It's Not The End Of The World - Phat Quarter Swap

Continuing with the hearts theme this post, here is my latest swap piece for the Phat Quarter.

December had a fifth friday so that means a swap over at the Phat Quarter Flickr group. This time the theme was It's Not The End Of The World.... and my mind went to musical theatre! The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Tell Me On A Sunday has a song in it called exactly that. Apparently I'm a little bit obsessed with hearts at the moment so this image came to mind.

I wanted to experiment with using my own hand writing in a piece and to use a different stitch than usual. I went with a long and short stitch for the heart mixing metallic thread with regular thread to give it an interesting texture.

I quite like the way the writing came out. At first I thought it was too messy, but after I slept on it I think it puts across the emotion of this piece quite well.

In case you were wondering the background of this piece is rust dyed - it is one of my favourite techniques of late and meant that I finally got to use one of my pre-dyed backgrounds in a piece.

I like the simplicity of this piece but the weight of emotion that it brings. I think I need to investigate this interest in the heart shape as well and see where it takes me..... keep an eye on the blog to see!

Valentines....

There seems to be a lot of talk about Valentine's Day around me at the moment and it made me realise something.... some of my prints would make great Valentine's cards or anti-Valentine's day cards!

Check out my print account here to see these embroideries as greetings cards - go on, you know you want to!!

Any Which Way You Can

I finished another embroidered square for my quilt! This one is based on a lyric from the Scissor Sisters song 'Any Which Way' off of their new album 'Night Work':

"I'm gonna find that man the right shade of bottle tan, who smells like cocoa butter and cash"

I really liked the statement, a woman can go find whatever man she wants, be it a millionaire or a nuclear physicist :-)

I decided that I wanted the bronzed torso of a man in sunglasses to be the image to go with this lyric. I used orange cotton for the background to emphasise the image of a 'bottle tan'. I embroidered the lyric in complimentary metallic blue thread.

I stayed quite simple with my stitches to emphasise the lines of the body. I used an off-kilter font for the lyric to add some personality to the speaker. Satin stitching the sunglasses was the most difficult part as I needed the thread to be thin enough that it didn't overwhelm the shape, but thick enough that it filled it. I think it came out pretty well! Let me know what you think...

On another embroidery note, my Phat Quarter swap piece from Vegkat came in the mail today!! It's a quote from Pee Wee's Big Adventure and I love it!! Thanks Vegkat!!!