Italian Insertion Stitch can be used for making a book binding. It is similar to the other insertion stitches that I used recently in class. I didn’t get to show a photo since I was having such trouble uploading photos when I was traveling.

The top one is knotted insertion stitch and the bottom one is grouped buttonhole stitches. We also did one with a lacing stitch and knotted buttonhole stitch on the edge.

All I’ve managed to get done today is to get the pages ready to be stitched. I haven’t started the insertion stitch yet and have to read the directions again as I haven’t tried this stitch yet. Hopefully, I’ll get more done on this tomorrow.

I finished lacing the Kantha bird embroidery today. Now I just need to buy a dark grey matt to go behind it and get it framed. I also finished the cat toys that I started on our trip to Washington. I ran out of beads so I couldn’t finish them in the car. I painted the first coat of paint on a canvas that I am going to finish with my local surface design group on Friday. We will be layering like I did in my studio journal recently.

 Here’s the finished bird after being laced to the card. You can click on the photo to get a better view.

 Here’s the back showing the lacing.

 I also stitched down the edges so they would stay flat.

 Here are the cat toys  before going in the washing machine.

And here they are, ready to go to the store after being “washed” and finished.

Here is the first layer on my canvas. I’m planning on doing a red background with green leaves in a variety of greens. I’ll show you more of this next weekend.

Today I am working on lacing the back of my Kantha bird piece. I thought of a way to mark the piece so that I didn’t have to wait to do this part until I got the backing board. It’s good that I did this because I realized that I measured incorrectly and would have gotten the wrong size board.

You can see I’ve just started lacing the back. I always feel like I need about 5 hands to do this. It’s a bit tricky getting it all lined up and keeping the tension even.

It feels like forever since I’ve spent a full day in the studio. I had piles of stuff to put away from my recent class and then a bit of final homework to finish up. I worked today on matting some pieces and getting a couple of pieces ready to stretch around a board so the piece can be surface mounted. I don’t have the matt board to go behind these and I’ll need to get that first before I can stretch them. But I needed measurements for the corrects size of the matting. I also went out and purchased more gray scale paper, mounting tape, a canvas and more gesso.

 Here is my print to stitch lichen in it’s matting. That orange really pops against the black, doesn’t it?

 This is another print to stitch piece. I was surprised that this light gray was the best color matting for this piece. The black just kind of sucked the color out of it. One of the things we worked on in class this time is deciding what value matting to use with each piece.

 This is a closer view of the stitched piece from above.

 Next I worked on getting my Kantha bird ready to be stretched over a board. After figuring out the cropping of the piece in class, then I needed to measure and figure out the right size board for underneath. I can’t get these stretched and stitched yet because I need the mat board that will go behind it. I will attach the stretched bird piece right to the mat. But now I know what size I need.

 This is another one that needs to be stretched. I have very little extra fabric around the edges and this might need to be cut down just slightly more so that the edges don’t show. You can see a little white around the top edge.

The other thing that I did was cut the gray scale paper into croppers. I now have a range of croppers from black to white with three grays in between. These will come in handy as they are much bigger than my former croppers and I’ll be able to cover much more with these. I use croppers all the time to assess how a piece is coming along and to see what else it needs. It is amazing what that little bit of framing does to focus your attention on what needs fixing in a composition.

We’re back home and I’m happy to be staying put for a while. That was a bit much with our two back to back trips. I wanted to show you a few shots of the Gail Harker Creative Studies Center including our mini exhibition. If you ever get a chance, the classes are wonderful there. I signed up for Level 1 Color Studies in June. If everything works out, I want to take the Level 3 Art and Design starting in September. But we’ll see…

 Here’s all my stuff piled up on a table when we first arrived.

 Here’s my work station and as usual it is a bit messy.

 The next photos are of our exhibition. It is so amazing to see your work that were just samples, framed and looking professional. These are three machine stitched pears that all started the same size but due to the different techniques used, the sizes changed.

 Here are two of my print to stitch pieces. I really like both of these pieces of photos taken in Glacier National Park.

 Here are another couple of samples. They look much nicer with a black background.

 Here is all our stuff laid out on the tables. There were four of use showing and we filled up 6 large table areas. This shows Lynette’s work in the front and mine in the back.

 This shows Patti’s work in the front and Nanci’s in the back. We weren’t supposed to share photos of the others work so I’m just showing mine in close up.

This front table held the Level 1 hand stitch work and then Patti’s table behind that. We had a fairly good sized group come and see our work and it was rewarding to hear people comment positively on our work. We are holding another exhibition in September here in Montana and everyone is coming for the opening. It will be such fun to see everyone again. So if you have plans to be in Montana in September, our exhibition/opening will be on September 5th.

Today I worked on finishing up the cat toys that I started on the way to Washington. I’ll put them in the wash to wet felt them.