Feeling Better and a Bird Helps!

Well, after two weeks of craziness around the Bird Nest....I think things are finally getting better. Today is the first day I can move my neck to the right and not jump. It's still sore, but I can live with it at this point. It has been a very LONG two weeks. The AT&T fiasco from week before last has been solved. THANK GOODNESS!! And, my poor old body is recovering from my ambulance trip of a week ago yesterday. Thankfully, I did not have a heart attack, just that awful pesky, trapezious muscle and what with Valium and Hydrocodone, I've been 'somewhere else' most of the last week. A good thing. On Friday I had a physical and was told that my thyroid was very low, so more meds were ordered and I've had two of those so far.
No idea what to expect as I didn't know I had an issue with that. We'll see how it goes. But long story short........hopefully, you won't hear about my woes for a long time.

In my last post, I showed a photograph of my latest Shorebird embroidered pincushion. I didn't want to show much of it until I knew it had flown to Alabama....it's new home. It was made
especially for my blogging friend, Sandra, and now that it is actually in it's new home, I'm going to tell you about it. Sandra was so very patient in waiting for the bird to arrive and I am very appreciative of her patience. As I've said, hers was my last piece of commission work. From now on, I will just make what brings me joy and show it here and if you are interested, you can email me. Otherwise, I will just surround myself with these little pieces of embroidery and whatever else I come up with....and either post them here or on my etsy, or keep them here for my own entertainment.

Sandra had requested a Shorebird last fall. (See how long she waited!!!!) She gave no other requirements, so I just let the painted fabric and thread 'talk' to me and this is what we got out of those conversations. For those of you not seeing my pincushions before, I just dream up a 'scene', paint some vintage linen fabric (or sometimes other fabrics), and proceed to embroider my birds, flowers, and so forth, by hand. I always like to incorporate embroidery floss, perle cotton, silk ribbon, and those types of things to stitch with...then add beads, stones or pearls for extra interest. It's so much fun. LOTS of work, and sometimes tedious, but fun too. The bird is embroidered with one strand of DMC embroidery floss in several colors. In the 'fringe' of this pincushion, I chose to add some shell beads here and there as they looked kind of 'watery.' You have to look for them amongst all those seed beads though. There are forty beads in each 'loop' of the beaded fringe. And, I think I did five beads on each little loop shape at the top of the fringe.

These projects are always fun to me....but, boy, they take a long time. I'm so proud I could finally send this one to Sandra. She tells me she slept with it by her bed the first night she got it.
Well, that made me feel just GREAT!!!!! I hope she enjoys it for many, many years!! At some point in life, I possibly could make more birds....but only if my head and heart tell me to. And, of course, all my projects are completely different from each other, so this particular one, like all my others, are totally individual and will never be repeated. I like that.

I'm probably going to show you too many photos....but, just bear with me. I'm so glad the pincushion is done....and then, I did that collage. It was made at the downtown studio and until I began to take photos of each of these projects, it never occurred to me that they MATCH!!! How weird is that? After taking photos of the collage, then the bird pincushion, I just knew I had to photograph them together. So, when I sent the bird photos to Sandra for approval, I just HAD to include the one with the pincushion and collage together. Just for fun. And, I guess...just for her fun....she wanted to buy the collage too. I was so excited over that and was happy to pack them both up and let them fly along to their new home. She says they are happy....me too!!!

The collage, if I remember correctly, is 11" x 14" and the pincushion is 6" x 6".....I really love how they look together. For the collage, I was just dabbling with paint, then decided to make a tree.
Loosely translated as you can see. I found a little bird on a paper napkin for the bird in the nest, and the larger bird is a piece of scrapbooking paper. Never knowing when to quit, I took a page of text from a vintage book and painted it, then cut out all those leaves. Making a little vein with a liner brush and glued them on with gel medium. Well, of all things.....I LOVED doing that!
And, of course, more words had to be glued on...as you know I love to do:

"A flock of birds
A gentle breeze is blowing
In the nest are some little eggs among the trees."

Just choose some words and add them to your collage. To me they don't have to make sense...just sound kind of 'poetic.'

For the back of the pincushion, I chose this lime green fabric I painted last summer. I placed a bird stencil on the wet painted fabric, laid it on my patio in the afternoon sun and it made these cute birds and branches...which I had saved until now. Just right for the back of this pincushion!

So...there you are....my latest work. And, I'm feeling better.......hopefully, my new meds will straighten me out and I'll be back in my little quiet rut!!! So, thank you for checking on me and caring...pat

PS. One funny story. Well, not really funny, but WEIRD! Around 8:30 a.m. last Sunday my grandson went to get my prescription filled that was given to me at the emergency room. I told him to drive my little PT Cruiser. Being a pretty day, he opened the sun roof. As he pulled into a parking place....a bird just happened to fly right over the car and decided to poop right then and there. Of course, it fell inside my car and hit Tyler right in the EYE!!! How awful! He went into the restroom and washed his eye out with that handsoap in the dispenser. Don't you know that felt good! Then, insult to injury....found out that the Walmart Pharmacy isn't open until 10:00 a.m. on Sunday. This kind of story happens in our household all the time. Funny, but NOT!! And, he was just trying to do a good deed! He's fine...but says he doesn't know if he will ever open the sunroof again!