A pretty Op Shop find and BOM Calendar Patterns

I'm not one to visit Op Shops! Somehow looking at other people's second-hand stuff doesn't turn me on. The family, on the other hand, find great delight in visiting some of the six Op Shops in our local area whenever they come to stay. 

I mostly go with them on their searches just to be with family, but I do take the opportunity to have a browse as you never know what you might find. On one such visit, I found this:

I liked the design and thought it would be something that I would enjoy embroidering at some stage. It was just the painted canvas and didn't come with any instructions or threads, not that it mattered with all my drawers full of stuff!

I did some Googling to see what I could learn and found it was embroidered mostly with crewel wool. I found my box of tapestry wool and chose colours and worked a bit of the dress, but the wool was too thick. I could have split the thread so that it was 2 ply like crewel, but I really disliked the effect of the wool, so needless to say, I pulled it all out.

Back to the drawing board with threads, I contemplated stranded cotton. Then, as I thought about all the long and short stitch that was going to be needed, I had a light bulb moment - Bunka thread was the way to go. It is a Japanese rayon thread used for punch needle work. It's the thread used in tassels, and is in the form of a chain, which you pull out to the thickness you need.

I have embroidered with it before and have loved the shading effects possible. You can see a couple of my projects using Bunka  here and here.

Thankfully I had enough colours and enough thread left over from previous projects to do the job. When it came to the flowers, I couldn't resist using silk ribbon and managed to find enough variegated ribbons to work the beautiful spray of flowers.

I used some silk threads on some of the details on the dress and was very happy with the result:

Maybe I should visit Op Shops more often!!!

 February patterns have gone out to those who have joined the

  Days of Delight Block of the Month Calendat.

Cute little hexagons show what the date is:

And here is Monday's mini-quilt:

It's not too late to join so hop over here and you can find out all the details.

Happy Stitching!

Val