Not much progress has been made on the runner as I keep on finding things I’d like to add to it so it never seems to want to be done!

Last time I blogged, we left off with the dahlias; both were done in satin stitch, one with the two colors separate and the second one with the colors blending with short and long stitch…well, let’s move onto bouillons and dessert, shall we? But before, some biology:

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If you are lucky to live in southern climates, you might have noticed that bougainvilleas are a lot like Poinsettias; the red/colorful “petals” are actually leaves, the flowers are the tiny yellow/white centers!

So how would you portray that in embroidery? Well i chose to use bouillons in a light yellow color…what do you think?

And after adding the yellow bouillons, AKA the flowers, the flower ovaries were done. These were done with double thread, in brown, because that is what I have noticed in these flowers.

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And now we have this:

I still needed to add some stuff to the blank space, so I decided to add another Mexican native: Vainilla! I knew this one was going to be hard, I personally didn’t grow up seeing these orchids…but I love vanilla, so I had to try.

And….this is when, while browsing pictures by my Flickr contacts, I saw this pretty monarch butterfly. Forget about the “flower only” theme…it had to be added!

Let’s focus on the vanilla blossom for now: Sadly the color of the flower is close to the fabric so, in order for the flower to be noticed, I had to add some foliage.

So far I’ve only done one leaf but i intend to add some more at the end, when I will probably fix the first leaf anyway. I’m afraid that instead of appearing like an elongated leaf, it looks more like a blade of grass.

For the center of the flower I went with a hint of darker yellow to show some “shading”. I am afraid the orchid did not come out as well as I wanted, but hey, maybe in the future I’ll try and do another project and do a better drawing of one…didn’t I mention this was going to be hard?

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And this is what we have so far:

Next up: the butterfly! (that will be in a couple of days!)

*No, I did not misspell vanilla. I just chose to spell it in Spanish!

Bougainvillea in parents backyard

Early in May of this year, we took a small vacation to México. Boombadeus got to meet some of my first cousins in Guadalajara, we went to one of the youngest volcanoes in the world and to a national park located in Uruapan (Uruapan is know as “the place of eternal Spring” and for their avocado orchards!), a beautiful city close to where I grew up. We also went to Guanajuato, a beautiful colonial mining city.

Besides learning lots about Mexico’s history, he also got to finally see where I grew up and the garden that was my playground.

In this garden, to me the place of eternal spring, he discovered Bougainvilleas (known as bugambilias in Mexico). Well, I am very sure that he saw it in Spain and southern France (as there are pictures) and he definitely saw it in San Diego…but this time he found out the name: Bougainvillea. The name stuck.

In order to celebrate this fact, to remember my childhood, and Mexico in general I started a project. We needed a table runner for the coffee table…so how about embroidering some bougainvillea into it? Well, this is how it all got started….

Bugambilia roja

as you can see, there are plenty of bougainvilleas, and I added some Dahlias (also native of Mexico)…but that’s just how it got started…in the next couple of posts, i’ll post the progress

I was in a private elementary in México, and it was tradition in the school that for Mother’s Day you had to make a gift. Yes, I said make; none of this “go buy” stuff. Besides, everyone knows mom always likes it best when it comes from their little angel’s hands…right?

In 3rd grade there had been a découpage hanging plate thing. But, while I do remember having enjoying the being extra careful to give a slightly raised pattern (everyone was just gluing, I wanted to go further!) to the flowers that I glued, I never got into découpage. 4th grade came along and they finally trusted us** with needles.

Before that I had only used a needle to sew things together, make clothes for my dolls, sew a button, maybe even fix the hem on my uniform skirt (which quite often would get caught on something) but this crazy idea of making little flowers using thread was quite new to me.

Just as fast I learned how to embroider, I sadly forgot about it for the next 2 decades, only for the embroidery “devil” in me be reawakened over a year ago. It was a few months before Jess’ wedding and she wanted to add a babushka to her repertoire.

