Saturday, July 19, 2014

Binge Stitching

Last night, I got an urge to really get into Doodleplex, mostly influenced by my recent focus on Buttaflies and other projects.
I think I spent about four hours on Doodleplex (or, at least it felt like four hours), but this morning when I woke up I caught myself wondering if I really had done as much as I thought I had.

Well, let's compare, shall we? 

My last shot of Doodleplex: 


Doodleplex as of this morning:


Granted, there had been some work done on Doodleplex between the before shot and my marathon last night, but not so much that I would consider it a significant gap in record-keeping.

I would also like to note that I've been watching a lot of the Haute Couture shows the fall-winter 2015 lines on youtube, and I must say that I tip my hat to the ateliers in Paris. Embroidering for so long is hard!
^_^

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Reality is relative and deceiving.

Have you ever had a really work intensive stitching session, but then look back on it and say: hey! I did more than that! 
But you really hadn't? 

That happened to me with what is, as you well know, one of the longest running projects on Lace (Making) Adventures.

Le Masterpiece.


Shall we compare with the previous update?


It'd say it's about an inch or so that I managed to carve out... but it felt like so much more.
>_<

Either way, I'm that much closer.

^_^

Monday, July 14, 2014

Back to the Buttaflies =D

While I haven't done an enormous amount of work on Butterflies, I still feel like I've made significant progress. I have the two little bottom wings planned out on the first butterfly and I'm starting to think of color schemes for the other butterflies.

^_^

First things first, I finished that teal band around the inner part of the larger wing and filled in the tip.


Here's a shot of the whole butterfly, for some perspective:


After that, I had trouble deciding on the colors to use to fill in that circle. As you can see, I'm favoring cool colors, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to go that route. 

I think most of my problems stem from the fact that outside of trying to free hand embroidery patterns and doodling, I haven't had much experience in the art department--by that I mean the painting/drawing part of art--and much less in determining cohesive color schemes.

Case in point: with Doodleplex, at one point I actually closed my eyes and chose colors at random.

Anywho, after about a half an hour, and thanks to questionable lighting, I settled on the following:


I was worried about the little circle, but am actually pleased with the result. I wasn't sure at the time about whether to go with satin stitch (you remember my last run in with satin stitch?) or long and short stitch like I'd been doing with everything else. 

I did, eventually, settle on long and short, mostly because I'm trying to practice for my first Chinese embroidery project, and also because the circle was a bit too big (in my mind) for my shaky satin stitch skills.

A closeup: 

I even got some shading done.

^_^

P.S. This project is no longer "Butterflies", but has now been dubbed "Buttaflies"

Friday, July 11, 2014

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



For those of you who have followed the incredible saga (which, according to my oh so official records has lasted almost two years!) you can understand how entirely epic this is. Through blood, sweat, tears, and migraines, this doily, marking my early beginnings in the world of tatting, has finally come to fruition! 

^_^

Monday, July 7, 2014

Getting back into the habit

Yesterday, I embroidered for the first time in what I'd say is close to about a month. 

O_O

Long time, huh? 

Honestly, I don't know why it's been so long... but I think it has something to do with a space-themed video game and, of course, getting Evelyn's Doily ready for launch.

However, I don't think I've posted much about my progress even before I sputtered out.

So, to be brief [dramatic pause]: 


And another shot:


^_^