Wire flowers

I learnt basically how to make those from an article by Pat Snyder in Dolls in Miniature. When I had first seen the article, I was not really impressed. BUT when I saw color pics of them, first on the web somewhere, and then on Shelly Norris's site , I became an enthusiast ! I first tried to make some basic flowers by myself with the wire I could buy here, and then took a lot of internet classes from ShellyN.

Last month Dienke from P&M , a Dutch miniature mag, was here and she got quite interested and maybe I could write an article on them ? So I contacted Shelly and she was agreeable.
Today I finished the photographed and written tutorial.Here are the test-products. Now let's just hope they are good enough and the instructions clear enough!

And for the first time in my life

I won something....
A purse contest at the Yahoogroup Msatminidolls , big group ; the list owner is Dana Burton, she is assisted by a very dedicated bunch of gals, like Lesa, Marilyn P and lots of others. If anyone wants to learn whatever about dressing/ making/wigging dolls , there is where you need to be !

This specific purse was stitched to fit a clasp made by Jens Torp from the UK , who is a great silversmith and a very nice man , too. The design was by Nicola Mascall; I bagged it from one of the pillows I had stitched before.
It was stitched on 64 hpi silk gauze with YLI100, a very thin silk thread.
The ruler you see does centimeters , not inches :-). The width is 13 mm.

but first finishing something else :

A pug cushion , designed by Shelly Hawley-Yan ( she is a great designer and a great animal lover, too).
When a friend of ine asked me to stitch a pug for her granddaughter , who has a fancy for all things pug, I did not have a design, since I can only design from RL portraits. Fortunately I remembered Shelly having published this particular one in American miniaturist. The colors are a glowing , somehow, like jewels, and I really like it.Thank you Shelly !!

The pillow will be mailed this week.

finally stitching full steam ahead

again !

I FI-NAL-LY collected all my courage and started an Undertaking !
I am going to stitch the Joseph Boria carpet ( Victorian Craftsman ) no.1029. It has,as it encouragingly tells me , 242,653 stitches when it will be done ( I suppose the odd number will be the central stitch?). Holy moly , that is near to a quarter of a million......Two of my friend of the Petitpointersgroup stitched this dinosaurus already, now it is my turn :-).
I am stitching on 40 hpi gauze.
Believe it or not , this is the feeble result of several hours stitching. I think I will play truant from time to time to stitch some smaller projects in between , just to keep my spirits up. Otherwise depression could loom on the horizon........Bwahhaaahaaa!!!

Karins critters

I stitched some portraits of Karin Fosters animals and last Friday they arrived at her house.( she describes the pets in her blog here)

Here they are ,all four of them :

I did not want to post the foursome earlier , as Yuki , the small black kitten , was meant as a surprise. I think I succeeded !