Adorn

New Painted Canvases and Stitch Club!!

2019-03-11T09:17:00.001-07:00

I'm thrilled to be working with Ruth Schmuff of Bedecked and Beadazzled on my new bird series, "Flight", canvases designed, painted and stitched by me. Take a look at this great stitch club offer:
http://bedeckedandbeadazzled.com/product/flight/

I hope you decide to join the club! Contact me or Ruth for any questions!

💗

Orna

Mastery of blooms - astounding!

2019-02-06T07:14:00.000-08:00

Raku Inoue

see more HERE!

A New Year gift - A Sweet Pea design!!

2018-12-26T11:06:00.000-08:00

I missed wishing my friends who celebrated Christmas warm wishes for a very merry holiday! I have come across quite a few Facebook friends who write about their difficulty with the holidays, perhaps not being a part of a large family or living
far from friends. These times can be difficult and to those who spent the day on their own, I hope you had a peaceful, gratifying day!

As 2019 comes around I wish all of you wonderful followers, stitchers, readers, and friends a new year filled with peace, contentment, creativity, and health.

A gift for the new year from me to you!

Party recipes!

2018-12-12T18:07:00.001-08:00

After posting the photo below of my lovely apple cake many asked for the recipe.

Here it is!!
1 whole egg, beaten
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
4 tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder
5 apples (recipe calls for Pippin apples, I used Granny Smith)

Topping: 1 egg beaten
3 tablespoons melted butter
3 tablespoons sugar
some cinnamon

Mix all ingredients for the cake, not including the apples and put into a straight sided 9" buttered cake pan. Peel and cut apples into thin slices. Add apples onto batter making concentric circles using the apple wedges. This is how I placed the apples...

First place a circle of wedges forming a circle and then form a smaller circle with wedges cut in half.

Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

Drizzle topping over cake and continue baking for an additional 15-20 minutes until lightly brown and bubbly on top. (Don't use all the topping, it's really enough for 2 cakes).

TADA!

I also made my favorite winter fruit salad which you may want to try.

I cut pineapple, kiwi, and mandarine into small pieces. Add pomegranate arils, they bring such beautiful color and taste! Mix 1 tablespoon honey and 2 tablespoons lemon or lime juice. Add the honey and lemon dressing and top with a few pieces of fresh mint. A real winter treat! (it's on the table in the photo above).

Amy Gross and her amazing nature sculptures!

2018-12-01T07:07:00.001-08:00

Amy Gross, an amazing fiber artist creates hand-embroidered and beaded fiber sculptures that contain colorful nods to the natural world. Bees, leaves, honeycomb, and moss, an array of birds, mushrooms, and other fungi. None of the elements of her pieces are found objects, but rather each handmade from craft store supplies and objects like yarn, beads, wire, and paper.

OPEN HOUSE!! (repeat...)

2018-11-28T05:44:00.002-08:00

Agnes Herczeg, you mesmerize...

2018-11-07T04:41:00.000-08:00

Agnes Herczeg works with pillow lace and needle lace traditional techniques to make these small masterpieces.

My kind of installation!

2018-11-01T05:32:00.003-07:00

Ana Martins, who works as Aheneah

Studio time

2018-10-25T09:13:00.000-07:00

When moving into a new home, one that has just been built, you are foolish to think that it's back to normal. We just had whole sections of the house repainted, touched up, and today the entire place, (aside from the studio), is covered with a film of dust. In the meantime I've been busy improving on some of the design books, writing new instruction books and setting up homes in display cases for my jewelry work. A large glass case is being put together for some smaller needlepoint pieces as well.

I now have an outdoor area and a greenroom for plants galore. I've been working on terrariums and plantscapes and having a wonderful time with my hands in dirt!

This big beauty is going to a new home and a new family today! There are many more in the works.

Absolutely exquisite, Animal Child

2018-10-09T06:18:00.001-07:00

Work by portrait artist and photographer Shelly Mosman.

Cayce Zavaglia - thread portraits

2018-10-01T12:54:00.001-07:00

Needlepoint to sit on!

2018-09-13T07:27:00.000-07:00

How do you control a heart exploding with pride?

