More Hoop Art

 I am enjoying working on these embroidery letters This one is for my sister, Ruthie. I used the same color palette as my N and played around with flower placement and lots of French Knots. 

Back to CT next week, where I will have access to everything in my studio, including some nice linen. These were done on unbleached muslin, easy to stitch. 

I'm linking up to Off the Wall Friday. 

Hoop Art

 I really missed my daily stitching that I did last year and was trying to come up with something else to do. While perusing Pinterest I came across a lot of embroidered letters.  In my studio in CT I have one wall in my sewing alcove that has several Ns hanging, wooden, metal, cloth, etc. I looked all over (I thought) but I couldn't find any patterns and couldn't even find an N to copy. So I borrowed ideas from an R that I saw. I have since found a vast supply of patterns on Etsy and have downloaded some.

I went to Youtube to see how to finish the back of my hoop art and found several different ways . This one was pretty easy, using a piece of felt cut to the size of the inner hoop and attaching it with a buttonhole stitch.

I am currently working on an R for my sister, Ruth. I sure wish I had baby to gift because I thought it would  be a nice one, but no babies in my life for now.

BTW I am not sure if my N is upside down or not. What do you think?

Stuff

 I'm here in Florida. I wish I could say warm and sunny Florida, but it has been a cool and cloudy January that is continuing into February. Looking at the weather in the rest of the country, I guess I shouldn't complain. We have no extreme rain, no flooding, no bitter cold and no snow storms.

I celebrated my birthday here, twice! The first one on last Friday with a group of friends. We went to a fabulous museum exhibit at the Baker Museum in Naples. Then out to lunch, of course.

 Dinner at another great restaurant last night. My cup runneth over!

Here are some pictures from the exhibit. the artist is Tamara Kostianovsky, who makes her art from recycled clothing. I am hoping to try some of her techniques in a future piece.

Several pieces were free-standing , such as this and the next one.

Some pieces were hung on the wall.

This is a technique I hope to try when i am back in CT with all of my supples. This looks like cotton T-shirt material, cut into strips. I know that it will roll on itself when cut. The large stand-alone pieces used the same technique. I'm not sure what was underneath.

This whole section was called Abattoir. The artist lives in Argentina, known for its meat. When I was there several years ago I ate more meat than I had previously eaten in probably five years.

There were several of these life size carcasses, showing the inside and the outside. 

This was a decent led tour and our docent was amazing. 

That's it for now. I'll write again when I have something worthwhile.

Stitching

 I finished December just a little late and now my whole year is finished. I really enjoyed working on it and especially liked having a theme each month, whether color or topic. December, of course, was Everything Christmas.

I'm Still Here

 A long time out-of-town friend sent me an email asking if I was OK since I hadn't blogged about the holidays as I usually do. No reason, just lazy I guess and not a whole lot to blog about. 

Thanksgiving was lovely, as usual at my niece, Lauren's. Great food and decor. Christmas seemed to come and go too fast and now I am in the process of un-decorating, not my favorite task. 

My son was here for a few days for Christmas. He lives so far away so I cherish the time he is here. We usually will spend one day in NYC, but this year we went to the NYBotanical Garden for its annual train show. We had gone several years ago, but it is different each year. All of the  buildings are replicas of authentic NY buildings, some still here and some that have been demolished, like Penn Station.  Kurt took a lot of pictures so here are a few.

Since the gardens are in the Bronx, we went to Arthur Avenue, NY's little Italy for some fun food shopping and lunch. Delicious!

This is the conservatory and where the train show took place. All of the roofs of the real thing are glass. I don't know what plant material was used to look like glass. All of the buildings were made of plant material.

Some of NY's more recognizable buildings.

I think this was the Penn Station that was demolished in the 60's to be replaced by something ugly.

There were model trains all over, including overhead and on bridges, also authentic replicas, like the Brooklyn Bridge and others.

PanAm Terminal

So thanks, Judy, for getting me off my doff and onto blogging again. I am still working on my daily stitching and as you may have guessed, I am behind with December. But I will post a few pictures soon.

November

 I finished November, except for one small block that I will do tonight. I didn't know if I would like working with such neutral colors, but I did.

Next month will be mostly about Christmas and lots of color

October

 Leaves for October. Some I like better than others. I thought I would color them in with crayons and then iron them. I did two that way and really didn't like them and there was no way to undo them.

My sister and I and two good friends had a very nice five day trip to New Orleans in mid October. None of us had been there before and we had a great time. We had some fabulous food, listened to jazz and took a couple of tours.

Halloween is a very big deal in New Orleans and we saw some incredible decorations, but this house was our favorite. It was a huge old house with spacious front and side lawns covered with life size skeletons. Each one sported a sign with a witty name/ and or saying. These are just a few of the pictures I took. Click on the pictures to see the details. 

I'm working on my November page and it is all in neutral tones, grays, blacks, taupe and brown. I read a saying somewhere about the month......NO sun, NO snow, NOvember. It's probably my least favorite month, except for my son's birthday and Thanksgiving. 

I am linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

Finished early

 I finished September a few days ago. I don't know why these circular designs go faster, but they do. I will be taking a couple of small trips in Sept and Oct. so it's alway good to be ahead of the game.

I need to put a little flower in the Sept. block, not much room there. Maybe a small Black Eyed Susan.

I received an email yesterday that my SAQA Auction piece that I showed last week has sold. That's always good news. 

I'm linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

SAQA Benefit Auction

 It's that time of the year where you can buy some wonderful affordable art from the SAQA Benefit Auction. You can read all about it here.

My piece, All Buttoned Up, is in Section 1. Bidding is between Sept 18- 24. Please read all the bidding info in the link above.

It is 12 inches square, as are all the pieces in the auction. Mine is comprised entirely of hand sewn buttons, sewn on in an ombre effect. There are tabs on the back that allow you to hang it in any direction. 

I'm linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

Finished

 Finally finished August. All those fiddly little flowers took a long time. I'm looking forward to Sept when I am going to make circles that encompass more than one block, as I did in June. But I think I will use autumn colors. I know I am going to look at my quilt with the embroidered circles for inspiration.