Something Old, Something New

Yesterday I started working on a batch of cherry blossom needle books.  You can see an older blog post about this design here.  I sold out of these at the quilt show, everyone really appreciated all those tiny french knots!  French knots are my favorite embroidery stitch, I use them a lot.  

In addition to this, I have been working on drawings for some new pincushions.  This is one in progress.

As always I start off with photographs for reference.  These awesome photos are by Anne Froehlich and are on Flickr.  I draw and think and sip some tea and then imagine how the drawings can be translated to felt and embroidery.  I think about color schemes and backgrounds.  I pull out scraps of felt and skeins of thread and make decisions.  Later I will make paper pattern pieces.

Just as I was heading out yesterday afternoon, two parcels arrived.  The first was from Quilting Acres and was full of beautiful pieces of hand dyed felt, and it arrived arranged in rainbow order just as I would organize it!  Perfect, I think this seller is a kindred spirit!  I was excited to find that she had some of the brown herringbone felt that I like to use for my tree stump pincushions.  I've had a hard time finding it.  

The second parcel was an order of Holland Felt which is my everyday felt.  It is gorgeous 100% wool and is lovely to work with.  It is certified organic in every step of the process from sheep to finished product.  I've found a new distributor here in the U.S. and their shipping is much faster and less expensive than my previous source.  Distracted, as I was by my parcels, I was a few minutes late for school pick-up, oops!