Bullion Stitch - Take a Stitch Tuesday

I experimented with the bullion stitch this week making a conventional picture with different flowers and a flying insect. Before I started the picture on the right, I looked through back issues of Inspirations magazine to get ideas. Most of the flowers are stitched using gumnuts petals, the bug has rayon wings and a purple cotton overdyed body. After some practice, my skill with the bullions improved and I think that most of them look pretty good. My son pointed out that although the flowers are fairly realistic, he has never seen a purple bee. It is stitched on a piece of overdyed cotton -- I bought a bag of pieces packaged for crazy quilters and then forgot about it. I will probably use them for finishing cross stitch pieces but I could use them to make crazy quilt blocks using some of my TAST experiments with flowers as focal points.

I also experimented with adding bullions to the free embroidery piece that I started last week. The cream is silk and the green is a DMC linen thread. The additional stitches add some textural interest and more color to the piece. I am starting to like it a bit more than I did before. It is interesting -- I described this piece last week as a mess but someone saw it in the TAST Flikr group and added a comment to indicate that they really liked it.

In addition to stitching, I finished reading The Peoples Act of Love by James Meek and started reading The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards. I also watched The Big Sleep this afternoon -- I love watching Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall together. I have been entertaining the cats by winding yarn into balls and I successfully started my first sock. Maybe later this week, I will be able to post a progress picture.