Winter wreath progress

I'm having a great time progressing on this project - I'm embroidering a version of The Winter Wreath from Kazuko Aoki's book, The Embroidered Garden.



Up above is a closeup of one of the large white flowers. It's all done in split stitch, which is very-time consuming, but I do like the texture. Oh, and tons of little french knots in the center. The stems are two strands of vintage Nun's Boilproof floss, couched with a thin white sewing thread.



Here's a small woven wheel rose, and the round flowers made up of french knots - shall we call them dandelions? I'm least confident about my stitching on those, but we'll see how it progresses...



Another large white flower and a large woven wheel rose. The rose stems are couched gold DMC embroidery floss.



I took this project outside and was delighted by how much better it looks in the light - it really captures the detail more.

I opened an Instagram account of my own this week - follow me @nyfloresita if you like! I also post on the Feeling Stitchy account to promote Feeling Stitchy blog posts, and Amy posts on Fridays.

A photo posted by floresita (@nyfloresita) on Aug 26, 2016 at 7:12am PDT

There's such a wonderful community of stitchers on Instagram, and Flickr has really slowed down in terms of finding new stitching online. For now, I'll be maintaining both accounts, and we'll see what the future will bring!

Stitching Saturday: the Magical Kingdom of Instagram

So, I finally jumped on the bandwagon and joined Instagram. It was pretty much kicking and screaming, since I'm an awful perfectionist and the idea of my barely-cleaned up cameraphone images floating around in the ether has never appealed to me.

But Feeling Stitchy needed an Instagram account to host our newest blogger, so I sucked it up and created one. :)

Could have sworn I posted my finish for the June 2012 stitchalong, but I never did! Here's my finish, finally. :) Fabulous pattern by @corvus_tristis.

A photo posted by Feeling Stitchy (@feelingstitchyish) on Mar 10, 2015 at 9:01am PDT

And then I discovered the magic of Instagram - it's kind of what Flickr was, or was trying to be, back in the day.

Since it allows photos only from your phone, there's a feeling of immediacy and candidness that isn't always on Flickr. Also, most photos look great when they're small! No need to over-preen for them.

Knowing it's just gonna be square helps if you've got little to no sense of composition, like myself. Just make it fit, and you're done!

It really helped me just get stuff posted - knowing I could snap, make it fit, fix the brightness and click go, helped me post this project that has been sitting around unphotographed for ages, because I'm such a darned perfectionist about the photos:

Guess what else I found? A finished pillow made from a lovely family tree pattern by @cozyblue. :)

A photo posted by Feeling Stitchy (@feelingstitchyish) on Mar 10, 2015 at 9:28am PDT

I think for now I won't create my own account, but it will be a great quick way to get book and review images posted for Feeling Stitchy.

How many of you are on Instagram? Love it or hate it?