New project on its way!

One of the secretaries at the office will have a baby end May.
I decided to do a special personal gift to the baby.
We know it’s a girl; and the mother loves so much faeries and butterflies that I decided to embroider some of the pieces with faeries.
All the patterns I’ll use are free on DMC Creative World in the folder named “Color Variations Free Charts".

I never made X stitch before TAST. I don’t really like it but for this project I thought it was the best

Sharing some Spring beauties from my garden.

Weather is fantastic in Belgium for the moment!

We never had such a beautiful sun with no rain at all at this moment of the year.

Everything is blooming all over! Spring is quickly turning into Summer... Here are some pictures taken in my garden.

This is a white bleading heart, also called Dicentera Spectabilis Alba.

These are the buds of a Viburnum Plicatum Chasta.

I love green; I love leafs and flowers!!!

This a Camassia, some of you already saw one of my drawings that was inspired by that beautiful flower.

For the others, you'll find the link here below!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/boskez/184576027/in/set-72157594183565921/

I was tagged for the Thinking Blogger Award

I was tagged by Hideko!

Thinking Blogger Awards

Now I have to choose

'5 Blogs That Make Me Think'.

All of my links are “favorites”; I don’t link to pages I don’t like ;o)
So it will be very difficult to make a choice.
Hideko’s blog has to be in the list but as she was already tagged I removed her blog from my winners. Sorry Hideko ;o)

And the winners are:

http://alliesinstitches.blogspot.com/
Allie’s blog is one of my BIG favorites. Her work is fantastic and she shares all her experiments with us; giving a lot of tips and tricks. I really love the way she is CQing. If you don’t know this blog you miss something!!!

http://gunnelsvensson.blogspot.com/
I discovered Gunnel’s work with TAST and I’m waiting her posts to have more inspiration. Her work is full with colors and creativity.

http://mycreativitygarden.blogspot.com/
Ingeborg’s creativity garden is a real delight; drop an eye!

http://judy-scott.blogspot.com/
I’m copying her own word; they talk better about her than I could!
“I'm a vintage girl with a life all jumbled and mixed together just like a cosy patchwork quilt… I love to create with fabric, paper, thread, paint and all sorts of things!”

http://quietermoments.wordpress.com/
Elizabeth created this new blog for SharonB’s Take a Stitch Tuesdays Challenge 2007. Her other blog is very interesting too! http://quietermoments.blogspot.com/

Here is more info about Thinking Blogger Awards? Just follow the link.

Gifts and SWAP – Great baggies …

During the week, don’t ask me what day it was - I forgot it ;o) the postman came to my door with two packs. One was coming from Japan and the other from the States.

It made my day!!!

Hideko is one of my SWAP sisters for this year. She is sending me Japanese fabrics and threads as other special goodies we can’t find here.

I love the delicate sense of color and harmony we find in all Japanese designs.
One of my dreams is to learn one day Japanese embroidery but we can’t find teacher and lesson her in Belgium. There are so many techniques to master in this art that it is very difficult to learn alone with books.

This time I received a huge amount of fabrics – Japanese, of course ;o) that are soft and smart silks. They seem to me that they are mostly traditional designs for kimono; am I right, Hideko?
A lot of laces and trims are accompanied by beads and silk threads and ribbons; a pack of mother-of-pearl buttons and two lovely silk flowers with a bead center.
A lovely card was also in the pack; that card was designed by Ingeborg and is a real eye candy!
Thank you Hideko, this baggie is just wonderful; as usual! You sent me so much beautiful things. I enjoy all pieces you sent me!
If you ever come to Belgium just call before and we’ll organize a special “embroidery day” with Mireille…



The other pack is a lovely gift coming from Susan.
It is so sweet from you to send me this unexpected baggie!

I immediately though at the Red Heat Society with there red and purple colors!
Did you know I’ll be 50 next year?! ;o))
Now I have to do a project in those colors to celebrate it!
Red and purple fabrics; the same colors for the threads and a lot of beautiful embellishments … Beads and more beads, buttons, laces and motifs.
I can’t tell which one I prefer; everything is so beautiful. Probably the threads … or …
;o)

Nevertheless, CQ friends are generous! Thank you to both of you for that special day I had drooling in the packages with a lot of Oooh and Aaaahs!

Mireille's Xmas gift

With CQI we participated in a Xmas baggie SWAP. As we weren’t “official” partners we decided to do our own personal Xmas present tradition.
We haven’t had the opportunity to meet a lot since a few months…
That’s why when she came on Sunday she brought me my Xmas baggie.

Wonderful! Really fantastic.
You can see that I received 2 “Clover” tools for appliqué.
A wallhanging pattern; one silver Kreinik metalic thread; some ILY silk threads, a lot of Caron’s beautiful threads…
Thank you Mireille!!!
Now, I just have to stitch ;o)

I didn’t make her a present yet; because she asked me to do a tutorial to learn PhotoDraw (Microsoft Office software). I already made the two first lessons ;o) and still have a lot to do…

Busy Sunday!

Mireille came on Sunday to embroider with me.
I met her on CQI and we became friends; it is easy to meet each other as she is living also in Belgium ;o)

We are doing the same project: a beautiful “passiflora” designed by Lesley Turpin-Delport.
We explore the different stitches we can use to add texture to the embroidery. Each of us made her personal selection in threads and colors so even if the design is the same the result will be different.

It was a real sunny Sunday and we had the opportunity to embroider on the terrace; accompanied by the birds’ songs we embroidered and talked as much as we could!!!
A perfect Sunday…

I worked on the “big bud” doing some more picots for the petals and the calyx in detached buttonhole.

For the picots I used DMC “normal” thread and “flower thread”, unfortunately I can’t find that flower thread in DMC, they are no more distributed in Belgium. If somebody can tell me if we can still find them somewhere else?! That would be good news!