Birthday Giveaway

Sewjourn is having a birthday giveaway, be quick it ends at 5pm tonight.

I have just downloaded my September copy of WOW, great inspiration there and well worth the miserly subscription. I am about to incorporate Julie Smith’s wonderful article on making a mermaid’s purse (or cuff actually) into my sea angels. I have just about finished all the machine stitching and will spend the next two weeks with the hand stitching.

Here is another taster.

 The first is the twin needle stitching on the neck of one dupion silk gown:This is the other gown painted with a mixture of acrylic, opulence ink and dyn na flow then sprinkled with salt:

I painted some pearl cotton with the leftovers but they are a bit stiff, even after being in the dryer. They might be okay in a twisted cord or couched on. This is in the wet stage, it actually dried much lighter and will be toned down with overlays.

The last photo is another of the wing pieces. On the corners I have stitched using the Maggie’s technique from the Perth workshop. I’m hoping these will look like fragments of fishing net once dissolved.

Sorry about the flash off the glass cooktop.

Cheers

Progress on WIP

Firstly some beautiful post received, from Britt in Perth

Claudia was mega excited when she opened the envelope and saw all the cute extras Britt had included. Britt offered a huge range of ATC’s on her blog for swap, each featuring her beautiful, fine tatting lace.

Also received were these amazing ATC embroideries from Anne in France and Emmy in Netherlands. I do not have the patience for such fine embroidery so I’m in awe of both of these super talented ladies. If you want to get a surprise for the return ATC’s don’t look any further girls!

 

It is a great feeling to actually finish something. I have had a number of projects on the go at the same time which sometimes makes it difficult to feel you are progressing. Having a long weekend this weekend and staying home instead of gadding about has made a huge difference. I have managed to finish or make obvious progress on a number of fronts. The biggest task was finishing off the ethics application for my research project. Emailing that away on Sunday was a huge lift off the shoulders. It meant that on Monday I could relax and enjoy some arting with Claudia. Firstly here are the ATC’s we finished for our swaps.

Claudia decided she would like to draw some pictures to stitch on to hers, so they have been scanned and printed onto ready to print cotton sheet. For the base fabric she layered some silk fibres under the green chiffon fabric (left over from my Mum’s cardi) and FME. I gave her my sample from a machine embroidery workshop and she chose to do a star pattern. The hearts are the ones Britt sent to Claudia.

My ATC’s were made as a strip of seven and are based on one of my favourite paintings by Grace Cossington Smith called Landscape at Pentecost . I used some techniques from Angie Hughes new book Stitch, Cloth, Paper and Paint. Bits of curtain fabric, scrunched tissue paper, silk threads and muslin were adhered to pelmet vilene with vlieofix. Then all the bits were secured with FME zigzag with white polyester cotton thread. The details were added with some cable stitch using no. 8 perle cotton in the bobbin. A coat of gesso was added all over and left to dry overnight. This morning I painted over using koh-i-noor watercolours mixed with white pearl lumiere. A tiny bit of handstitching finished them off.

Claudia also wanted to paint so she painted some cotton sheeting with nice, bright stripes to use as the backing for her ATC’s. The Stitch Explorer stitch for February is the Trellis Stitch, a great stitch for 3D effects. I have tried out a couple of motifs on my sampler based on the links Sharon gave us. The circular motif is in perle 8 and includes a few beads threaded on by hand. The diamond is stitched on a base of reverse chain stitch and I worked each side separately decreasing to form a triangle shape on each.

This weekend progress has also been made on trying out a few techniques for the ’sea angels’. While painting fabric I tried out a few different colours and paints on some dupion silk and will use this as a sampler to try out stitches for the sea angels gowns. It scanned really badly so I won’t bother loading that picture.

This week is the new stitches and craft show at Melbourne Showgrounds. As I have to go up to uni on Thursday I might try to pop in for a few hours and check it out. If you’re free check out the web-site, it looks like a mega show with something for everyone.

Cheers

While the mice are away…..

…that means Claudia and I are the cats!

The essay I’m writing is so tedious (but important) I have to take breaks every now and then, and since most of my children and the husband are away (hardly any housework for two of us and we eat when and what we like) I have all this time to do more interesting things. I have sprayed the muslin and a sheet of Sheer heaven paper with my new radiant mists (from the Thread Studio) and they are lovely (and some moonshadow mist). I would like to put the sheer heaven through the printer , I’m hoping the paint won’t be a problem, to print some words upon. It’s going to be used on a box like this, which our textile group are making for the Embroiderer’s Guild exhibition. This is Pauline’s box in progress, hope you don’t mind me putting it on here Pauline? I also sprayed the muslin at the same time and it will be part of the layering on my box (I have lots of bits for this that I’ve been making that hopefully will look okay when put together). Looks a bit pale here from the flash, it’s much richer in colour. Also this afternoon, I decided to cover some boxes that started like this: and after a bit of spray adhesive and fabric, looked like this: Did this outside of course. I’ve promised Claudia we’ll try some sun printing if it’s sunny tomorrow, this spring weather is very unpredictable. Cheers

Playing Around

Having spent most of the day on uni work I decided I was justified in giving myself a treat. I spent a very relaxing, enjoyable couple of hours stitching Susan’s postcard to send off. I won’t post a picture this week as it will spoil the surprise. Thanks for swapping with me Susan.
Claudia has been continuing her ATC’s. She has made one for her cousin who has just jetted off to The US to work at Camp America. At this stage she is getting acclimatised at her Uncle’s house north of Detroit. The second ATC was for a swap with Annica in Sweden. Claudia spotted the ATC’s Annica had for swap while I was reading her blog.

Claudia has just asked me if she can have her own blog to post her stuff on! I have told her she can when she is a little older. She is off to her first monthly Young Embroiderer’s class at the Embroidery Guild on Friday, so we’ll see if she enjoys that.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been doing a little ‘arting’, I just haven’t had time to blog. I was reading on a blog about somebody’s fun with painting an old stained cloth so I decided to also try some. I dug out an old cotton sheet that has been used as a tablecloth for trestle tables on large family gatherings. I started with wetting the cotton then ironing until just damp. I used a mixture of permaset, lumiere, and koh-i-nor colours and a wide brush with lots of water. I painted wide bands of colour and then splotches of colour on top. I then scrunched them up and left in a tub to dry.

The resultant fabric, the splotches on the autumn tonings are a little obvious but this fabric is destined to be used as a background for a pentagonal box so it will be layered upon. (I will use the silk paper I showed last post.) The pastel shades are not quite as pale as they appear.

The last play around was with the xpandaprint. I sewed a grid onto water soluble paper and then began stencilling with the xpandaprint and sprinkling on the embossing powder. In the end I just painted on the xpandaprint. As I have not yet purchased a heat gun I had to heat set with the iron. This is the photo after heat setting. You can see where the colour has just come off a little.

I have dissolved the paper in water and these will be applied to my Research Journal cover which I intend to stitch tomorrow (we have a long weekend here for the Queen’s Birthday).
Cheers till next week