w 12 ... late!

Ok so it's now Friday!! I've been busy clearing out the garage to take the stuff from my studio! I posted the photos of the view from my studio a few weeks ago. Incredibly the next day I received an email saying that everyone was on a months notice to leave. Boo Hoo...I couldn't believe it. Making it public was like the kiss of death! Ok so that's a bit over dramatic but I was really dissappointed. I suppose all there is to say about is...next!

Back to reality and I'm still fiddling about with the little stitched landscapes for my class.

My usual jumble of stuff in the making. My new one is to the right of the picture before I added the flowers. 

Here it is finished, well at least the front is. I still have to put on a fabric backing and the brooch pin.

A bit of duplication on the next few pictures. I'm always amazed how the work looks in close-up. These flowers are really quite small and now I see them blown up some are not all that well stitched! They're a teaching aid, I want people to think that they can stitch them as well. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!! 

Until next week, byee!

x

A selection...

Not a great picture but this is one of my unframed pieces that has been lurking around for a while. I had worked it on a backing of calico but all my unframed pieces are usually worked on a base of felt. This is probably why it was in the lurking pile! I added it to a piece of felt with the embellisher and some more rows of free machining, problem solved! I've mounted it on the horizontal for a change. There's a kind of landscape thing going on with it... with a bit of imagination!

This one is actually another one on calico but this time I've decided that I'll window mount it, so it'll not need to be put on to felt. It's very much a work in progress as I've not stitched the flowers yet.

I quite like how they look without the flowers being stitched (I'll take some more photos of them later) but I think that's because it's a close up which I find always looks way better than the actual size. 

I've used a mixture on this one of hand and free machine embroidery with some work on the embellisher as well. I love to combine techniques when it suits.

These are a couple of quite small pieces, actually I think I may have shown them before, or maybe on flickr... anyway I decided that they had too much work on them to be put on a card (I try not to do any hand stitching on my card pieces...a personal thing!) so I decided to whiz a zigzag stitch around the edges, add a brooch back and voila!...  a couple of instant brooches... As to whether anyone will want them or not remains to be seen but at least I'm happy as I feel like I've used them!

This is a before picture...

and this is the after...

The addition of a few straight stitches and some little flowers makes all the difference. I didn't notice until after I had mounted and packaged this one that I hadn't done any of my little French knot flowers. It obviously didn't need it otherwise I think I would have noticed at the time.

Some of the machining looks really messy when you see it in close up!

The photo above and the few below are from a landscape that I finished last week.

The colour doesn't seem quite right in these two photos. I may have had the flash on for this one as it was probably getting dark by the time I remembered to take some photos!!

The last photo here shows this piece before I did the extra hand stitching and free machining and I think the colour is better. You can see the extra details that I put on it in the close up photos.

I'm pleased to say that this piece sold at the Morningside Makers Market on Saturday !! I really liked it and wouldn't have minded if I'd had to keep it for a while....maybe this will be the start of a new series.......! :o)

Bye for now!

x

13th March...

... I can now reveal some work I did for Classic stitches magazine as it has now been published. These are some of the pictures I took of the three covered notebooks before I sent them in. To check out more photos or how to make them then check out -
CLASSIC STITCHES ISSUE No. 85

For this piece I used some of my hand dyed fabric ( obviously a different batch from Saturdays dyeing session!)

...It was lovely digging out the old embroidery trimmings to use on this one. I never thought that I'd use any of them but I thought that they went really well with the patchwork fabric and the hand stitching.

I couched down the ribbon in the shape of a bow and added beaded edges to this one.

This one was mostly made up from vintage fabric. I suppose we can class old Laura Ashley fabric as vintage!

...The hand dyed one again with its mixture of buttons.

That's all folks, bye for now!