Off the reservation and back again

 Yesterday I took an online class from Jessie Chorley with the Orange Coast Sampler Guild. Jessie designs fabric collages that involve embroidery and appliqué, similar to crazy quilting but with its own sensibility.

We have templates that we can embellish with embroidery:

She suggested floss and Perle cotton colors as well as stitches which she likes to do. Jessie uses a lot of seed stitch and satin stitch in her creations.

She also provided fabric pieces to incorporate into the hanging:

And she offered suggestions on other items and techniques we might consider using.

This is way out of my wheelhouse, but I think I'm going to tackle it in baby steps. At the moment, though, I think I'm going to play in my embroidery floss colors and fabric stash. Jessie uses faded, muted tones--I think I'm going a little brighter. And, of course, since I try to make everything ever so much more difficult than it needs to be, I think I'm going to use some shading in the motifs--actually, I'm sorta thinking about trying to duplicate the pattern on my china on the teacup, for example.

We have another class in October to go over what we're doing. I do not believe I will be to the point of having a review by that time--I have other things that are calling my name more loudly--but we'll see how it goes.

After the class, I went back to my usual type of embroidery. I picked up Betsy Morgan's Tasmanian Needle Tidy. I now have pink snails and purple thistles. Dearly Beloved said they look more like pineapples to him, but I'm going with thistles. I have yet to see a purple pineapple. I will leave it to you to decide:

Thistles, right?