Anemones

This is the second postcard from Dot in her anemones series.

I love the shape of the flower.

My Birthday Present

What a lucky girl I am. I received this beautiful sketch book for my birthday from my sewing soul mate Dot. Its a mixed media cover that has been stamped & appliqued and is absolutely gorgeous.

Thank you so much my friend. x

A Little Bit of Creativity

Saw this scissor holder that a friend had made. Liked the style of it so she told me the size fabric to use and then challenged me to figure it out! Think I managed it ok.


I used a piece of fabric I had space dyed in pinks, red and orange and a green piece of fabric for the inside. I printed a flower motif onto the pink piece using green acrylic paint mixed with a fabric medium. I then free machine stitched round the flowers.


Having done that I then stitched it right sides together (with some wadding behind the pink piece as I wanted to quilt it), turned it the right way out, top stitched all round the edge and then free machine quilted round the flowers.


Lastly the pockets were folded and stitched into place. Very simple but very effective.

Summertime

Well seeing as it's supposed to be summer (we have torrential rain, thunder & lightening at the moment!) I decided to have a bit of a 'play' with the quintessential English summer fruit, strawberries.

I wanted to start by sun printing some fabric and somewhere along the way 'sun printing' morphed into 'mono printing'. Not quite sure how!

Anyhow, I began by mono printing with an ochre colour and when that was dry I repeated the process with a mixed green layer. Not really sure if this is a technique I really like that much.



Having done that I then cut out a strawberry stamp from funky foam and proceeded to stamp over the fabric. Still didn't like it that much so I cut it up to play with in sections.

The first piece I also colour washed with a very diluted green dye mix. Then this piece was laid over some anaglypta wallpaper and fabric pastels were rubbed over it in 3 different colours, pink, yellow and green which I then heat set. Much more pleased with the result, more texture and colour. I then free machine stitched round the strawberries and free machine quilted the background.

Not a brilliant picture, sorry!

The seeds were hand stitched using french knots, a free running stitch and small black beads.

The second piece I colour washed with metallic bronze ink mixed with a little red earth coloured ink, colour washing over the strawberries as well. I then machine appliqued two strawberries over the top, one in cotton and one in velvet.

Once again the seeds were french knots and individual straight stitches.

I still have a couple of pieces that I am playing with. Will maybe blog them later when i've decided what to do with them!

Leaving On A Jet Plane Update

Hills loved her book. We sat by the river on Thursday having our lunch in a gentle rain shower watching the trout and ducks swim lazily by. Bliss

Amish

I have been creating some Amish pieces for my course work and have decided to blog three of them as they are my favourites.

This one is my favourite

For some reason this is very American civil war era to me.

All the pieces are about 12" square and are hand quilted. I took these to Ireland to do over there whenever I had a free moment to myself.

Leaving On A Jet Plane

A good friend of mine is packing up, lock, stock and barrel & kids & taking a slow boat to China ( well, her's will be of the pressurised flying varitey, lol ). Her husband is being moved to his companys Shanghai office for eighteen months to two years or more. I shall miss our coffee afternoons and lunches, book swaps, sitting by the river putting the world to rights and generally having a good giggle.

Front cover of the book

As a small leaving gift I have made her a book in which to record her life in Shanghai. Because the cover is removable she will be able to replace the book each time she fills it.

The book opened out

The front and back of the book are made from fabric with a mixed media strip inserted each side of the hand dyed felt spine. The feathers were free machine stitched as were the rows of hearts and loops.

Detail from the spine, free machine feathers a la Rikki Timms

On the plus side to her leaving she has promised to keep her eyes open for unusual and exciting treasures of the fabric variety for me. Knowing Hills she will have sussed out the markets etc within the first couple of weeks of being there!