Because I Can

Because its 72 degrees outside, I’m going to stitch for the afternoon. My laundry room will still be a disgusting mess on Monday. I’ll clean it then.

Because that green circle needs some embellishing.

Workt By Hand

The sun is shining and the snow is melting.  (We won’t think about the fact that we’re supposed to get more tomorrow night!)

I’ve disappeared for a week again, didn’t I?  My sister and I spent five days in Tipp City, Ohio at a stitching retreat called Workt By Hand.  This year is the tenth annual retreat, hosted by Ali Strebel, Sue Spargo, Sally Korte, and Melissa Becker.  It was a blast.  The learning curve was steep, because I haven’t done much of this type of stitchery before.  Just to give you an idea of what we were doing, here is a project by Sue Spargo.

Isn’t that amazing!!!

Our theme this year was Circles.  This is Ali Strebels project.  It’s the top of a hassock.

And a butterfly by Sally Korte.

We were given a wool background.  I started out being a rebel and purchased black wool instead of the light neutral we were given.  I always have to do my own thing…  I then chose my colors from some wool I had along and started cutting circles.  The rest of the day was spent stitching all the circles down.

The next day, I started learning decorative stitches.  Here are some things I’ve done.

You can see on the orange circle how the wool is stitched down with a wool/nylon thread.

I decided I wasn’t ripping anything out, because this is my learning project.  On some of the circles, you could see how my stitching got better as I went around the circle, but I’m ok with that.

Sue Spargo taught me how to stitch this little cutie!

I managed to acquire some fun threads and ribbon to work with!  I’m still going to add some silk and velvet to the embellishing as well.

Fiber of any sort just makes me smile!!!

Here’s my whole project.  I feel like I’ve spent a ton of hours on it already and there are still a lot of empty circles!

If you’d like to see more photos, Sue Spargo did a blog post on the retreat and Ali Strebel is planning to do one but hasn’t as of now.

I’d like to sit and do just one circle right now, but it doesn’t work that way.  I stitch one thing, and two hours later, I’ve done several more.  For now, it’s time to get back to the ginormous quilt!

See ya soon!