Weekend full of the wild, wild west

I spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday at The Needleworks in Austin in a canvas enhancement class with Tony Minieri.  He's a hoot.  And so talented.  And entertaining.   Lots of fun.

He did a stitch guide for a Melissa Shirley piece - for Jake's room, of course.   He has a definite cowboy theme going on.

The body of the horse is done in needle blended encroaching gobelin.   So far I have about 8 combinations of threads going.   A lady at the shop told me she did a piece with needle blending one time where she had 60 needles hanging from the back.  She's waaaay more patient than I am.  

His chaps will be an applique of ultra suede that we "tea stained" with a marker.  It's already cut out and ready to go, but everything around it has to be finished first.

I got the most praise from Tony for my random ray stitch on the agave.   The color of thread he chose was perfect.  

I also enjoyed stitching the ground in the Bunger stitch.  I decided Amy must have designed that stitch to look like the state she lives in.  Maybe I need to design the Williams stitch (or the MIMI stitch) to look like the state of Texas.  (Good luck on that, huh?)

I'm sooooo close on finishing the turkey.  I have half of the feathers stitched, but my friend, Jackie, gave me an idea to go to Bass Pro Shop to look for black and white feathers in the fly fishing department.   She also suggested that I get tooled leather belts to use on this canvas instead of stitching the borders.   Love that idea!!!    I was planning to frame it anyway, so that would be perfect!!  

Ok.  Gotta run.
Jane