I could spend all day, every day, hand-stitching. I love to embroider and in my fabric landscapes, the finishing touches added with thread is my favourite part. I first heard of "crazy quilting" almost 30 years ago in a class with Judith Baker Montano, and over the years I have added sections of crazy quilting into my work. I have been slowly working on this piece for weeks. It's called "I Spy..." and I decided to add ten charms, sewn strategically in it's stitches. Some are hidden better than others, but I can imagine young viewers searching the scene for each one.

The style of this piece is different from some of my other work, but I love the way it turned out. The hand-dyed fabric in the water works perfectly with my painted sky fabric and the mix of textures and stitching in the foreground keep my eyes moving around the landscape, searching for more.

In the above photo is one of the hidden creatures. In order to secure the little ladybug, I used a small piece of tulle netting to cover the charm and stitched around it to attach her to the vine. When a charm doesn't have an opening or an obvious spot to stitch through, this trick of using tulle is a great option.

This last picture shows four more of the ten "creatures". The finished size of this piece is 28"x31" and I finally mounted the picture around a wooden frame for hanging. Sometimes the only way I can stop myself from adding more stitching to a piece is by framing it! 😆