This week's Throwback Thursday is brought to you courtesy of Jennifer Aikman-Smith and
DragonDreams designs. I've had the privilege to meet Jennifer a couple of times and I can confirm that she's pretty freakin' awesome.
If I recall correctly (and I probably don't), this was the first of the blackwork pieces that she designed. There were three four in all - a dragon, a unicorn, a princess, and apparently a knight I missed ;). I had never stitched a large blackwork piece, and I really wanted to try it out. I also decided to use a darker, more jeweltoned variegated thread for it - a Caron Wildflowers called plum. It was stitched on a 28 antique white linen (I'm starting to think a majority of my pieces were stitched on an antique white linen) and it took me one month. I started on December 1, 2002, and finished on December 31, 2002. Woot!
I really would like to get this one framed, but it's a bit lower in the priority from some of my other pieces. It was great to learn to work blackwork and I really enjoyed this piece quite a bit.
DragonDreams is still in existence and available wholesale (or at least a good number of the designs are), so getting some of the designs is still possible, though no new big designs have been released in some while. JAS does offer freebies on FB, so it's still possible to get my hands on cute little ones that she's still designing.
