Finished

My resolved piece is finished.  At first I really hated it .... but it's growing on me.

I'm glad to have it done now though.  I just have a couple more things to write up and then I should be able to do a submission of chapters 6, 7 and 8 and then I can get straight on and cracking with chapter 9

Circles are finished

 This morning I made myself ignore the temptation to go and sit in the garden in the sun, and I sat at my machine and finished the centre panel for the prairie points piece instead.

It was a lot of fun to do and I like how it came out.  I'm hoping that the random and almost sketch like stitching of the circles will be a good contrast to the neat and ordered lines that are on the points.  The one criticism I would have is that I'd have liked the stitching in the orange centre of the circle to be a bit neater but stitching circles with the foot on with such a small arc to the circle proved to be pretty difficult.

I'm off outside to enjoy the sun for a while but I'm hoping to get the sample all put together and finished this evening.

Circles

Managed to start a little stitching last night, but after a long couple of days at work I didn't have the concentration needed to spend a lot of time.  Still it's a start and hopefully with another couple of hours work the centre will be done and I get this this prairie piece done :)

Centres

After a few lovely days away in St Ives (what a brilliant place for artistic inspiration!) I'm back again and starting to play on the machine again.

Last night I spent a bit of time messing around with ideas for the centre of my prairie point piece.  Haven't gotten very far yet but I think I've decided which plan I want to go with - though it will be with a further modification or two.  Hopefully I'll get some time after work tonight to get started.

Been Busy

Have finally managed to make a start on the stitching for the resolved piece.  I've spent about three hours at the machine today. And this is what I have to show for my time.

Lots of lovely stitched stripes in primary and secondary colours waiting to be turned in to prairie points.

I still have some way to go before I have a finished piece though as I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do with the central circle panel yet, I keep chnaging my mind!  Actually it may be a while before anything else gets done, I'm away for a few days at the end of next week and am busy for the next few evenings so unless Old Father Time decides to grant me a few extra hours in the day, things may go quiet here for a while.  I'll be back as soon as I can. 

Almost ready

I'm almost ready to start the stitching for my resolved piece.  For the coloured prairie points I've decided to use the simple stripe pattern of stitching that I used in sample 2 of the chapter.  But before I went in full steam ahead I wanted to play with the idea of using colour fabric for the background.

I stitched up a quick sample using some calico which I'd part coloured with a water colour pencil.  Having done this I now know that I much prefer the look of the stitching against the plain fabric.

I have one more quick sample piece that I want to make before getting stuck in.  If I go ahead with the idea above I will need to have light, medium and dark shades of 6 different threads, so that's 18 altogether.  So before I go with this I'm going to investigate the possibility of using a variegated thread which will cut the number needed back to 6.  It'll just depend which I like the best, I have a feeling I might be sticking with the original plan but I do think it's a thought worth investigating.....

Still thinking

I still haven't started stitching on my prairie points piece. My design has gone through a few different changes as things have popped in to my head while I've been working

At the moment I'm thinking about going with something like this which is in effect a prairie point colour wheel........

I've done a paper mock up.  I need to now try and explore the stitching options and also have a think about what to do with the centre panel.  I like the spiral idea in the first picture but not sure how it would work with a design using so many different colours.

So there is a little way to go and more thinking to be done before work can really start on stitching.  Hopefully I can get cracking over the weekend it would be nice to be well on the way to having a finished piece by the time Sunday evening rolls around.  We'll see though, I have a stinking cold at the moment and can't seem to concentrate on anything for too long before I need to give my poor brain a break.  This makes fo slow going :(

Developing Ideas

Over the last couple of days I've been started to think about possible ideas for my prairie points resolved sample.  First off I started with some images from the Millennium wall in my town.

Most of the images from the wall featuring triangles are of buildings of one type or another.  So I started to think about some kind of colourful street scene.

With prairie points making up the roof line.  I got as far as mocking the idea up in paper, but it really wasn't satisfying me as a design idea.  I don't really think that it's 'creative' enough.  Although I think it would make a pretty piece at it's basic it's still just a line of prairie points.

So now I'm off on another tack.  I'm finding this idea a lot more pleasing but it still needs some tweaking, so we'll see where it goes.

