PLOS week 5, etc.

As a general rule I like to begin with the TAST for the week and then go with the PLOS and hopefully find something previously stitched that goes along with what I've learned for the week. First of all, last week started off with a OOPS! Sharon lost track of the day of the week and that just seemed to throw everybody off..... at least it threw me off. But no big deal, after all she is recovering from surgery and the healing process can sometimes throw us off schedule.

Then I had trouble getting started on my PLOS as I couldn't figure out just what I wanted to do for the week and lo and behold when updating my blog I entered the pics in the wrong order. Do you think this could be a Murphy Week? You know the week where everything that can go wrong does! So let's just start from the top with the pics and go from there .......

Since I've been learning about 'Direction' and 'Movement' in PLOS, I thought an EGA correspondence course completed in 1988 was a good example here. The border, in particular, shows both direction and movement but that is still an aspect I need to work on in cq embroidery especially using my own ideas. It is fairly easy to follow someone else's design but putting my own ideas to work will continue to take practice.

Now this needlepoint piece was also stitched while an EGA member and although you can't see it, in the black section to the left of the Bargello rose, I have stitched my initials and the year using beads. This piece had a painted background and used several techniques, such as weaving with rayon ribbon as well as lacing with the ribbon. Movement and direction are also a big part of this piece. Several of the stitches used are typical of our cq embellishment stitches, such as cross-stitch, and a leaf pattern.

As a general rule I don't place my COH (ChainsOfHearts) swaps on my blog but 'linear', dimension, movement, direction, and shape were covered in lessons four and five of PLOS so this is what I stitched this past week. After blogging I will put the hearts in my COH swap album.


As I said in the beginning of this post I had a really hard time getting started on this weeks PLOS lesson dealing basically with "Direction" and "Shapes". And, again, because of the dark background fabric this photo is not very clear. I started out with one needle using two strands of two different greens DMC floss and layering the Fly Stitch. I also stitched a second Fly Stitch sample using a single strand of a different set of two DMC green flosses in the same needle trying for a different greenery effect. For my purple free form flower I used a #5 dark purple and a #16 shaded purples perle in the needle at the same time. Now I had used the different colors of floss in the needle at the same time before in some of my counted cross-stitch work for shading effect but using two different sizes of threads was new and my purple flower turned out really neat. For the two 'buds' I stitched Colonial Knots with the two sizes of threads and then used a single strand of Caron's Watercolors for the greenery.

Sharon talked about stitching different shapes together so ........ using magenta #5 perle I stitched a small square and then using turquoise #8 perle I stitched a small triangle over top. Directly underneath I used the same colors and stitched a triangle over a triangle. I want to try more of this technique. For my last example I used a light rust #5 perle and stitched the Cretan in a fairly close, elongated stitch. I then couched the Cretan with a Herringbone #8 turquoise perle. Across the top I used three strands of a dark green DMC floss in a detached chain tied down with a three wrap French Knot. Across the bottom I stitched a cross-stitch. It has taken awhile Sharon, but I'm beginning to enlarge on the basic stitches.
Although there is only one last week in this class I have enough information and ideas to keep me busy for a long time. The PLOS class has been my first online class but it won't be the last. Even after the completion of this class I will have more work to do on my sampler as I left plenty of room for additional stitching. Thanks Sharon for a great class!