Thistle Journal Cover

   I am hoping that if I actually get caught up with the Christmas rush and customer's orders, I make the time to finish up a couple of my own projects. First of all, I would like to finish this journal cover I began probably three months ago.
   It never fails, what begins as a simple little project takes on a life of its own in no time at all. I always find it amusing that what some people consider to be obsessive attention to detail is to me absolute mindless bliss.

   I began with a beautiful blank piece of linen that was prewashed. I lightly marked the center spine area of the cover, the perimeter, and then a few circles that I wanted to leave open except for the stitching.

I painted the images with my Thistle Stencil and began working the hand embroidery around the outside of the circles. I photographed the piece, printed it out, and then began drawing on the image with pencil to help me decide what to do next.

I really enjoyed every minute of working on this. There were many evenings when I couldn't wait to settle into my old chair, surrounded by wisps of brightly colored thread and needles poking out everywhere, and watch a good film. I finally realized that I needed to stop stitching on this piece and begin something else before every speck of linen was covered up!

Watercolors

I have signed up for Jane Lafazio's online workshop Sketching and Watercolor: Journal Style, and I just completed the first assignment. It is funny, but I have wanted to learn to do watercolor for a really long time. I have a sizable stack of books on watercolor techniques and botanical illustration by many wonderful artists, but they have sat there unused for years now.

This was my first assignment and my first watercolor as well. My shadow got way too dark, so I added the dark brown border to try to balance things out a bit. I know nothing about using water colors or pairing for that matter, and I am looking forward to learning more. This is really a lot of fun.

Pomegranate and Satsuma Mandarins.

Here is my second little painting. These paintings are quite small; they are only 5" x 7". It's so odd how I could never get up the gumption to simply do this on my own, yet now even at this crazy busy time of the year I am somehow managing to forge ahead.

I would love to be able to transfer some of my line drawings to fabric or paper so that I can either hand or machine embroider them, but I have not found a really suitable transfer technique as yet. For the marking for my machine quilting, I use a water-soluble fine-tipped blue pen on light fabric and for dark fabric I use the Staedler white water-soluble pencil. 

I have heard from knowledgeable people that the iron on heat transfer type pencils do not always come out. And Solvy won't work as I do not want to wash the project after stitching.

Any tips or suggestions on transfer methods from you readers would be greatly appreciated.