Day one Stitching with Sue Spargo

Monday was the second time I've taken a workshop with Sue Spargo and it was even better than the first one I took in 2013!  Because she was stitching at then end of the table I was sitting at as it was empty the first day SCORE!

The first exercise she had us stitch was to do a combination of back stitching of varying lengths parallel to each other.  Then she gave us some examples of what we could do with various woven stitches. This is Sue's bird that gave us some inspiration.

Another of Sue's birds.  Sue offered a bird or a chick project to work on.  Another gal and I chose to work on leaves.  Three gals worked on her new BOM which I'm sorry to say I cannot share pictures but they are wonderful.  Another gal worked on a journal project.

This is my friend Judy's bird wing, weaving on the wing and thorn stitch couching the yarn on the bird's belly.

 Love the blue against the yellow on this whimsical bird.  I took this picture on the last day and you can see an open woven trellis circle for the eye.  Drizzle stitch on top of the head and a open filled buttonhole weave on the background.

 More weaving on the wing and some bullion knots on the tail.  Beading on the back, I think that is a Italian knotted border on the belly.  Woven Picot for the beak.

 Some more woven stitches on this chick and some beads on the bottom row.

 Vertical weaving on Sue's (student) leaf with some beads.  Trellis stitch and beaded ?coral stitch.

 Another day three picture with all sorts of stitches. Woven stitches on the wing with bullion loops on top.  A necklace of double cast on stitches at the neck.  Woven Picot beaks.  Woven spiral circles.  Drizzle stitches, pistil stitches.

This is what my leaf looked like after doing my woven stitches.  The top has silk ribbon woven, then Aurifil thread, sea grace, Perle cotton, more Perle cottons.  The beads were done with the Pekingese stitch and the last row was cotton tape.

 By the end of class I had added some bullion loops with Sue's new Eleganza Perle 8 in a variegated colour.  The colour changes every 2 inches!

 Before heading off to bed I finished the bullion loops.  The colour is more of a navy at the dark end.  The flash washed out the colours.  My background is a grey/turquoise colour.

The next one involved working with embossing silk velvet and stitching different shapes.  Here is a silk velvet sample Sue share with us.  I did ask if I could share these pictures on my blog and got approval.

 Here is an embossed circle I added to an already stitched velvet leaf shape on a wool leaf.

 Another larger embossed silk velvet circle stitched on wool leaves.

 These are some circle samples stitched with the new thread lines Sue has designed.  They are amazing.  There are new colours and weights of Eleganza Perle cotton in 3 weights.  Also some rayon threads of Razzle and Dazzle in new weights and colours!

I apologize I forgot the name of the gal who did this lovely silk velvet wing on her bird.  I asked but can't connect pictures and names right now.

 Another silk velvet wing ready for some embellishing maybe?

 Day two coming tomorrow...stay tuned.