Embroidered Christmas Presents

My current work-in-progress is the embroidering of this Christmas boxes motif.  
I am trying a few different stitches on the biggest box and deciding which look best 

I love the floss color palette I am using on this project.  These are not colors I would usually think to put together.  However, I was looking at my color wheel for ideas - I started with the gold floss. The triad color scheme for gold {yellow/orange} is red/violet and blue/green.  Beautiful!

Organizing - Floss and Color

I am in the process of organizing all my embroidery floss.  I really like to see how beautiful it looks neatly stored in these plastic floss boxes.  I have a small bunch of skeins still left to wind up on their bobbins.

I was looking at the order of colors on my color wheel and I decided to arrange my floss in that order.   Such a nice collection!  It looks like I have a lot of floss and a good color selection doesn't it?  Well...

..during my organizing, I came across this list that I picked up from the fabric store quite a long time ago. 

It lists all the floss color numbers that DMC offers.  There is even a check list to mark off the colors you have.  Imagine my surprise when I checked off all of my floss and realized that I have 89 different colors - wow! But that is out of a possible 454!!!  I have only tried about 20% of their colors.

I find I tend to buy the same colors over and over.  I need to branch out - I would love to collect the whole list of colors.  I wonder about any of you?  Do you keep track of your floss colors and does anyone have a whole color collection?

Purple And Green

Here is my progress so far on my olive branch border.  I have been experimenting with the olives.  I have tried various thicknesses of floss and I think that the olive in the top left of the picture is the winner.  Three strands of floss in rows of backstitch as a fill.  I think that will work!  The leaves are done in the fishbone stitch.     I also have progress to show on a new project:

This says "Benvenuti Amici" which is Italian for "Welcome Friends" .  I am using the chain stitch for the lettering and for the motif on the bottom the double knot stitch.  You may recognize the double knot stitch, remember this disaster?  Let's just hope I don't have to remove any of these stitches and risk it happening again!
I really love the color combination of purple and green, as you can see by both of the above projects.  I was looking at my color wheel and noticing that purple and green are part of a triad with the third color being orange.  I think I will have to use some orange somewhere on the benvenuti stitching. 

There are so many beautiful shades of green, I am growing several of these pale green zinnias this year, I really love the light green color.  I should have grown some purple flowers to go with them!

These are certainly not purple but I can't resist their beautiful color!

Ladybug Embroidery Pattern Packet

I really enjoyed stitching this little ladybug and whimsical mushrooms: This is one of the images from the new Ladybug Embroidery Pattern Packet:Can you spot all the different stitches I used? I used the back stitch, french knots, chain stitch, satin stitch and the long and short stitch! One of my favorite parts of a new embroidery project is the selecting of colors! I knew red and black would be on the short list...but for the rest, I relied on my color wheel:
I selected red as the "pure color"
according to the color wheel, the tetrad, or four colors that will make a nice relationship with red are orange, yellow, purple and blue. I didn't want to use blue, so I tried again, using orange as the pure color:
The four colors for orange are red, yellow, purple and green! Perfect!I have listed the pattern packet in the big B Etsy shop.

Color - little flower project

The floss pictured here is DMC# 340. Do you like this tint of blue:

with this tint of yellow - DMC #727:
with this tint of red DMC #603?
According to my new color wheel - a "tint" is a pure color (in this case blue, yellow, and red) with white added to it. These three tints are three colors apart from each other on the color wheel. This means they are a triad and make a beautiful color combination. I used them on this little flower stitching. You may also notice, I am showing off my open chain stitch for the picture border!

Color - my new color wheel!

I love the fact that embroidery floss comes in such a huge variety of colors. I know that one of my favorite parts of embarking on a new stitching project is the process of selecting colors. I want to learn more about color theory and color relationships and so I bought this color wheel. It is so much fun to use and has so many interesting color facts and advice. For instance, I have this little stitching project from "Shhh...Baby's Sleeping":
What colors to use? I know I want to use this beautiful blue as this is for a baby boy.
According to the color wheel, a nice relationship would be a triad of colors. That means three colors that are evenly spaced on the color wheel and will always look pleasing as a combination:

So the other two colors in the blue triad are red:
and yellow:

I think that makes a beautiful color combination!

I am using the blue to outline the ball in back stitch:
and red for the stripes - I used the split stitch here:

now all three colors for the french knots and
satin stitch stars!

I think I am really going to enjoy this new color wheel and all the new color combinations it suggests! Speaking of color, I have to include this picture of my sweet pea bouquet looking so pinky and beautiful on my shelf!