Tree square

Tree square
Originally uploaded by Pearliepie.

One of the teachers I work with was diagnosed with Leukemia this year. The school has really pulled together to support her. Her students have started fund raisers to help with her medical copays, because she has to be in hospital so often, and the staff all decorated a muslin square to be sewn into a quilt for her.

I thought it would be fun to document my progress by taking a picture every time I ran out of thread. In the middle of the experiment I misplaced my camera, so there aren't many pictures of the top in progress, which was the most interesting bit. Oh well.

I did the outline of the treetop first with backstitch.



Then I got bored with green and started the trunk.

When the trunk was almost done I went back to the treetop and started filling it in.
I used two colors of thread held together for a blended look. The bigger circles are stain stitch, filled web stitch and button hole stitch.
In the middle of the trunk I used a raised rose stitch to look like a knot in the trunk. The rest of the trunk is modified long and short stitch to represent bark.