CHALLENGE: Threads.Infusion Challlenge

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.  

                                                                                                                    ~Thomas Merton

I love e-magazines!  I can read them on my iPad, make notes on articles, delete articles that I am done reading and star those I want to revisit.  I feel so much more efficient!

One of my favorite e-magazines is threads.In-fusion from the Threads Studio in Perth, Australia. The owner of Threads Studio, Dale Rollerson (with her husband, Ian), has taught me so many things.  She really has stretched the way I create art (in addition to some of the most wonderful art quilting supplies anywhere!).  Her relatively new magazine is packed full of new techniques to try (my favorite pastime!). In her latest issue, she posed a challenge for readers: Hand Stitchy Challenge - Stitching With Attitude - Stitching Strategies.  If you wanted to take part in the challenge she would randomly draw an embroidery stitch and style out of two bowls.  Here are my words that she drew:
       Your two words (actually three...) are
          a stitch  lock stitch
          a style  square
          a how  irregular
She also offered to put together a packet of fabric and threads for threads.  I decided to purchase one of these packets, but in between ordering and its arrival, we had a blizzard! Some schools were closed the entire week and we went two days without mail (so much for the "rain, snow, shine, we will deliver") Here is a view of our decks with all of the snow:

    

Being buried inside, I decided to complete the challenge before my goody bag arrived.  I was not sure what a lock stitch was and finally found it in the Internet.  Here is a pic of it:

 I found it easier to draw on the fabric where is wanted the stitches and then basted it on a piece of muslin in order to hoop it.

                                                 

I started with my piece with two of my hand-dyed fabric and stamped them using Lois Ericson's stamps.  This stamp was used on the background:

And I use Lois' 'Grass' stamp on the accent pieces.  The stamped fabric is below:

                                      

I quilted the background, then made big silk ribbon 'X's' on the background (thanks to my friend, Karen, who gave me this wonderful stash of embroidery ribbon. I layered my squares of lock stitches on the piece, a bit of an embroidered border and POOF, I was done. Again, here is my piece: 

 Close-up of the accent pieces:

 Close-up of the beaded border:

That leaves me two things:

1. If you remember from the beginning of this post, it said that my squares should be 'irregular'...hmmmm....obviously, I am not good at the 'irregular'. I'll make this a future goal!
2. Finally, the snow cleared, and our dear mail-person, Shirley, delivered three days of mail in one day.  Actually if you asked Shirley, it was more than one day; I saw her in our neighborhood around 5:30 pm and she usually delivers to us a 1:00 pm. I hope she made it home that night!  That day in the mail was my goody bag from Australia.  When I opened the bag, it put a whole new perspective on what I could have done. Here is the contents of what Dale selected for me:

See what I mean!  Now I have supplies for something fabulous in the future!