More sewing and studying

A quick update today... I have felted projects I am working on, however they are gifts so I won't be posting them until after they are completed and received by their recipients (in the off chance they happen past the blog)

My embroidery continues forward with the completion of my mom's towel set. 

My mom's towel is on the left, mine is on the right.

I determined that I don't want my mom's stitching to be monkeyed with, so I plan to frame that towel to hang in my art room.  Therefore, I picked my own color combos for my towel (since I don't have to match the other towel)  Mom didn't do any satin stitching on hers, I stuck somewhat with the instructions in that regard, though I used variegated thread for mine to give it a faded effect in the lettering, flower petals, and lower decorative detail.  This was the first time I ever stitched french knots, that I can remember, and my best example of satin stitching to date.  It was a great warm-up exercise for the bird quilt, and now I can use Mom's thread organizer for the quilt.

Sunday night I had the Oscar's on TV while I transferred the patterns to my fabric squares.

I stitched every time I sat in front of the TV this week and managed to finish one bird and begin a second before I paused.

I want all the states in the background to match, and I didn't want to do them in black and have them stand out too much... so I decided that since I'll be using a green fabric for the sashing, I should do the state outlines and names in a nice mellow green as well.  Then I realized... 50 states is a lot, and I need to make sure I have enough of the exact same green in order to have everything match. My grandma had sent me a huge stash of embroidery thread close to 20 years ago, but the greens in the stash were not quite the color I wanted, so I took my squares to the craft store and picked out the perfect green.  I bought 16 of them, which I hope will be more than enough.

I now understand why my grandma had upwards of 20 skeins of single colors.  She used to embroider quilt tops, and a project that large does require a large supply of a single color if you want to guarantee consistency.  

I've packed my squares in a little luggage organizer to keep them from fraying while they are stacked in my tote, and my big project is now perfectly portable!

In the photography realm, I've been watching a new Creative Live seminar on editing in Lightroom and I am picking up a large number of tips and tricks which will help with my next batch of editing as well as aid me in future shooting techniques.  As always, whenever I learn new skills in LR I'm tempted to go back and re-edit just about everything I've ever posted.  Though on the other hand, the data from my older images will be lower quality anyway, so might as well leave well enough alone.