Take fibers and embellishments sent to you with a specific person in mind, find an appropriate design that will make use of what has been sent to you, stitch and finish the item and voila! You have a completed Melanie’s exchange piece. 🙂
I suspect mine arrived in Australia the day Anne left for her trip to New Zealand. 😆 But, not matter. She has it now, so I can show it off. This was a challenging exercise in creativity and brain power. First, it took me ages to settle on the right design, then I had to find a fabric that worked with all of the colors and finally I had to figure out how to finish the completed piece! Nothing that I had originally envisioned for finishing the piece worked out because it ended up being bigger than I had imagined. No worries. I think it ended up better this way than how I had been thinking of finishing it.
The first photo, obviously, is the piece before I finished it. This serves to show off the lovely Meadow Mist fabric from Silkweaver that I used. I’ve already talked to Anne and she’s okay with my plan to submit this photo in the next Silkweaver competition. Woohoo! I’ve finally stitching something on their fabric that I can submit! 😆
The second photo is the finished product. The cording turned out to be pretty interesting. It was an accident, but I might actually try to do it again sometime. I took the leftover variegated silk that I had used in the Smyrna cross stitches in the border and a bit of the leftover metallic blue, hooked them together so that the metallic went from one end to the middle and the silk went from the other end to the middle, then I twisted the whole thing and when it was ready to kink, I folded it up at the point in the middle where I had joined the two colors. Since there was so much less of the metallic, what happened was I got this cool effect of the silk bubbling up with the metallic in the creases. It’s hard to explain, so try to click to get the larger picture and see if you can tell what I’m talking about. At first, I was upset that the cording hadn’t turned out right, then I started thinking, “Wow, this looks really neat!”
Enough babbling. On to the photos!
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Jenna, I LOVE how the cording turned out!! The whole piece is just lovely. You did a fantastic job!
I have to agree with Christine. That cording is lovely!!! In fact, I’ll have to try to remember that whenever I actually get around to thinking up ways to finish the things I stitch, lol! 🙂 The dragonfly design is nice too. I might be a little biased, since I love dragonflies, but I think you did a great job with the stitching.
what a lovely piece Jenna!
That’s a really gorgeous finish!
I think the cording brings a lot of new interest to the piece, relating so well to the algerian eyes!! Great thinking there, Jenna! 😀
You’ll never believe this, but I was actually thinking of your cording on the drive home from work tonight! Spooky!! I was wondering whether you had attached the silk, then wound the metallic through afterwards – and of course I didn’t have it in front of me to inspect … I don’t know why it came to mind while I was driving … but it obviously left an impression on me! 😀 I really love the effect of it – it’s awesome 😀
Jenna, your ornament for Anne is gorgeous! You did a great job on the cording and the stitching and finishing are just perfect – congratulations!
The cording is wonderful. Will have to remember that in the future!! Beautiful exchange project Jenna — you did such a marvelous job : )
I love the dragonfly design and the way you finished it!
It’s gorgeous Jenna, congratulations
I tried again and again to post a comment yesterday… hurray, it’s working today! You did such a great job on that exchange, Jenna. I love the way you finished it – and that cording, wow! 🙂