Embroidery

Well, this post is coming a little later than intended.  A nasty stomach bug hit la casa de ADD.  I managed to avoid it this round (had it about three weeks ago), but it seems to be running rampant in the area, and my brother's family got it and then shared with DH.  So, it's been either busy or exhausted or both here for the last several days.

I had planned to show off my latest applique projects (and I still will), but the weirdest thing happened.  I was working on my February block for Bunny Hill Designs' A Tisket A Tasket BOM, and I finished the applique.  It looked like this:

It was missing the embroidery of the birds' eyes and beaks, and the stems between the hearts and the top bird.

Ooooh, embroidery.  I hadn't done any embroidery since I made a smiley-face patch for the seat of my jeans when I was about 19.  Before that, I think I'd been about 12.  I've been dubious for a while about doing any projects that required embroidery, as I don't remember being any good at it when I was a kid, and I didn't expect my skills to have improved with disuse.  But, stitchery projects keep popping up all over, especially on blogs from Australia and Europe (gotta love this internet!), and some of them were really sweet.  

So, I figured this project, with its small amounts of embroidery, would be a good way to dip my toe in the water.  If I didn't like it, it wasn't a big part of the work.

Silly me.  It's hand stitching!  What made me think I wouldn't like it???

I can't show you a picture of the finished block (it's hiding), but I'll dig it up and post it with my other applique projects.  I was rather pleased with my work, considering I haven't done any in so long, but I still thought I'd like it to be a bit more even before I do the next block.  I want this to be a nice finished quilt.  So, since I've seen Gail Pan's A Christmas Wish BOM on several blogs, I figured I'd do the Love block as a practice piece.

Whee!  That was fun!  (Please excuse its rumpled state.)  I hadn't gotten very far before I decided I had to do this whole quilt, too.  Problem is, since this block was only supposed to be practice, I didn't worry about making it as big as the instructions call for.  So, I'll have to stitch this block again.  I'm planning to turn this one into the center of a pillow for my bed.

After doing that block, I couldn't stop!  So look what happened:

I found myself prowling around the 'net, looking for more embroidery patterns, more tips, more, more MORE!

And then this followed me home from the store:

I might have a problem here...