Ibolya the Lonely Matryoshka and a Minor Correction

I miscounted, and this is actually post number 77.  I fail at counting.

Moving on.

One of the blogs I follow is the 'official' blog for DMC floss.  Well, the other night I came across a post about a stitching contest; more specifically "Rainbow of Stitches" contest being hosted by Feeling Stitchy.  Basically you do a bit of stitchery based on 9 different categories and then you enter them into their Flickr pool.  Each category is a color of the rainbow, plus pink, black and white.  By the time I found the post on the DMC blog, there was less than two weeks left to enter -deadline is Memorial Day- and I wanted to do something that would be striking, yet simple enough to put together.

The first thing I did was pick the category I want to do.. basically the main color of my submission, and I picked purple violet.  Then I thought about the subject.  At first I thought it would be cool to do a hedgehog themed entry; however I'm not that awesome at drawing them, and while I could use the same hedgehog I've used previously on other projects, I wanted to do something original.  My other addiction at the moment are Matryoshka -also known as Russian Nesting- dolls.  I had gotten bored about a month or so ago and decided to sketch one out.. so I did.  I decided on a whim to go ahead and trace her out onto some fabric using a water soluble marker and go to town!

This is the first mid process picture I took.  You can kind of see how unmirrored the image is, I eventually filled her in NOT using these line as a guideline.  the faded line under her chin was where the original chin-line was at.  This was quite rough and the end product looks quite different.  The stitches I used in this portion are as follows:

The outline for her hair was done by alternating granitos and a backstitch.  the right side of her hair is filled in with french knots and running stitch.  The left side of her hair is a granito and french knot flower, and of course running stitches.

Her entire headscarf is done in a couching stitch using Ecru as the base thread and DMC # 211 as the couching thread.  As you can tell in the picture, you have to do this method with two needles, or spend time switching back and forth.  Using two needles was easier for me.  I'm VERY sure that her hair was done using DMC # 898.  The flower in her hair was done with DMC # 327.

Here's a closeup of the upper half of her body.  Her eyebrows, eyelashes are done with the running stitch; and her beauty mark is a french knot all done in the same color.  Unfortunately I don't know the exact number of the color since when I bought the skein -among several others- I did not have enough spool thingies to put my floss on, I left it still intact and my daughter ended up getting into my box of floss and she lost all of the wrappers.  There's now flosses in my box that are wound with no numbers because I have no clue what the numbers are.  The flesh tone is actually DMC #3770, and it was all done in a running stitch.  Her eyes are done in a deep dark green; however I've misplaced the spool labeled with the number so I can't give that to you.  The little flower detailing on her headscarf was done with #210, #327, and the greenery is #989.  That was done in a combination of granitos (flower) and a running stitch (greenery)  Her torso was outlined in a running stitch using #327 and alternating at a slant, the 6 pointed cross stitches were done in #327 as well as #210.  Oh, and her lips were done in #817.

Here's the finished project; all framed up nice and neat.  I took the glass out to photograph so there's no glare.  Her skirt is actually reversed appliqued and is actually a scrap of the Liberty of London scarf I bought from Target on the Friday before Mother's Day to make myself a top -speaking of, I need to blog about that- and the apron and apron strings were some bits I inherited from Jeff's grandma when she passed away in 2007... apparently I'm the only crafty person in the family.  The apron was quite easy to reverse applique because the white fabric is actually double layered which is why you are not seeing the shadow of the dark threads crossing back and forth.. trust me though they are there! *Edit:  I forgot to mention that the Liberty fabric is sandwiched between the two white layers, I had basted it down to the bottom layer of white fabric and then sewed it on my sewing machine, and then I carefully pinched up the white, made a snip and went to town to cut off the top white layer to reveal the skirt under. 5/27

Ibolya is named so because I wanted to find a foreign -to me anyway- word for "violet"; and I believe it's Hungarian.  I honestly do not know if it's referring to the flower or the color if it's even used as a first name in Hungary, but for all points and purposes it fits her exactly.  She's currently framed in some awesome paper so the space showing is 5 by 7 and she's in a 8 by 10 frame.  The actual cut size of the fabric is larger; however until I can figure out what project I want her going on she's staying put inside the frame.  She's currently resting on a cabinet in my sewing room;  however after I get around to putting the glass back on and picking a spot she's gonna go on the wall.

There's not many entries for the Violet category -I hope I'm not jinxing myself here- so I'm crossing my fingers that I make it to the final 9 -basically first place in each category.  That would be pretty awesome!