www...4? I think!

Busy tidying, not my usual pastime I must say. Well it's more of de-stash time...it has come to a head. Stepping over things just to get into my room, then there's the clearing the table before I can start to do any work. Driving me nuts!

 So here are a couple of photos of my start. Sadly there seems to be more notes of 'keep' on these magazines than there is 'out'.

I just had to stitch the other day, withdrawal symptoms kicking in. I had some room at my little table-top ironing board (Ikea x) and my sewing machine so I made myself a background piece of cloth. Just my usual style, nothing too complicated you understand. Strips of fabric machined down onto a felt background with some further details on top.

 Unusual for me but I decided to do some hand stitching as well as my usual free machining (free motion embroidery).  The above photos shows the pink felt base fabric and the stitching on the reverse.

Above are some shots of the work so far and as I have done some of the hand stitching today I've included them in the 'Wednesday work' post.

The flowers, I have daisies on my mind at the moment so I think that's where they came from. The work is so much more colourful than in my last post. Maybe it's a reaction to all the neutral work I've been doing lately.

I do love a bit of colour. :o)

I hope to have more to report about the clear-up by next Wednesday.

Bye for now

x

www3...woops!

Ok, so it's Thursday, I forgot to post. In fact I actually forgot to take some photos yesterday. So here are the two out of four that loaded. I took them this morning but the work was done yesterday...honest!

I know, I'm not showing much, that's because it's in its early stages and it's for an exhibition...I hope.

I can tell you that the above piece has a mixture of fabrics, some painted with gesso, some printed (can't really see that in the picture), the beige is an old linen and some builders scrim as well as my all time favourite, calico. The lace and the linen came from a super charity shop. That's where I found the linen thread which you can see in the top photo. They had labels on them saying that they were Irish linen. A bit of a scoop I'd say.

Managed to load the other two photos. Above is another snip of what I was working on yesterday.

This photo shows some of the crochet mats that I found in that same charity shop. I hope you can see how fine the white one is on top. I don't know how they managed it and it is beautifully worked. I put the pen beside them to help with size.

Anyway, that's it for this week I hope to be on time next Wednesday.

Bye for now.

x

www...3

...working Wednesday work...ok so I'm going to run out of W words!
I really didn't do too much today. This was all done as I waited for the washing machine to finish. A little trial that didn't go where I thought that it would, which I suppose is what we should expect. I've not got these pictures in order but I can explain as I go along. 

 Nice Kit Kat wrapper...this is the large one from the multi wraps, silver inside. Anyway these pieces show the wrapper a bit shrivelled and painted. The background fabric is calico which I smeared some yellow acrylic paint on first.

 As you can see in the photo above I have used the painted piece to print onto the fabric.

 This one above is getting back to the beginning, my first thoughts. I originally decided to melt the foil wrapper with the iron. NB. protect the iron & the foil with baking parchment. It is literally a case of laying the iron down onto the baking parchment with the foil  below and quickly lifting it off. It is that simple! You may want to repeat it but you start to lose the shine of the foil and it can flatten rather than leave all these nice cell like shapes. Don't expect them all to work, I probably got about half that worked ok.

Some of the pieces were great like the one above...others not so.

These two photos, above and below show the before and after print. I used a metal scraper to put on the paint and rubbed over the back with my hand. The foil is pretty robust so it shouldn't come to much harm. You could use an old credit card to scrape the paint on if that's what you have.

Back to the beginning again with the one below. After melting I thought that I would glue the foil onto the fabric. As I started to colour the surface of the foil and the fabric the foil started lifting a little. I eventually got fed up and removed the foil and was left with a lovely glue shape on the surface. I will add a bit more colour to it when I get a chance. I thought that it left a rather interesting shape so I tried it again and it was rubbish. Probably a bit too impatient me thinks anyway it didn't work so I'll give it another go sometime. 

All these things I've been trying are not new it's just that I've come across them by accident. If I'd thought about it I may well have tried out these techniques but that really wasn't in my mind when I started. Basically a quick creative fix that turned out quite nicely thank you.

Just as an aside and not that great a photo but this was a huge bumble bee that landed at my feet when I was hanging out my washing. It was a lovely day and really quite warm in the sunshine. I ended up spending the rest of the morning in the garden. A fruit pancake and a coffee, something to read and a comfy chair...then some hard graft in the weeding department.

Lovely!

X

www...2

Wednesday was working ... until I tried to upload my photos!

I'm having internet connection problems so I'm going to make this quick and hope it uploads. As you can see I did manage to get some stitching done today. Some free machine work on hand dyed muslin. I love how you can get it to go into holes. I will post the rest of the photos on my Flickr page when the internet problem is resolved. The engineer is due to come on Friday morning.

Until next Wednesday...happy stitching!

x

WWW...

Will Wednesdays Work?.........

I've been having a think, dangerous I know. How could I start to blog a bit more often?  

Ok, so here's what I've come up with...Wednesdays! Original, I know. There is a plan, may have failed by next week but here goes.

Post every Wednesday....tah,dah! Ok, the plan is that I will post a stitched or not stitched photo every Wednesday. I will add some words for good measure.

Here's my photo from today (which will finish in about 15 minutes so I'll make this quick). I have made five birds today and have just finished mounting them about half an hour a go. I will take some pictures of the rest tomorrow. I may just pop them on my Flickr page...because it won't be Wednesday!!!!!!!!

Got to go, be back next week.

Byee!

x

PS. There are some real birds on my Flickr page at the moment. A couple of little Red Polls, worth a look.

yum, yum...

...enjoying these. A Christmas gift from the ladies at my creative embroidery class. I'm taking my time over them and not doing my usual guzzle. Mmm, wonder what I could use the packaging for?!* 

I've spent most of yesterday and today working on this sample. I do enjoy a bit of canvaswork. This is to take to my class on Friday. I'm going to make it into a notebook, this is the cover ( a bit obvious I know, sorry). 

I've used a lot of my own hand dyed threads for once.

I really want to work more with my own dyed stuff as I have a lot of fabrics with matching threads. I can feel a bit of crazy patchwork/quilting coming on! 

The lovely variegated perle above is one of the Anchor threads, No. 5. 

I'm not working to a pattern, it's just evolving like most of the things I do. I've been working some of my favourite stitches. Cushion stitch, Norwich stitch, rice stitch, simplified rice stich and diamond eyelet (see below). 

I still have a bit to finish . I've been doing so much machining lately that I'd forgotten how long hand stitching took! 

Bye for now, got to get stitching! :o)x

Hello kitty!

Yes, you're right, not the usual thing for me. I couldn't resist buying this the other day, in fact couldn't resist two to be exact. Well it's a nice little tin of mints, eat the mints, keep the tin. Oh yes, then there was the price...10p! :o))

Then there was a lovely surprise inside, not only are they mint flavour (fairly strong I have to say) but they are in the shape of a bow, cute or what!

Back to reality and the mess on my table. I've been busy working on one of the projects I really should have finished last year!!! Got to go and get on.....Byee!

:o)