Delicate but Strong

That's how I should describe my hand-worked embroideries.  When I give a gift that contains embroidery that I've worked by hand,  I always remind the recipient of the delicate nature of the embroidery and suggest the item be hand washed.  Something happened last week to make me think that maybe only half of that statement is necessary.

I've been working on a bow and flower design off and on over the past few months.  It's one of those projects that I'm really not sure what the finished piece will be but I like the design so I pick it up and work on it in between other projects. The project is worked on a piece of pale blue kona cotton that just so happens to look a lot like a set of pale blue cotton pillow cases that I have.  Those pillow cases were thrown into the regular wash cycle last week, and by mistake, so was my project.  Just to put this into perspective for you, I don't have a front loader, my machine has an agitator. To further add insult to injury, when the wash was done, hubby placed all the items into the dryer.  I didn't even realized the project was part of the load until I took the clothes out of the dryer.  Here's what it looked like when I retrieved it.

I was so surprised that it held up through all of that abuse.  This incident left me with the impression that my stitching may not be as fragile as I thought.  The lazy daisies were still lazy and the french knots were still knotted.  Quite frankly it was the french knots that I was most suprised by because I thought they would be the most vunerable of all the stitches on this piece; they're so small and there are so many of them.

The piece still needs some work but I'll be more careful about where I lay it down in the future.  I don't think it would fare as well if it had to make a second trip through the wash and dry cycles.

The jelly roll quilt-a-long started on March 1st.  I just received my jelly roll so hopefully I can get my block cut and pieced this week.  I chose Moda's Nature's Notebook (April Cornell).

I think this is so pretty.  I seem to be choosing yellows and blues more and more these days.  I think it's my way of helping Spring along.

What's new in the shop?  I finally finished the little whimsical tea cozy that I mentioned in a previous post.

I really like the way it turned out.  I stipple quilted and washed it (intentionally) to give it that nice, soft, old-fashioned quilt look.  The polka dots are a nice break from flowers all the time but yet it still has a "cottage" feel.

Hope you had a great weekend.  Thanks for visiting.