Lloyd and Lola are Done

No, not as a couple.  (smile)  I named my wolves, so why not the lovebirds!  I've kept up with the lessons in my cyberclass, so now my blackwork lovebirds are finished.

Tanja Berlin's Just the Two of Us

I really, really like them.

This was billed as a beginning blackwork class,

but there were a lot of challenges along the way:

the stem stitch around the toes was tricky,

the heads are a dense layering of

DMC 310, YLI black silk and a

Belle Soie in dark periwinkle

(hard to see in this photo).

And let's not forget the very fine pearl purl

which had to be couched down

around the bodies and the beaks.

But challenging yourself does

give a feeling of accomplishment.

Here are the heads in various stages of progress.

I was really happy to be able to get

rid of the last of the red tacking stitches!

 And here is a close-up of the head.

You can see the periwinkle peeping through the black.

The reason the red in the beak

doesn't extend all the way to the

black stem-stitched inner border is that

this type of lovebird has a

white band across the top of its beak.

I actually looked up lovebirds on the Internet

because it was bugging me.

The eyes are spangles (sequins) held down

with a kind of eyelet stitch.

I would definitely urge you to try a cyberclass,

if you see one that interests you.

We posted WIP photos all along the way,

and got lots of good (and prompt!) feedback from Tanja.

I felt that I had plenty of time

to complete each class, too.

That's it from here.

I'm taking them to the framer's today.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Thanks for visiting!

Lovebirds - Lessons 2 and 3

Hey Blog Buddies,

What have you been up to recently?  I've been spending a lot of time working on my blackwork lovebirds in order to keep up with the cyberclass I'm taking from Tanja Berlin.  It's a good thing the overall size of the piece is not terribly large, is all I can say.

In case you missed my first post about them, here is where I left off...

This was Lesson 1.

And here is Lesson 2.

It's kind of hard to see in this photo,

but there are a couple of small stitched areas

toward the top of each bird

that look a little lighter than the rest of the body.

That's because most of the body

was stitched with DMC 310,

but the lighter areas were stitched with

YLI silk which is noticeably thinner than DMC!
How thin was it?
It was so thin that I had to tie it on to my needle!

And here I thought that silk floss

was always thicker than DMC floss.

Gloriana is.

You learn something new every day!

I thought that Lesson 3 was rather ambitious,

but I managed to finish it.
I'm all caught up to where I'm supposed to be,
waiting for Lesson 4 to be published.

The colors in the body are

four different shades of metallic thread,

and the beaks were stitched with Au Ver a Soie silk,

which is a bit thicker than DMC 310.

Here's a close-up.

As you can see, some of the octagons

contain a two-color metallic square.

It all depended on whether

they straddled the basting lines,

which are thankfully gone now.

They annoyed me.

Put them on my long list!

This is a fun class,

and I like how the birds are turning out.

Lesson 4 (coming this Friday): the heads!

Hope you're stitching something fun.
Thanks for visiting!

Lovebirds: Class 1

Hey Blog Buddies,

How's your day going?  Just thought I'd pop in to give you a peek at the blackwork class I'm taking.  It's my first ever cyberclass, and I'm enjoying it very much.  There are two weeks between each class, and if the first class is any indication, the lesson can easily be completed within that time frame.  The piece is designed and taught by Tanja Berlin.  There is a class forum for questions, and students are encouraged to post WIP photos to get feedback from Tanja and perhaps even other students.

The first thing she had us do was to transfer the outline of the birds onto our linen.  The way we did this was to trace the outline found in our instructions onto tissue paper, pin the paper onto our fabric, and then baste over the traced lines, using long stitches on the right side of the fabric and short on the back.

After all the basting lines were stitched, the next step was to tear the tissue paper away, leaving just the red basting stitches.  The tissue paper within the lines didn't want to come off, so tweezers were used to get every last little piece of paper off.  Of course, this procedure stretched out some of the basting lines, which needed to be tightened up from the back.  I found the whole process to be quite challenging, but I guess I did OK because Tanja said it looked good.  I was glad to be able to start the actual blackwork.

Tanja's instructions are very detailed with lots of photos, and she leaves virtually nothing to the imagination.  She suggested that we mount our linen on wooden stretcher bars like those normally used for needlepoint projects.  The wooden stretcher bars are much lighter (in weight) than plastic Q-Snaps so I think I'll be using them from now on for my larger, but not ginormous, linen projects.  As a matter of fact, my previously mentioned wolves are on wooden stretcher bars.  I thought it was a weird way of mounting linen at the time, but they have been working well for that project.  You shouldn't be afraid to think outside the box!

Stitching the branch was the last thing

to be done in Lesson 1.

Tanja helped several of us out 

with the placement of the shading stitches

to give the branch a more rounded look.

Here's a close-up of part of the branch.

I am taking out the basting lines

as I stitch each area of the project.

We have just received the PDF

for Lesson 2 this morning,

and I'm looking forward to starting it. 

That's it for now.

Have a stitchy weekend and

thanks for visiting!