I quickly volunteered, as making a white scarf would be quite easy for me, but then it hit me…how about embroidering it and making it look even more authentic? I HAD to do it. And with a vague idea in my head, I headed onto Fabric Row and bought fabric, embroidery floss -mostly in the yellow that Jess had picked as her color- and headed home to hem myself that scarf.

For the pattern I quickly I researched traditional Polish head scarves and costumes and found that roses was a common pattern…so did the two toned embroidery. I grabbed my blue pencil and drew this on the silk scarf:

I added little bunch of blue flowers was added so that the bride would have her “something blue” and some red french knots just ’cause I wanted to make french knots. Bride liked it and wore it which was quite cool!

While I no longer have the napkins I made for that Mother’s day (hopefully I can find them  next time I go to visit the house in México) every time I embroider nowadays I still remember spending, that April and May, one hour of a day learning a couple of stitches. We would sit by the benches outside the classroom, in the corredor ***….that month, not only did I learn embroidery,  also learned about the perils of embroidery: Sewing in your project onto your skirt!!

*If you do the math you’ll realize that I was an early bloomer. I have two wonderful workaholic parents that taught me how to read and write when I was quite young. I went into kindergarden already reading and writing!

**the teachers, I was trusted with heavy duty scissors at a young age…ok, not really. I just knew where they were in my parent’s workshop.

***hallway, our school had an inner courtyard, and there were covered hallways that lead to the classrooms.

1. Beheaded LOTS of mums!
2. Went glue gun CRAZY!

Nah, seriously, these are the changes that I made to the pomander idea:

Reagents (sorry, can’t take the scientist out of me!):

craft balls (styrofoam balls), silk mums (and their leaves)
fall “sprigs” as accent, exacto knife, scissors, glue gun, glue sticks and ribbon.

…

Procedure:

One: Proceeded to behead the mums, separating the mum flowers, the leaves and the stems. Separated the leaves from some of their plastic “frame” using an exacto knife; this allowed for easier gluing later.

Two: I made a hole in the center of each ball…it would have been difficult to do so after the gluing process! Notice what I am using to make the hole? Yep, the stick where the silk mums came in. Isn’t that crafty of me?

Three: Using the stick again, I pushed the ribbon through the hole.

Four: Since I wanted the balls to look more like small “arrangements” I wanted to add a little bit of green (rather than end up with a sea of undistinguishable red) by using the leaves so I glued them to the base of each mum. About 2-4 leaves per mum. I really wanted the green to peek out here and there…

Five: Glued the flowers to the ball. I had a scheme for this; to make them look even, I would glue the first flower and surround it with flowers…sort of like a honeycomb of flowers.

Six: every so often I would ad a little bit of the “fall spring of color” to add a little bit of interestingness to the ball.

Seven: Since I wanted one of the sides to lie flat against the pew, I covered one side with leaves only (this sort of also made them look like certain white-flower arrangements that are placed in bride’s homes in Mexico on their wedding day)…I guess this makes them technically semi-circles.

Now, tie the ribbon (make a small bow at the end) and…

all done! now, tie a little knot (or bow as I did) on the ribbon and you’re ready to hang them on the pews!

….now if I could only find someone else that needs them…

In our little garden, tomatoes were still being harvested; the basil was giving up and the eggplants were growing beautifully.

(/of channeling the “oldest” of the Golden girls)

Yes, this took place about a month before our wedding. We were working on a final idea for the centerpiece but then it hit me…what about the church?

While reading Wedding Bee for ideas (a great place if you’re going the DIY way), I found a post that pointed out the Pomander balls made by Mackenzie 
for her brother’s wedding. She and her new sister in law not only made the flowers but also glued them to big paper lanterns and used them as center pieces.

I really liked them…but I already had the centerpiece idea…then it hit me…but what about pews?

Obviously the ones Mackenzie made were going to be too large…and it would take a little bit of more effort to make it look the way that I wanted…but hey, that’s for the next post!