BFF Month 2.4 Stitching

Without further ado, here's the final motif for Month 2 of Rosalie Quinlan's Best Friends Forever:

I am continuing with the Northern Cardinal colouration on all the birds, even though they don't all have crests. Northern Cardinals mate for life, and they are rarely far apart, so they feel appropriate for the best friends forever theme. Plus, they are one of the few species of birds that stay near our house all year. The others tend to fly south for the winter, or north for the summer.

I know the photo is dark again too. Yes, it's still very cloudy around here! I had to use the flash for the next photo:

The next steps for Month 2 will be to wash the whole thing again, cut the motifs apart, line them, and piece them into the blocks. Plus, Month 3 is already underway!

BFF Month 2.3 Stitching

Here's the apple tree from Month 2 of Best Friends Forever, all finished. I think I've already said it all about this one! I will admit, though, that the solid apples in padded satin stitch do look pretty nice. :)

You can see by the dark photo that after an early taste of crisp January sunshine and snow, we are back to our usual grey and rainy December weather here in Toronto!

The last motif for Month 2 is also almost done, but I ran out of the grey-brown thread, DMC 840, so I'll have to dash over to the store some time this week. It's annoying, because somehow when I stocked up on thread for this project, I forgot that one! Well, I guess I'm lucky to have the option of a nearby store, I know many don't. On I go!

BFF Month 2.2 Stitching

Here, finally, is the next instalment of the Month 2 stitching on Best Friends Forever:

I did a lot of experimenting on the big hearts here before I hit upon a stitch that looked the way I wanted it to. I wanted a lot of texture so the hearts would stand out even though I was using a light colour.

When I'm "shopping" for a new stitch, I always come back to Country Bumpkin's A - Z of Embroidery Stitches, vols. 1 & 2:

These are probably the most used books on my bookshelf. They are spiral bound inside the cover, so they lie flat, and the detailed photographs are excellent.

Twisted chain stitch turned out to be perfect for this design. It works up quickly, and I found it to be very forgiving -- it creates a fairly straight line even when your stitches aren't! It's worked on both sides of the line...

...and can also be used for applique.

For the flowers I stuck with the stitches I've been using since Month 1:

The petals and leaves are done in back stitch with four strands of floss, the flower centres are tiny chain stitch, and the stems are stem stitch, naturally!

Regular readers may be wondering what happened to the apple tree from Month 2? After much procrastination it is now well under way! Here's another preview:

In the long run I think the padded satin stitch will prove to be a bad choice here, because I'm sure it will catch on something. But I'm committed now! Hopefully the whole tree will be done soon. ;)

In the mean time, happy stitching!