Art Nouveau Jewelry book

Isn't this the most beautiful lotus? After I got the Fashioning Fashion book, I started looking for other museum exhibition books and I stumbled across this one. It is divided into sections of gorgeous pictures of flora, fauna and the human figure. I love Art Nouveau and jewelry/anything in that style, so I've seen lots of books on it. This book has pictures of jewelry I've never laid eyes on and the pieces are breath-taking! All the pieces are from a private collection. This book definitely serves as an inspiration.

A promenade through French Blogs

A while ago, I happened upon a French embroidery blog and that began a week-long surfing expedition through blogs it linked to, and blogs they linked to, etc.

I can't tell you all the blogs I visited, but I started out at Facile Cecile's blog here. Her blog title actually means "It's easy with Cecile." She is a teacher and designs projects that a group of women work on together. (I don't speak French and Google Translate isn't the best, so I'm apologizing in advance, if I don't quite get it all right...)

One interesting thing about this group of French embroiderers is that they like to embroider much more on patterned fabric. They refer to surface embroidery as "traditional embroidery" as opposed to Ribbon Embroidery or Cross Stitch, which is also very popular. I kept wondering what SAL stood for, since I assumed it was an acronym of French words - imagine my surprise to find it meant "stitch-along"! It was a "Duh" moment for me....

These are both by Cecile.

When they attach a motif, like a "silkie", they embroider all around it, differently than I've seen. Sometimes the motif is not square or rectangular, it's very irregular. I saw it over and over, wide branches and flowers, blending the motif into the background fabric.

One of the projects was a design of poppy pods, where each pod was broken up into 3 or 4 vertical areas, and then each area was embroidered differently, say one area with beads, one with stem stitch, one with bullions, etc. They seem to have very interesting and beautiful ribbons....

There is often quite a mix of all different fibers in one project...on patterned fabric again. You'll see chenille wound with floss as stems, for instance...and lots of layering of ribbons.

There is a lot of embellishing of patterned ribbon...

I saw some ribbon embroidered flowers, where some of the ribbon looked like strips of tulle. I couldn't tell if it was cut by the stitcher; or if it was bought, but it was often space-dyed. Does anyone know anything about this? Check out the pictures below...

I'd like to experiment with a more loose style like this...

Happy Stitching,
Lin Moon

Spring Garden Show

Last week I went to the 22nd annual Spring Garden Show held at the South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. The show is set up on all 3 floors of the huge mall there and different companies set up displays. And I don't just mean displays of flowers - they bring in dirt, stones, benches, flowers, plants, water, etc. One of the displays included beautiful flowers and plants, a bench strewn with gorgeous embroidered pillows, with a stream going by! Here is one of the larger displays (click for a better view).

I could have taken a million pictures of all the wonderful flowers there...I really like irises, so here are a few of the more unique ones...

I was blown away by the beauty of these epiphylums- the flowers are huge, six to seven inches across. Don't the petals look just like ribbon?

Check out the shading on these petals...

I don't have tons of room left in my garden - things keep multiplying - I should join a garden club and trade with others...I just bought an iris fan and also these epidendrums (a type of orchid)

It was great fun, but I could have spent about 5 more hours there!
Happy spring,
Lin Moon

Fashioning Fashion Exhibit

I have been trying to update my blog for awhile and couldn't really figure out how to get all the features I wanted(playing endlessly with the html), never imagining that all I had to do was update to the new editor and viola! it would all be there for me! If you'd like to follow my blog, please click on the right side to Follow Me....Thank you!

Last month my husband and I went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for the "Fashioning fashion" exhibit of European Dress from 1700-1915. To say it was fabulous would be an understatement! Check out the sparkles that would be on a man's jacket:

Clearly the men of that time were more comfortable with their masculinity!

This looks like a rather run-of-the-mill dress, doesn't it? Nothing too fancy.

But check out the trim that embellishes the bottom of it! (And might get dirty - argh!)

Some of the sleeve details were amazing. I love the lace and all the detail that went into the sleeve of this beautiful dress.

...and the layers and work that are apparent in this one...

What comes to mind when you think of today's lounging pajamas? I daresay it's nothing like this!

and look what one wears on one's feet while lounging!

There were some simply wonderful dresses...

and a close-up of the fabulous embroidery on its stomacher

How about this one with its long train...and a detail shot of the train

This dress is all embroidered

Here's a close-up of the embroidery

Here are a couple of close-ups of a gold embroidered stomacher

Isn't the metallic lace along the bottom just beautiful?
Here's a picture of the embroidery on one robe

After seeing all this wonderful embroidery and embellishment and wondering how good my pictures really were, I decided I wanted to get the book. We went around asking and they had sold the last copy just moments before - I couldn't believe it! But luckily Amazon still had a few copies, so my husband ordered one for me the moment we got home (yes, he spoils me...) The book is fabulous too!

You can get the book here.

Hope you enjoyed the eye candy...
~Lin Moon

Bird Postcards

Does your embellishing ever overflow into other, non-stitching areas? Mine sure does. Sometimes I feel like I just want to embellish everything! I work at Borders and one of my co-workers asked me if I'd seen the new bird postcards we'd gotten in. When I saw them and the great tin they came in, I just had to have them!

I was at JoAnn's to get some picture frames for the postcards and saw this great lacy scrapbooking paper. It is gorgeous and comes in different colors other than white, too.
In one of our bathrooms, the walls are pink and everything else is white; it has a botanical shower curtain that I love. (Even though the shower curtain is dry-clean only - go figure!) I got out some of my CQ embellishments: some beads, some glass flowers, pearls and little ribbon roses. I had so much fun embellishing the bird postcards and hanging them up on the pink walls!

I stand in front of them everynight while I brush my teeth...(is that tmi?)
Well, whadya think?