Dragon of the Sea

This is one in a three part series of oriental dragons. The other two parts are called Dragon of the Clouds and Dragon of the Mountains. This series and any others I can collect that are similar in art form and color scheme are for my second son's quilt. He wants a dragon quilt and I think he should have one!

I have the patterns for these dragons in a book called Magical Cross Stitch, a David & Charles Book. It has some really wonderful patterns in it, especially if you like fantasy.

I was working on a Celtic Peacock for a contest but found I had started stitching at the wrong point. By the time I realized my mistake it was far too late for any sane ripping.

As you can see, I am several inches shy of having the space required to finish the tail feathers. Because this is done on linen, there have been several ideas thrown at me on how to remedy the problem and finish the piece. My best idea so far is to stitch to a point, start a new point on a new piece of linen and somehow fuse the two pieces together. My only worry is a possible gap or hideous looking overlay.

I am doing this project again on 14 count aida that I have hand dyed using tea bags to get a more "ancient" look to the fabric. With this new version of the peacock I am also taking pictures of my progress so that I can make a video of it when I'm finished to post on my YouTube account. I researched YouTube a little to see if there were others who have done this and I found nothing. It doesn't mean no one else has done it yet, just that I couldn't find anything right off hand.

My daughter found a Santa Claus book for me. I collect Santa's and Snowmen...makes me wonder if I have a thing for "big" guys. I'm hoping to get one pattern done before that holiday over takes us all, but I have several others that have priority right now. It is already the end of October and I really don't see the time being there for the fun stuff.

As always I have to ask why life feels it is so important as to interefere constantly and consistantly with my crafts? If I were smart I'd make my work my crafts, but here in Alaska that would really be a seasonal business....hmmmmmmm but then again, I would have many months of snowy, wonderful winter to do my wonderful crafty things!

I suppose it might be a good idea to start seriously considering this idea instead of griping about it. I'll let you know what I come up with.

When all else fails in life, cross stitch will out!

My very good friend Sean was staying with me while in town working last year. We were doing beadwork and other crafty things and ended up at Joann's Fabrics drooling over everything. I found this yarn that was very pretty and commented on it.

Sean demanded I make him a blanket for his bed and I eagerly agreed. When I began the project it was with crochet. I got about ten rows into it and decided that I didn't like how the crochet was making this otherwise soft yarn into a stiff and rough feeling "thing".

Ripping out all of that crochet was torture and I ended up with five small balls for the actual one :D

I decided then to KNIT a queen size blanket instead. So far it is soft, stretchy, pliant and wonderfully warm. No issues whatsoever about it. I'm guesstimating that it will take around 25 balls of yarn to complete. I plan on doing a broomstick lace around the outer edge to give it an added something. I will post the blanket on here again once it is finished :D

I am a member of an artist website called deviantart. Every 5,000 pageviews I like to give a gift to the person who gets to the number and the last time was at 10,000 pageviews.

Prior to the target number, I submitted a poll asking my lovely viewers what they would like as a gift and "bookmark cross stitched by me" was the winner. A close second was coffee from Raven's Brew.

So, I dug around my old magazines and came up with a nice SPRING pattern. They are actually two different patterns that were book covers for bibles, but I really liked the flowers and butterflies so I combined the two into one. I really love this bookmark and the girl who won REALLY loves it as well.

Bookmarks are a very fun and useful gift to give people. I generally like to give gifts that have some kind of usefulness to them and bookmarks are always welcome. Kind of like "you can't go wrong giving a candle" type thing. Not everyone reads, so be careful when giving this out. You can always fall back on the candle thing if the givee isn't into books :D

Want to see more? Please visit me at www.Mattsma.deviantart.com

I absolutely LOVE cross stitch!!!

This Rainforest Series took me about three years to do. It is not particularly difficult, I just had things to do. I would stop and do other projects, or learn a new craft or obsess about something else but I always came back to this.

The actual series calls for these to be stitched onto an afghan, but I have decided to make a quilt out of it. I'm still looking for other similar "rainforest" critters or graphs to possibly add to this small grouping.


The backsides have been covered using that two way iron on adhesive and some white cotton fabric. It makes the square stiff, but also keeps the threads from coming loose with handling. It won't be easy to sew onto the quilt, but for long lasting durability of the cross stitch it was the best idea I could come up with.