Stitchin' Fool

I finally decided to wash and use/wear the big shirt recently eco dyed, instead of overdyeing it.  There are too many projects in front of me to be bothering to try to redo something that's already cool the way it is.  The t-shirt in the photo was also eco dyed a couple months ago and I had ideas of doing it again, as well.  Both got washed today.  Hopefully this week I'll get to putting new buttons on the big shirt.  As for stitching on it, time will tell.

I'm still stitching away on the piece below.  You last saw the center section, here.  The discharged squares got stitched and beaded over the weekend.  Now I'm on the outside area, the green/brown shiboried linen.  Hand stitching the shibori.  With 30 wt. silk thread.  Tiny modified back stitches.  I keep asking myself why the heck I'm doing this.  I don't have an answer, I just keep stitching.

Still planning to attack my large stack of eco dyed fabric to design several new pieces, yes, hand quilted.  Meanwhile, I tinkered around with fabrics yesterday for the Fiberactions challenge and have two quilts in mind for that, one machine quilted cotton, one hand quilted silk.

All this hand stitching has given me a new appreciation for sewing thread.  The best stuff I can get locally is Gutermann, and I'm in love with their cotton, rayon and silk threads.  I still have a lifetime supply of DMC embroidery floss but it just isn't working for me these days.  Since I'm mostly hand stitching, and not embroidering, I suppose that's apropos.

Dinner awaits, and then likely more stitching!