My piece comes home!

After travelling almost all over the world my piece that I did for the three country challenge (Japan/France/South Africa) has finally come home. There were 30 participants in each country and one from each country was given the same Movie Director to draw inspiration from and to create a piece.  My Movie Director was Alain Resnais who I knew absolutely nothing about.

I chose the movie Hiroshima - mon  amour as It was the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima, movie made by a French Director and the piece made by a South African ,,,,, all the dots connected the three countries.  This challenge took place in 2010..

I have finally finished my Japanese Anemone piece.

I chose the spotty binding as I thought it softened the 'white' of the flowers, however, it 'dances' on the edge of the piece and is quite distracting.  I think a more regular pattern would have been better.  I may revisit this one.

An unexpected break !!

I have managed to get to the sewing machine and finally have been putting the 'Japanese Anenome' piece together which I started a while ago.

The background flower is drawn on as well as the buds with fabric oil pastels. At this point I have also just fused the stems and leaves in place. The stitched flowers are just placed.  How to quilt the background?

After stitching the leaves, buds and stems I used a mix of stippling around the leaves and then I changed to the very open pansy design around the rest of the piece. I now need to stitch in place the flowers and finish them off with hand stitches and beads. Sort of happy - I think this is one that will grow on me once finished.

I was given some young sprouting bulbs by a friend a while ago and they have been doing well. Look what I discovered a couple of days ago ........ one is about to flower, well, actually to my delight I have discovered a few more popping up in the other pot.  I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the plant!