Buddy Bee Gold

I was invited to teach for Pacific Northwest Needle Arts Guild last month.  They requested another goldwork project, so I created Buddy Bee Gold (named after my Dad).

Buddy is padded with felt, there is cut work, chips, kid leather etc.  

A fun group of ladies, they seemed to enjoy working on Buddy.  I loved my day of teaching and sharing!

Sammy Slug

Goldwork is one of my favorite needlework techniques and slugs are not my favorite, so I put them together to make Sammy.

I don't know why, but I was looking at the shape of a slug and thought it would be a great goldwork project.  I started working on it at the Bellevue Art Museum at the open stitching day in the lobby.  It was really fun to spend the day with other stitchers in the museum.  

The visitors would stop by to see what we were doing.  The ladies would ask it I was making a bird of paradise or a snail and the men would say you are making a slug. I think this was the fun part for me to have people guessing what I was doing.

After finishing Sammy I did a little research and discovered he would like to eat strawberries.

I hope the next slug you have in your yard will remind you of Sammy!

Strawberries . . . .

After my whitework course at the Royal School of Needlework I was thinking about another pulled thread project to do and came up with strawberries.  

I found the box at Williams Sonoma I was ready to make strawberries to fill it.  I used red 32 count linen, red pearl cotton and green pearl cotton.

 I used a different pulled thread pattern for each strawberry.

 I used red buttonhole thread to sew each one together and filled them with ground walnut shells.

I think they look great together in the box, but one would make a nice scissor fob or a pin cushion.  

The Mercer Island Visual Arts "Treasures in Miniature" show is coming in April, my strawberries will be there.  

Hope no one tries to eat them.