2018-09-03T08:52:00.003-07:00

Some of my brilliant students are sharing their completed and almost completed creations from my class "Dare Design":

The complexity of Ann's piece is quite amazing! Her color choices, the way the diamonds form negative spaces, and how the beads are situated, are all enticing!

Pat's piece is so lovely! She called it Step Into My Garden, which seems perfect. It looks like a manicured small royal garden and all I want to do is step into it and stay!

Sally Barton's piece is mesmerizing, the crescents seem to be dancing across the canvas. Her colors are so appealing!

Melita's design, Crescent Journey, received a 3rd place ribbon and scored 94 out of 100 in her judges' critique!!

I declare mandatory waiting periods!

2018-08-29T04:20:00.000-07:00

I'm here, behind the boxes... We moved into our new home two weeks ago today. I have moved at least 30 times in my life, sometimes in the same city, a few times to different continents. It doesn't get easier... Still so much unpacking and finding the right place for our stuff needed. One thing I vow is to stop buying things that I will look to donate a few years later! How much money gets wasted, and in many cases if you wait to make sure you need something, you find out that it's really not necessary. I hereby proclaim a waiting period for anything I buy! Promise!

A few photos of my green room, one of my favorite rooms in the house...

Sally Barton, the journey she took in my class Dare Design...

2018-08-13T09:25:00.000-07:00

Sally tunes into my online class, Dare Design, all the way from New Zealand! Her journey has been really fun to watch. At first, it seemed that she was a bit intimidated, and perhaps not sure how brave she wanted to be with color, however looking at where she took her design, I see a daring designer in the making!

Here is one of her very first drawings. The goal was to look at triangles as a composition of shapes and colors. We played with possible tessellations of her shapes.

Above are her second set of drawings.

The triangles from above were tessellated and this is what Sally achieved:

Next Sally looked for the right stitches to convey the shapes she came up with.

And after much work and trials, we charted her final triangles. She decided to work with two different triangles and bring them together in a complete design.

Her final master chart looked like this:

Here is her work in progress!!!!

It's quite brilliant!

Kindly remember!!

We are all well aware of the importance of respecting the ownership of a designer's work.

These designs belong solely to Sally Barton.

Do NOT print or use these designs for any purpose without Sally's explicit permission!!!

The House I Built, not the needlepoint one.

2018-07-24T06:43:00.001-07:00

It's progressing, right? The metal window wall is up as well as the walls of the greenhouse. The hanging wood cabinet is NOT the right color! This will have to be fixed to a color much closer to the wood floor.

The view from my windows is not a city view, is it?
I'm very happy with the mix of shiny new cabinets and old beaten up wood cabinet.

I love the pattern we did in the wood floor at the entrance! It almost looks like a wood area rug.

Our Master Bath is full of pattern. There are SO many decisions that need to be made when building a house and I love most of my choices. The stone floor in the bathrooms is not one of my favorites but it will do.

I really obsessed with the tiles in the kitchen. I saw them in a European magazine, tracked down the US supplier, realized that I can only afford a small area and placed them sort of like a runner in the kitchen. I love them!! Not everyone does, I realize that.

Our stove top is Induction. We love the way induction works, even more than gas.

That's it for now.

Student to Designer, Mary Frances Kelly-Poh

2018-07-16T08:48:00.000-07:00

Mary Frances didn't let anything stand in her way! She had been traveling for a good part of the class so the challenge was to keep working on her design with fewer tools and more distractions. Here is her journey in photos of her drawings and stitching.

I love the transition from the above square pattern to the "Petal" pattern below.

Refining...

Mapping out the possible stitches.

First go...

Second go...

And the charts:

It's now in Mary Frances' hands and she has begun the journey...

Kindly remember!!

We are all well aware of the importance of respecting the ownership of a designer's work.

These designs belong solely to Mary Frances Kelly-Poh

Do NOT print or use these designs for any purpose without Mary Frances' explicit permission!!!

30% Discount on our Thread assortments!

2018-07-11T06:39:00.000-07:00

Use code YUMMIES at checkout for 30% off these luscious silk combinations! These threads rarely go on sale, let alone 30% off!

See the HERE.

Another Student to Designer transformation!!

