The White Peacock Purse and More!

Well, as planned, I completed the stitching on this last night:



I added my spider to the bottom left-hand corner and then highlighted the peacock's wing with a bit of metallic silver thread. That seems to bring it out a bit more and I must say, this so pretty!

I do think we need to take a moment when looking at our work and give ourselves a pat on the back sometimes. I'm still amazed with what comes out of my head and through my needle! And I don't think there's anything wrong with congradulating ourselves for our accomplishments! I love this piece and will have a hard time parting with it.

Susan asked me what the little flowers are that I used on the vine to the right of the peaocock. Those are just lavender colored flower sequins held in place with a few petite delica beads.

My next project will be a cellphone pouch:



It doesn't look like much now. It's simply a painted dryer sheet ironed on to the foundation using Heat & Bond. Notice the transparent quality that it has! Wait till you see what I'm going to do with this. I plan to start on it later today.

In the meantime, today is another finishing day. At least the machine finishing. On Wednesday, I assembled the Purple Painted Lady purse and the Green & Yellow Rose purse. Oh, did they come out nice! I used purse frames for them and only have the hand finishing left to do. I should have photos in the next couple of days.

Today, I'll be doing the machine finishing on the Pansy Purse. Again, I'll be putting it on a purse frame. I also need to finish my little Valentine Cupid Doorknocker.

Last of the news for today, I recently came accross a huge batch of beautiful upholstry fabric samples. There was way more there than I will ever use so I put some in my Etsy shop.



I hope someone can use them. Beautiful colors and textures! I can see these worked into crazyquilts or used for contempory embroidered pieces. Perfect too for the background on fabric postcards! I'm itching to do some more of those!

Ok everyone, I'm off to run my sewing machine. See ya tomorrow!

TAST and The White Peacock Purse

I didn't complete this last night like I had hoped, but I did get quite a bit done including the beading on the Detached chain leaves on the vine to the right of the peacock:



The beads give it a whole new look! They add more color and dimension to the stitching. I used 1 light green bugle bead in the center of each Detached Chain stitch.

Here's what the entire block looks like:



This afternoon, I'll add the spider web to the bottom left-hand corner and highlight the peacock's wing with some silver thread and then it's complete. I'll have another update for you tomorrow.

TAST - Detached Chain Stitch

As I mentioned yesterday, Sharon chose the Detached Chain as this weeks stitch focus. I use it alot as it's one of my favorite stitches. It's so versatile! Quite often, I use it for leaves like I did on the vine to the right of the peacock:



This piece scanned a little dark today. It's much lighter and brighter in person. And very sparkly!

I decided to leave off that rose applique as I feared it would compete with the peacock. Instead, I did a stem stitch vine and used the Detached Chain (aka Lazy Daisy) stitch for leaves. The next step is to bead it. I always add either a bugle bead to the center of the leaves or 3 seed beads. If I use Petite seed beads, then I'll usually use 5 of those. I haven't decided yet on what beads to use.

The beads add sparkle, dimension and more color to the piece.

I've drawn up the motif that I used in case anyone would like to stitch it:



Click on the image to go to my Flickr site where you can download the larger version. Trace onto tissue paper, pin to your block and stitch through the tissue. Once stitching is complete, carefully remove the tissue paper. I always freehand these motifs but if you want to do an exact replica, the tissue paper should work nicely for you. For the flower, you can outline stitch it, satin stitch it or fill it in with beads.

As you can see, I did alot on this piece yesterday. I added more glass flowers to the branch and a few seed beads. I did the grape vine to the left of the peacock and I did a rose motif on the dark purple ribbon. The roses are vintage Millinary (did I spell that right?) flowers. I found a whole bagful of them awhile back but kept forgetting that I had them! I added some glass beads for a little extra sparkle and did the leaves using silk ribbons from Pat Winters. If you need silk ribbon, visit Pat's Etsy shop! Working with Pat's ribbons makes me want to do more SRE!

Looking at this from a distance, I do feel like the peacock needs a little something to make him pop out more. Maybe I should have done him in purple but I've been wanting to do a white peacock for some time now. I may take a strand of metallic silver thread and outline him with that and maybe highlight his wing with it.

I still need to add my little cat and I'm thinking of a spider web for that bottom left-hand corner. I love doing spider webs!

We Have A Winner!!!

Well, I checked the times on yesterday's comments as well as a couple of emails that I received from readers who have trouble posting to my blog and the winner is, Gail who posted at 11:23 yesterday (Monday) morning.

Yes, the focal point is a peacock:



I sent ya'll over to my Flickr site thinking you'd find the photos of my other peacock pieces. I like to use vintage jewelry as part of the tail feathers.

On this one, I did the tail feathers a bit different than I have in the past. I used white eyelash yarn, couched it on and used some clear pearly sequins to add sparkle. Then I added some large dark green seed beads for the eyes in the tail feathers. I had wanted to use crystals but I didn't have any in emerald green.

If you look closely at the jewelry piece, I altered it a bit. I cut that loop off of it. That part sat over the wing and I didn't like the way it looked so I just grabbed my wire cutters and cut it off!

After getting the peacock stitched on to this block, which took most of yesterday afternoon, I decided that the rose applique was too much. It overpowers this little guy so I'll be leaving it off and doing something else with that seam.

So, Gail who commented at 11:23 on Monday morning, please drop me a quick email with your snail mail address and I'll send your pansy off to you. You can find my email address on my main Kitty & Me Designs website.

In other news, Sharon has chosen the Detached Chain stitch as this weeks TAST Challenge. Also known as the Lazy Daisy stitch which is what my grandmother always called it, this is one of my favorites and one that I use on just about every block I stitch! I must find something extremely creative to do with this stitch! I'll have to think about that a bit and see what I come up with. You've probably noticed that I always add beads to my Detached Chain stitches. I do that because I love the sparkle. In fact, you can see some of my beaded Detached Chain stitches on the seam to the left of the peacock.

Ok, that's it for it today's news! I'm off to sew up some new blocks because after this peacock block, I have nothing else to stitch on. And I can't have any of that going on! I must stitch!

I also plan to run my sewing machine tomorrow in hopes of assembling some of those purses that I've been making.

No Winner Yet

Ladies, ladies, ladies! I can't believe we still don't have a winner yet. I've been holding off on starting the "focal point" until we had a winner but I can't go much further without it so I'll give you one more suggestion.

Why don't you all poke around over at my Flickr site and see if you get any ideas!

Ok, onto the purse itself:



I did some more beading yesterday. I worked on that bottom Herringbone seam. I must say, that is just so pretty! I really like the way the Herringbone looks over the ribbon! I knew if I worked with it long enough, I'd find a way to make that Herringbone more attractive!

I then beaded the bottom right-hand seam.

I do plan to hand-paint that applique as it might clash with my focal point which will be white. I'm just holding off until I get the focal point stitched on.

Ok, I think I've given ya'll a good couple of hints here. Keep guessing! I'm off to organize my fancy threads in a nice rolling cart that I bought at WalMart over the weekend.