After that last non-stitchy post, I thought I had better show you that I have actually been buzzzzy with me needle, honest
!!!
Firstly, I finally finished the backstitch and beads on Buzzy Days, and DH kindly framed it for me. Here it is, all completed! :-)
This one was stitched on a hand-dyed 28ct Lugana from Silkweavers. I added some 'Fuzzy' thread to the centre of the daisies and the bee, and if you look carefully, there's a caterpillar and a ladybird charm in there! :-)
My best mate Mouse (hence the 'Mouse and Bee' theme! 
) came down for a few days last weekend, and we had a lovely day out to Malvern Quilt Show. Mouse has never really done patchwork as she's a dressmaker at heart; but she took one look at all the gorgeous patchwork fabrics on display and was an instant addict! As you can imagine, we both came home with lots of fat-quarters and half-meters. 
Then we settled down for some 'serious' stitching. First off was to get up to date on the Friendly Stitchers "A Stitch A Week" sal (we are now up to week 20!). Here is mine . . 
The clematis ended up being a much darker pink that my 'real' one, as the pale colour barely showed against the fabric. I used a stump-work technique to make the 3-D stamens on it. The bluebells were satin stitch, the top of the bullrushes in the frog square were bullion-knots, and finally 'Daisy' the cow is munching on lazy-daisy flowers!
I had another finish - and also a bit of a disaster. At the show, I found some sweet gold-thread tassles that just 'begged' to be included to my bee-garden scissor case. In order to attach it, however, I had to turn the scissor case inside out. This I did, but on turning it right-sides-out again, the seam split, and the fabric frayed so badly that there was no way to rescue it. You can imagine how gutted I was! Thankfully, I have enough of the threads and fabric to make another.
In the meantime, I set-to and finished the matching needlecase. Here it is:-
Finally . . Mouse and I both had the kit for Jane Greenoff's "The Embroideress" in our stash piles, and so we decided we'd make a start on it together. A good job we did! There is no key on the chart, only on the rather flimsy pre-sorted thread cards; my cards were so badly printed however, that I had to keep referring to Mouse's to work them out! I was also missing 2 colours and needed to check that Mouse definitely had them included on hers.
We dug in with our needles, only to realize that there were several discrepencies between the chart, the instructions and the photo of the finished piece! We had a lot of discussion, trying to work out how a certain part would go, and making a few 'individual' changes ourselves.
Here is my effort so far:-
If you look carefully, you can see I changed the owl to satin-stitch (he was originally in cross-stitch), and I also changed the colour of the backstitch round some of the flowers. It's made mine look completely different to Mouse's - amazing that such a tiny substitution can make such a huge difference to the look of the piece! I think we both like the fact that our samplers will be the same, yet unique!
Right, enough of my yacking . . 
I will get back to my stitching, and maybe even get round to re-stitching that scissor case (WITH tassle, this time!)
Buzzzzzzzzzzing off . .. 
Bee
x
