in the case of the Or Nue situation  that’s going on in the center of the lantern. Hence . . .the many threads hanging off the canvas.

The flowers are coming along very nicely with continuous Buttonhole stitch.  The tassels however aren’t working out like I planned.  But now that I did it wrong, I know how to fix it.  Well . . .hopefully. LOL.

I haven’t done anything on the pink flowers yet, but I know exactly what I’m going to do.  And I know it’s going to work because I’ve done it before.  It’s a really cool ribbon technique with a bead.

I’m going to bead the gold on the medallion, but not in the traditional way.  This is a technique I learned in the bead embroidery class we had last summer at the shop.  I have to tell you, that every class I take I learn something.  I may never finish the piece, but I will always use the technique I learned on a piece at some point in the future.

 I hope this gives you a little insight into how pieces come together for me.  Not everything works out the first try.  So, if at first you don’t succeed, try try again!