Planning a Party

Yesterday I spent a good five hours planning, drawing and illustrating the tea table to go on my block.

Using the picture above as inspiration, I decided to draw three table segments. I love the different color tablecloths with the different lace toppers.

I want to recreate that look but, realistically, I don't think I'll find lace that tiny or intricate for the scale of my tiny table. I plan to use whitework embroidery to give the lacy effect. Hopefully, that will work...

As part of this job, I have to have a pattern that DMC can give away. And since I don't want to get in trouble with Disney, I decided to create a generic tea party scene. So I worked on my first draft. The table illustrations below are slightly larger than what will fit on my block so I'll be editing as I stitch to see what will work and what won't.


And I'm not likely to stitch "It's Always Tea Time" on my block -- I just added that for fun. In Wonderland, the watches of the Mad Hare and Hatter are stuck at 6 o'clock. And in the Disney version, the Mad Hatter had to kill Time while he waited for Alice to come back. Time has been stuck ever since and so the Mad Hare, the Hatter and the Doormouse are left perpetually having tea.

The tea table on my Alice block will curve along the long seam treatment in the bottom right of the block.


I've been trying to use as many DMC threads as possible and this green variegated machine embroidery thread captivated me. So I tried it as background grass for my Mushroom Forest. And I really like how the color changes in this application.

After finishing the Tulgey Wood and some of the Mushroom Forest background grass...I decided I'd better put this piece on stretcher bars.


And now here is the block today, ready for the tea table. I want the table to stick out a bit so the table top will be about 1/4" wide -- I'm not sure how I'm going to do that yet.


The greatest news came yesterday when I was told I have an extra two weeks to finish. That was music to my ears since today we're gone all day at a family party.

Though I miss my trips around the blogosphere, I don't have much time for reading blogs and conversing just now. Thanks for all of the comments you've been leaving on the Alice posts! They make me feel pretty Wonderful!