feline fanatic

MrsM had me quilt her gorgeous "Over the River and Through The woods..." hand embroidered wallhanging. I had seen pictures of this pattern before but never one in person. MrsM's hand embroidery skills are jaw dropping! She used a varigated embroidery floss that shaded from deep teal to pale moss and it really added to an already impeccable job. I loved looking at it while quilting. She asked for snowflakes and holly leaves and left the rest up to me. We used two layers of batting to get the unquilted areas to pop right up. Bottom layer is Quilters Dream select cotton and I layered Hobbs Polydown on top of that. Thread is Filtec Glide in white. I did pebbling, McTavishing and echo stitch to fill up the background behind the embrodery and give the illusion of snow on the ground. The sky I just did loose lines and swirls ala Van Gogh's "Starry Night".
I put snowflakes in the center of each star and square on point and scattered them about in the loop 'd loops behind the words. I think snowflakes might be best left to the computer quilters due to the nature of their symmetry. It was very difficult to do them to my satisfaction and I feel I wasn't really successful. They definitely "read" snowflakes but they aren't very symmetric as that is near impossible done freehand, especially when your vield of vision is obstructed by the hopping foot. After doing them I believe a computer guided set up would definitely be the better option for snowflakes IMHO. The holly leaves and berries went in the background of the FG in the border, I was much happier with how they turned out. SID around all the geese, stars, squares on point and border bits using a ruler. The rest is all free hand. I hope MrsM likes it.

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I loved the one horse open sleigh!

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The back
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