Wherein a snail is finished...

I finished the snail last night and I must say I am pleasantly surprised at how much I like it. ;0)

I used beads for the body to give it the shine of the snails body in real life. I wasn't too sure about getting the beading to come together without tooooo many gaps but it actually worked. WooHOO!

I used some more of the Waterlilies silk floss for the antenna. I used about 6 strands and then couched it down in a spiral fashion with more of the silk. It gives a unique look to the couching and I think it will appear again somewhere on this quilt 'cause it looks really cool! :0) ETA: Please excuse the kitty hair in the large version... heh.

Anyway, just a quick post to show you lovelies the finished snail. We're busy listening to some music - Lynard Skynard, Chris Isaac and Mary Chapin Carpenter so far... (we are nothing if not eclectic in our musical tastes) while we clean house. Have a great weekend!

Still stitching!

I hope all you ladies have had a great weekend! We had nearly half an inch of rain here in Phoenix on Sunday so it has been a lovely, misty moisty weekend for us. We don't get too many of those here so we really appreciate it when we do!

I've added a few more bunches of grass to the single one that was there before. Here is a rather elongated picture... I think you'll have to click on it to see it in any viewable size.

It's not a great picture since I had to stand so far back... but you get the idea. That tuft of grass on the left was looking a little lonely so I have since added another, smaller, tuft just to the right of it. Pictures next post. As I look at this, I see I'm going to have to remove that squiggly green seam treatment above the left hand tuft of grass... it looks kind of out of place!

If you look closely, you'll see the outline of a snail just under the little starburst stitch. This is supposed to be a kind of forest floor picture along these blocks so the snail is quite large compared to the grasses, which are just baby bunches, really. Here's a close-up of the snail outline.

I found a picture of the kind of snail I wanted, one with a really nice big shell. Then I traced the outline on some tissue paper and used that to stitch through so the outline was transferred to the block. I used a varigated silk thread to do a padded satin stitch for the shell. The padding was with #5 perle cotton (I'm not completely crazy!) and the satin stitch itself was done with a 12 strand silk (Caron Waterlilies) that really has some good reflective qualities. I used just one strand of the silk floss so it took me four evenings to get done, but I really enjoyed doing it.

You'll see a break in the stitching about 2/3 of the way back along the shell. I'll be adding a line of beads there, as soon as I can find the perfect ones. I think it came out pretty good. I started at the back tip and worked my way forward. The sections I did later are definitely better than the first ones... it's been awhile since I did satin stitch! ;0) I'm not sure what I'll do for the body of the snail... still thinking about that one.

That's all for now. I'm still not feeling well and I'm really tired most of the time, so this post is rather short. Take care, ladies!!