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 :(