Final Stitch Wars Piece

14" width 2" depth
embroidery floss and felt on organza

Here's my final piece for the Stitch Wars Strikes Back show.  It's my biggest piece to date (soon to be dwarfed by the 18x27" piece I'm working on).  It turned out really well but was incredibly time consuming.  I think of it more as a shadow box than a hoop.  It's a little tricky to get a good photo since there are layers of organza and felt to create depth between Slave I, the clouds, cloud city and yes that is a tiny millennium falcon flying off in the distance. 

The most time consuming part of making this was stitching Slave I.  In order to get the right look for the chipped paint, I did thousands and thousands of tiny stitches.  It will be available to purchase here when the show opens August 12th.

Star Wars Evening Post (second series for Stitch Wars Strikes Back)

(clockwise from upper left) "The Runaway Padawan", "Wait He Cannot" and "The Dark Discovery or The Truth About Vader"

7" hoops, embroidery floss on cotton

I just packed these up and sent them off to Florida for the Stitch Wars Strikes Back show.  They're all based on Norman Rockwell paintings and I was very happy with how they turned out.  I really enjoy doing pieces that combine themes.  I only intended to do one piece like this but I couldn't decide which idea I liked best.  I actually have one more piece that didn't make the show deadline (yes, it's in the dreaded long term work in progress pile) but I'll finish it up and post a picture soon.  Check out the Bear and Bird website when the show opens (August 12, 2011)  if you're interested in purchasing one.  (I also may be opening an online shop soon; more on that later)

It's a Crest!

Third and final piece in the "emblems" series (not to worry, there are 4 more Stitch Wars pieces I have yet to post).  So, this one strays slightly from the everyday world (unless you're a resident of the fifteenth century or participate in Renaissance faires).  I wanted to give a nod to the admiral without using the oh so popular "it's a trap" so I did a little expanded universe research and stumbled upon the knights of Mon Calamari.  I really love how this one turned out and am a bit sad to send it off this week.  This is another one that I finished half of and then set aside.  The mirrored waves were a bit daunting.  I sketched the whole thing out onto the fabric but things tend to get wonky when I put the fabric in the hoop so I have to adjust as I go and step back and adjust more.  I finally sucked it up and just dove in, trying not to over analyze as I went along (there's always the temptation to give up part way through when I'm not sure it's going to work but 9 times out of 10, if I just keep going the end result is a success)  The show opens 8/12 and all of the work will be for sale on the Bear and Bird Gallery's online shop (here)

the second piece in my "emblems" series for the Stitch Wars Strikes Back show.  I actually started this piece before the Jedi Union one (here) but had to step away from it after finishing the first tauntaun (mirror images can be quite frustrating and there's usually at least some amount of pulling out stitches and adjusting lines).  Like I've said before, I love the everyday world of Star Wars.  The idea for this one came from "The Empire Strikes Back".  Echo Base was a pretty big endeavour; engineering, construction, tauntaun wrangling.  I mean they've been repaving the freeway here for at least five years now so multiply that by an entire galaxy's worth of planets and there'd have to be some kind of organization for all that labor.  And thus the idea of the taunatun teamsters was born.