Fiber, Metal and Stone, all in a week's work.

I find designing stitches for my painted canvases very challenging. A painted canvas is a piece of art, it's, well,  ... a painted canvas. So there has to be a very good reason to stitch over it.  I search and search for good justification to adding  stitching on top of the painted work and if I'm not absolutely sure I've found stitches that enhance what is already there, well, no compromising, I keep searching.

So, if you remember my birds, (who for the reasons stated above are taking sooooo long to design!!), I had my third bird moving along quite well.

 

In fact, the background was all done in the manner you see above.  I was stitching the background, adding the felt leaves, padding the flowers, but the whole time I was not happy.  When I competed it I shuddered.  It was WRONG!  It was so heavy that the poor bird became buried in a big pile of stitches.  I looked at the canvas and despite hours of stitching and experimenting, it took me a minute to decide to grab my trusty seam rippers and out it went! I felt a burden come off my shoulders, and off of the bird's shoulders as well.   I put the canvas down for a couple of weeks and with a deep breath came back to it again.  After a few failed attempts, I got it!  And this time I'm very happy! Here is a glimpse.

I've been a little all over the place this week, working on some metal stamped jewelry, (I promised to teach a class on metal stamping and designing jewelry, I don't know when I'll learn to say no?) 

Then I went on to design and execute a new silver ring with a beautiful raw amethyst stone. Sawing out the leaf shapes and then putting the ring together was challenging but I felt the stone needed to be exposed more than just on the top.  Once I completed the ring,  I found out that the shank is too big for me!  If I want to wear it I will need to redo the shank, and I'm already getting  a headache.  :(

It's time to get back to stitching so off I go.