Stitching on a Plane

I realized that I was a serious stitcher when I started spending more time planning what I'd stitch on my trip than what I'd wear. I'm on a trip now and here's what I chose to stitch on the plane.
It's the Halloween Mantle from Bent Creek. It's on 18-count linen and stitched with pearl cotton so it's easy to see even in the inferior plane lightning. I need to finish up the witch portion and I'll be done. I'm thinking it will make a nice pillow.

Cleopatra's Cat

I have finally gotten back to working on my cat. If you looked at my stitching plans for 2013, you'd see that, in this fourth month of the year, I am about four months late.

Most stitchers would probably consider me right on schedule!

Here she is now. Cleopatra's Cat is a group correspondence course from the Embroiderers' Guild of America. She is charted for blue tones but I changed her over to red because I like red better and have a lot of it in my stash. I changed her eyes from gold to green.

The technique is called or'nue. It's a, get this, "laid filling stitch." Wha-a-a-t?

It works like this: you put down ("lay") metallic thread, then stitch over it to form the design. The original model was stitched on white-with-gold-metallic canvas. I used that same canvas, though it doesn't show up in the photos very well. And her face looks weird in this photo because I've only got part of the stitching done. She uses threads of wool, silk, cotton floss, pearl cotton, solid colors and over-dyes. She also uses just a little red metallic in addition to the gold thread.





 Here is the original photo from the EGA website.

You can see how different the design looks in a color change.

 Here are a few close-up photos of the various sections. If you click on them, they should get bigger and show more detail. See the gold flecks on the canvas? It looks really pretty in real life.

Soft little kitty feet.

This is over-dyed floss and gold thread.

The eyes will have a metallic gold iris.

Several of my EGA friends are doing this project also. We all made different choices. One stitched her on 24-count congress cloth instead of the 18-canvas, one stitched her on black canvas, etc. If I can, I'll get a photo of as many of the cats together as possible. Stitching with friends is just one of the many good things about being an EGA member.

I've been working on other projects as well. I still have to post my photos of Santa's Village from Cottage House Needleworks. I've also completed a cross-stitched quilt square for World of Charity Stitching. I'll get more photos up soon.