Saturday, February 25, 2012

FREE-A New Brazilian Dimensional Embroidery Design for You

Our Brazilian Dimensional Embroidery International Guild (BDEIG, Inc) is 20 terrific years old in 2012. To help us celebrate the start of our next 20+ years, we invite stitchers to enjoy free B.E. designs - One-A-Month. These will be posted at the BDEIG website here, a new design posted each month, for one month only, and then replaced by a brand new design.

This is "Brazilian Bouquet", designed by Loretta Holzberger.
If you would like to see more of Loretta's beautiful designs, visit her website. In addition to Brazilian embroidery, Loretta specializes in needle lace and has also developed several beautiful stumpwork designs. She has also written several books. In addition to her needle lace and stumpwork books, she has developed some very creative work with silk flowers and Ganutell, a unique wire and floss method of making dimensional flowers.

Be sure to download the pdf file for this design; you are welcome to share it, but please don't charge for the copies you make. These designs are wonderful teaching projects for chapters or for your own projects.

Look for the next design from Debbie Kelley of DK Designs, and in May, I'll send in a design I have just developed for the Edelweiss flower.

Happy Birthday to us!
     ...and don't forget to become a BDEIG member if you haven't done so yet. You'll find a membership application here.

I have more to write in a day or two or three. I've been working on my design instructions for the new 2012 BE designs. And I've been putting together a lot of my stitch samples into a little crazy quilt. 

There were a few hundred left over, so I'm going to do some-exciting-thing else with them.
Rosalie

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Time for CATS ... My Flowers Aren't Blooming Yet

This is Emmy.
Emmy is A Woman of Mystery - meaning we aren't sure of her exact age, but she is probably 13 years old -- a beautiful short-hair calico rescue kitty, who is sure the sun rises and sets in her world only.

This is Cuthbert (You've seen him quite often -- he's usually between the keyboard and the computer monitor, beneath the lamp and my 'petting' hand --and as close to Emmy as she will allow).
Cuthbert is a Norwegian Forest Cat; he thinks his pictures are the absolute best:
Emmy has her own opinion of The Big Boy:
I love them both.
Rosalie



Itty Bitty Brazilian Dimensional Embroidery ....and Something New: TooT

It's my "Itty Bitty Clown"!
My Millefiori Design #884 - Itty Bitty Clown -- is back for an encore. I had a request and went in search of this little guy who is only 3" tall. I found him in a circus tent playing with the elephants. He's made with a stitch I developed a while back called "The Nibble" using variegated rayon floss. This is a close-up view of "The Nibble":
Here's a Great Big "Itty Bitty":
Finishing touches are the most fun to do when the stitching is complete on one of our Brazilian dimensional embroidery designs. I used a red plastic embroidery hoop and added a 1/2" diameter blue satin cord as edging, gluing all to the blue mat board with my favorite fast-drying clear glue, Fabri-Tac.
The balloons are buttons (you can cut the shanks of plastic buttons with your wire-cutters), an old earring (the golden 'balloon') and buttons with offset holes (I have seen these recently at Michaels). The balloon strings are black sewing thread. 
By the way, I found the elephant he was playing with. The elephant's name is "TooT, and is one of my newest Brazilian dimensional embroidery designs that I will teach at BDEIG Seminar 2012 this June. (Pictures of ALL available classes will be posted soon; keep checking back.)

Here's a picture of "TooT":
One nice thing about elephants -- they can hold a LOT of flowers. There are some new flowers here, and there are some favorites - a petal of one, a leaf of another -- all fitting together to make something brand new! For example, TooT's little "hat" is really a flower from the book My LadyFlowers by Rosalie Wakefield (me). I knew it would balance up there because I've seen it done before! See:
Rosalie