Sunday, May 31, 2009

Flower Diamonds: Pilot class for Terry Dryden

Before writing this blog entry, I checked to see what date I had started working on Terry Dryden's pilot class called "Flower Diamonds" and it was May 10th, so this means that it took me approximately 3 weeks from start to finish. Not bad at all! Time does fly when we are having fun :-)
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Contrary to what I normally do, which is working on multiple projects in some sort of rotation system unknown to me as I pretty much stitch what I want to stitch when I feel like it, this time around I concentrated on this project alone as Terry needed to get our report back by mid June in order to get everything ready for the lucky ones who will be taking her class at the upcoming ANG seminar in Milwaukee and I am the worst person to evaluate how much time this or that will take me. I always always tend to underestimate my time, and I did not want to chance it with this one.
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Flower Diamonds has 3 panels which are yellow, lavender and orchid. Most of the design is the same in each panel except for colors and threads and of course Terry's 9 central flowers. I am including here 4 photographs, one of each panel and one that shows the whole project.
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This first photo here shows the "yellow" panel where you see the three diamonds in the middle with flowers inside.

(yellow panel)
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This second photo shows you the "lavender" panel with different flowers in the middle.

(lavender panel)

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Third photo shows the "orchid" panel with again different flowers and colors in the 3 central diamonds.

(orchid panel)

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And finally the last photo shows the entire project. Since this will be finished as a neck roll, then you have to imagine this as a round circle (round and round it goes) and once finished we will never ever be able to see all sides at the same time. I have already been researching patterns in order to find one that I really like as I intend to finish it myself.


Being a ghost stitcher for a pilot class was an entirely new experience for me and it has turned out to be a lot of fun, a lot of work too :-)
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Terry Dryden had given us lots of different threads, silk ribbons and beads to use in this project in order to entice us in making changes, which I did actually. My best friend Terry from England, (another Terry), will probably faint from astonishment when she reads this as she is always there telling me to change this and that. I sometimes do and often don't, though lately I must say that I do it more and more. My changes involve the 9 flowers in the middle diamonds. If you check my May 10 post, you may see some of the differences. To come back to threads, I think that we all have had bad experiences with kits, not having enough threads, but not this time around I am happy to say and it was a great feeling. I could then concentrate on stitching and not worrying if I am going to run short of this or that.
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I must also add that this project has given me the opportunity to acquaint myself with lots of new threads and ribbons, at least new to me, and that is something that I have been looking for to do in the past. It was also very interesting to find myself in a position to see how a particular color looks like when placed next to different colors. It is just so amazing how absolutely different they look. I normally do not stitch the same project twice. My reason for this is that there are so many beautiful projects out there, why would I want to stitch the same thing twice no matter how beautiful it is when I can use that time to stitch something else. In this case, I had no choice since there were 3 panels and I had to stitch each one of them if I wanted to end up with a beautiful neck roll (grinning).
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All around this was a wonderful learning experience and I am so very happy that Terry Dryden offered me this opportunity to stitch Flower Diamonds for her pilot class as a "ghost".
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Thanks, Terry Dryden :-)
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Pierrette =^..^=