Stitching a Rainbow

The last couple of evenings I've been working on a new prairie sample inspired by this beautiful rainbow that appeared in the sky during a rain shower at the weekend

I don't think it's amazingly clear in this second shot but it arched right over the whole street, amazingly beautiful.

My sample didn't go exactly to plan.  I wanted to attempt to make large prairies but I made the mistake of selecting a wide zig zag stitch which started to pull in the fabric.  The calico strip shrunk to about half the size, and this in turn made the stitched strip very thick and difficult to turn into neat points.  I may have failed in my goals with this one, but I still love the rainbow inspired theme.

Full steam ahead (fingers crossed)

Look what I managed to get done with Jemimah last night. My second sample for the chapter, all in auto patterns and with no tension issues.

I didn't actually get to speak to the engineer yesterday when I picked her up so I don't know what they actually found wrong - but touch wood, cross fingers and all that - she seems to be back to her old self. I had a quick mess around with free motion stitching too and all seems well. Let's hope she stays that way.

I am away at the weekend but apart from that at the moment this month is fairly clear so it's hopefully full speed ahead again. I have a little mini target in my head - that I want to be starting module two by November at the latest, with all these machine problems this module has taken so many more weeks than I anticipated.

Playing with Prairies

Don't pass out but after all these months chapter six is finally underway with the first completed prairie sample, made from those strips I was busy sewing up yesterday.It's nice to be working in the sketchbook again rather than on random bits of paper :)

And some BREAKING NEWS - I got a call from the repair shop and so went by and picked up Jemimah this afternoon. Haven't had time to set her up yet, but I'll be putting her through her paces again this evening. Let's hope she really has come back fixed this time!

Prairie Blues

I sat down last night and made a list of some of the things that I could get on with while waiting for Jemimah to get back from the shop. Actually when I look through the remaining chapters in the module there should be quite a lot I can do with Beatrice, particularly if I bend the rules a bit.

I've been putting off chapter six and the prairie points as the guidance calls for the use of automatic pattern stitches and I don't have those on Beatrice. But I figure she does have a few variations on zigzag and straight so I'd probably have enough variety to start playing with prairies, experimenting with different sizes, threads fabrics etc. And maybe I'll start to get a feel for and develop some ideas for the resolved piece (I can go back and add the pattern variations to the mix when Jemimah gets back)

So that's just where I decided to start today.We've had one of those sunny/cloudy days today and as Dave decided he was going to do some work in the garden I thought I'd drag Beatrice outside again too. (Yay for bank holidays!) I didn't want to be taking a lot of things up and down the stairs from the sewing room to the garden, so decided just to go with a limited colour palette for the first experiment. As you can see I grabbed the bucket of blue threads.This afternoon I've whiled away a couple of hours stitching in between being nabbed by Dave to put a couple of raised bed frames together for the veg and flower gardens next year! I've got two stitched strips now. If I'm lucky I might find some time after cooking tea to get my first lot of prairie's made :) Wish me luck.

Preparing Prairies

After a day off yesterday I've been hard at it on the machine again today, making a start on the first samples for chapter six.I picked out a range of spicy colours and have been stitching in to a band of calicoIt's nearly done. As soon as it is it will be chopped up and turned in to prairie points. I've never played with prairies before so it should be fun......... I did get to see some ever so cute Prairie Dogs on a trip to a local farm centre yesterday. I know nothing to do with embroidery but surely you've come to expect a bit of randomness from me every once in a while ;-)

Thinking about Triangles

While I couldn't progress with the painting yesterday, I did have a little look through the work that will be coming up in chapter six. Working with prairie points, and I'll be making my first resolved piece.

There is a lot of stitching to be done before I need to come up with the idea for my piece but I have lots of things whirling round in my head at the moment. Here are some of the things that are inspiring me right now.

I have some potential ideas inspired by the butterfly and the spider pictures on this page in my sketchbook.Images from the Millennium wall. Prairie Points as rays from the sun or points of a star...?
Prairie Points for the roofs of buildings in a little village scene......?
Prairie points on a 3D model based on a dragon fruit.....?
These are all just mutterings for now. Lots of directions I could go in, some may prove to be entirely unsuitable. Exciting times though :)