2018-07-01T08:48:00.001-07:00

Lynn Decker Miller is now stitching her completed piece.

While she works on that, let's take a look at the path she took...

The first assignment was to map out a triangle and then paint it with watercolors:

Next the process of transforming the shapes inside the triangles into stitches.

Here students found that they needed to be flexible,

what looks good on paper doesn't always work on the canvas.

With the chart in hand, Lynn tackled the canvas, with great success!

She worked on a second colorway for the same triangle:

Her work was now in my hands.

I charted her original triangle and then tessellated a few options for a final piece.

Here are Lynn's charts for her design.

Kindly remember!!

We are all well aware of the importance of respecting the ownership of a designer's work.

These designs belong solely to Lynn Decker Miller.

Do NOT print or use these designs for any purpose without Lynn's explicit permission!!!

How my Students became Designers , AMAZING work!

2018-06-29T09:05:00.001-07:00

Dare to Design, one of my most challenging and yet gratifying classes is in its final stages.

I want to share some of the work of my very talented students.

Patricia Karpenko has taken us on a wonderful journey.

She began with the watercolor phase of the process and came up with this beautiful triangle,

an initial cell of her tessellating design.

After working off of this painting for a bit, she woke up one morning with a variation that excited her, and she embarked on a slightly different direction.

After this initial drawing, she went to the canvas and interpreted the drawing in an exquisite way!

The shapes and colors are magnificent.

Once she finalized the stitches, it was my turn to chart her design.

Pat received this first laminated chart of her new design: Step Into My Garden.

I also sent her this chart of her triangle tessellated, coming together into a square.

The ball is back in her court. Pat is working on her piece, stitching the complete design

with any final changes or additions she may come up with.

I will share her completed design when she is done.

Congratulations Pat!!

Wonderfully wacky clothing.

2018-06-25T12:46:00.001-07:00

A week ago today, AMAZING!

2018-06-16T20:21:00.000-07:00

We were all together to celebrate the amazing event! Orin, our son-in-law, produced the beautiful musical, THE BAND'S VISIT, which won 10 Tony's at the award show on Sunday, June 10th.

Here is a screen shot of Shiri and Orin at the awards show.

and here they are rocking the red carpet!

Our family was all together, a huge treat!

Nina looked beautiful and was soooo proud of Orin!

My beautiful daughter, Shiri.

It was an amazing night!!

A Post of Praise!

2018-06-13T10:14:00.000-07:00

When does a package get lost in the mail? When it's very, very important!

On May 31st I sent out a very important package full of kits and instructions for a class on my design Sunflower. The class was to start on June 18th, plenty of time, right? Not if the package disappears! Yesterday I found out that the package never reached its destination, and nobody knew where it was. After realizing that even if the Postal service found it and returned it to me, it wouldn't reach the stitching group in time for their class, I immediately began making calls to all the fiber companies whose fibers were in these kits. I begged them to help me by sending out the threads I needed immediately, and ship them overnight so that I would receive them all today. I assumed that by tomorrow I would be able to complete the packaging, the printing, the laminating, the shipping labels and ship it out overnight to its destination. So many things had to happen just so, on time, it was a long shot but it had to be done. I called: Rainbow Gallery, Threadworx, Edmar, Caron Collection, Wichelt, Access Commodities and gave them all my lists.

drum roll...... at 11:30 this morning EVERYTHING arrived! Package after package, it all came in. By that time Rae and I had printed and laminated the instructions, we put the fibers together in packets for each colorway and not 5 minutes ago, at 12:50 this afternoon, Rae took the big box to the Postal shop nearby.
All these wonderful companies helped me achieve this feat! All the students ready to start stitching on Monday will not be disappointed! I'm so relieved and so happy to be working with people who understand the importance of service and valuing the customer.

Hurray for Sally at Rainbow Gallery, Debbie at Threadworx, Lois at Caron, Lamora at Access Commodities, Sue at Wichelt, and the wonderful people at Edmar! Thank you all!!

Rana Balca Ülker - what that needle can do!!

2018-06-03T07:24:00.000-07:00

It starts with a painting -

Irem Yazici - Turkish embroidery artist

2018-05-29T18:32:00.002-07:00

I think this one is my favorite -