Mystery Tour

Many years ago I bought a plant at the local nursery. It was trying to burst out of a 5-gallon pot and the sign said it was shade tolerant so I put it in a gap near my front and oh has it flourished! I noticed the other day that it is "in bloom" and I thought I would take a picture.

Here is the plant

And here is the (rather snigger inducing) blossom

If anyone recognizes what type of plant I bought so long ago I'd love to know!

I am starting work on my next two embroidered pieces. These will be a diptych.

They were made by using transfer paint on paper and then ironing the resulting image on two pieces of material. Of course each subsequent piece has less intensity than the previous one because of the transfer process. I thought these looked like the same piece of landscape on a cloudy day and on a sunny day so I thought I would explore that idea.

This week's Diva Challenge was to use the new tangle pattern Ellish and here is my result

I enjoyed this as my maiden name started with an L and I have played around with letter based patterns before. I also decided to use the Ellish idea an transfer it to the letter M since my current last name starts with the letter M.

Lots of fun! Looking forward to seeing what others have done with this challenge.

Another Ketchup Day

I can't believe it has been nearly a month since I last posted! I have been very busy teaching workshops, taking classes and finishing projects. So here is a round up of what I've done over the last month.

In my art class we did some shibori dyeing (specifically itajime) and I got sort of carried away...

Bamboo Rayon Scarves

Silk Scarves

Cotton T-Shirt

Another project was to do a Master Copy, i.e. a copy of a piece of art done by a master artist. I chose a piece by Van Gogh that he painted about a year before his death. His piece was 18" x 24" and painted in water color, oil and pastel. My copy is one-quarter scale and done in oil pastel.

Trees and Shrubs by D. Menconi after V. Van Gogh

The second part of the assignment was to appropriate something from the Master Copy into a piece of your own art. I wanted to try to use the movement of the leaves Van Gogh achieved in his piece on the water of this piece I have been working on for several months.

Ruth's Dream

If you want to see in-progress photos of this, you can see them here and here.

On the new design front I am working on a new needlebook to go with the one I did in January. This one will have a butterfly on it.

And last but not least I have done most of the Diva Challenges set over the past few weeks.

Diva Challenge 265

Diva Challenge 266
String 191

Diva Challenge 268
String 200

That's been me. I can't wait to see what you all have been up to while I wasn't looking!