Focus on Colours - Black and White Embroidery, Turquoise Challenge, Multi-Coloured Minis

I've made progress on my black stitched embroidery.  Just a few more stitches then I will add a few watercolour accents like I did on my raccoon piece.

I was notified that I have been accepted into the annual Glebe Craft and Artisan Fair in November so I am busy making some smaller items for sale since I have already completed several medium and larger sized items this year.  Besides my bookmarks and ribbon embroidered minis, I am working on some 4 x 6 landscapes that can either be used as postcards or framed with or without a mat.

Since I loved laying down strips and machine stitching the two swamp pieces, I used that method on some of the minis.   Some of the skies are hand painted and the satin ones were dyed with ranger transfer dyes (which are no longer sold I believe).  They are mostly stitched with straight and zigzag stitch with some free motion on the florals.    They are really relaxing to do (I can't believe I said that given my sewing machine anxiety:) 

And finally, 'Turquoise'.    I loved finishing the landscape part of it but adding the border is not fun for me.   The finished piece is part of a challenge so it needs to be 12 x 12".   Emulating the 'elephant head' in the landscape I made two stamps, one with trunk-like swirls which I repeated on a piece of darker fabric and the second is an elephant head.   How and where to use them is still a work in progress.

 Do I run the strips along the horizontal above and below to add to the panorama?  Then add some elephants on the outer border?   Maybe too distracting.

 Do I add a narrow strip of darker fabric to frame the landscape then use ghostly images of the elephants on the larger border?  Maybe.....Question is 'how much is too much?'

 Perhaps the stamped darker pieces would look less distracting around the edge of the stretched canvas??

What a process finishing is!!   I put it aside to perculate for awhile and went outside to visit the fall flowers, even a few grapes that the critters haven't yet seen.  

 This fall flowering bush with an unpleasant odour (name??)  was buzzing with bees, a few wasps and even several house flies.

It was tricky trying to get close without getting stung by a wasp but it's great to know that some bees are still surviving.      If they go, we are in real trouble.....

This post is linked to WIP Wednesdays over at the Needle and Thread Network.  Take a look at what some Canadian fibre artists are doing this week.