Thursday, February 24, 2011

Saints alive!!!!

I was just browsing through The Blurb Bookstore and I came across this book. It amused me, and I thought some of the quilters out there might find it interesting.




You can preview a few pages here.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

More foolery

I've been busy using up scraps to make more embroidered cuffs.

This is how they start off. Small offcuts of fleecy fabric, tiny scraps of silk and wisps of wool sliver (roving) meshed together on the embellisher, machine quilted to a backing of eco felt and hand embroidered. Then made into a "sandwich" with a pelmet vilene (pellon) "filling" and a felt or fabric bottom "slice" and machine zigzagged together.



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Then they get buttonholed all the way around and further embellished with trellis stitch and beads. I like to fasten them with beads and buttonholed loops.


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Here's a couple that are finished:


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The larger one has "tiles" of constructed fabric appliqued by machine before the hand stitching.
The one that is threaded through is made in the same way as the pieces in the first photo.

This one is my current favourite!


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You can see the beads and the buttonholed loops in this photo. These last two have a top layer of printed chiffon embellished to the fleecy fabric, I like the way the barbed needles "distress" this fabric.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

It's all humbug!

Messing about with humbug shapes using scraps of needlefelted fabric, I made these two pincushions. I always need another pincushion!


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I made the first, the red one, with the seams to the inside, the second with the seams on the outside.


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It's a tube, made from one or two rectangles (my pairs of rectangles were the same width but different lengths, so the seams are not lined up. Altering the proportions of the rectangle(s) changes the shape of the humbug). For the third side, put the seam(s) in the centre, for the fourth side fold the other way and put the seam(s) at the side. Don't forget to leave a gap to turn out.

I was playing with these because I was thinking of making some small bags and toying with the idea of using this shape for feet................

Monday, February 07, 2011

Sketchbook Challenge - February - Opposite

Complementary colours, opposite on the colour wheel. A clementine drawn on blue card.


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Not one of my best. Coloured pencil. I should have used a better support, but instead I used card from the Pound Shop and it wouldn't take enough layers of pencil.

Having said that, it was a challenging subject to draw. Trying to keep the luminosity of the orange fruit, with all that white pith was very difficult. I'll probably try it again with harder pencils and a better support. My own challenge was moving out of my "comfort zone" to use a coloured ground.

Second try on purple Canson paper:



I'd had it in mind to draw this last year, but I didn't get around to it. The image was posted on an internet challenge, Virtual Sketch Date. A photograph was posted each month for people to draw and leave a link on the virtual sketch date blog. The challenge finished early last year, but the blog and the images are still available here.

On the subject of "opposite" I did these a while ago, whilst following Illustration Friday.



Day



Night

The Illustration Friday word that week was "Remote"

Thursday, February 03, 2011

Paisley UFO

Here it is, stretching on my batik frame. I'm not sure if it's finished or not. I want to keep some of the dye markings clearly visible, so I don't want to fill it completely with stitches.


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No idea what I'm going to do with this. I always have this trouble when I make anything "flat"!