Class

I'm taking Susan Sorrell's Fertile Earth class at www.joggles.com and learning new ways to design. The first lesson was using a fruit or vegetable as a design source, so I found this strawberry that I had painted in a class many years ago. Considering that I can't paint realisticly, it's pretty good. I scanned it into Microsoft Picture It and made a negative. When I first realized that a negative in the program was not what we are used to in print film, I was so excited and tried it on lots of things. These are my colors.Then I used the outline function to find the main design lines.

I made negative again to get rid of the black then moved it into Photoshop Elements 2.0 and used a filter-I think zigzag-to get a line design. This I printed onto treated fabric and stitched with running stitch and Perle Cotton.

To get back to the strawberry motif, I used the shape in sheer fabrics and stitched using back stitch. Then I beaded the center.

I'm really enjoying getting back to hand stitching. Finally, I'm using the programs to do something other than play. It's a super way to design even though I don't know much about the programs.