Today is part 2 of guest posting from my mom, Laura, about her new original work Summer Seashells!!!

Finito, finished and done.

This project occupied the major portion of time for a couple of years.  I did a majority of the design process as I worked. Some artists plan out everything before starting. They choose threads, decide  stitches, plan out which colors go where. I did not do this. I had an idea  of a beach with shells and crabs. I also had lotsa beads and beach earrings. I drew the outline of shells and some random lines onto my linen and started stitching.

I had fun trying out a lot of stitches.

Originally I envisioned lots of little crabs scurrying around the shells. These just did not work out on the whole. I tried multiple stitches but felt that only these two, the little one above and the big one below, could be identified as crabs. The others were just a mess and were eliminated.

I wanted the feel of a beach at low tide with the waves washing in and around the shells. I used variagated cotton floss for the most part and variagated the stitches. Chain and butterfly chain using the full 6 strands. I stitched the sand lines with 3 strands of various colors of sandy brown floss in stem, chain or back stitch.