Week 13 Raised Cup Stitch

Week 13 of the TAST 2 challenge over on Sharon B's blog is Raised Cup Stitch.
This is yet again another new stitch to me.
I rather like this stitch and will use it in my Crazy Patchwork pieces.
The first one is my official sample and you will notice that the last yellow flower is bigger than the rest --that is because I worked two rows around the cup.
The centre of the blue flowers are French Knots in Perle 5 thread and the yellow ones have pearl beads for the centres.






This is my sample sampler in variegated Perle 5 thread with pearl beads centres.

Now for week 14.

I Felt like Felting

Last year my friend Suzanne dyed some wool tops and this week I volunteered to make felt with them using the wet felt method.
I love wet felting-I find it so relaxing especially the way it is done these days using bubble wrap.
None of the old circle motions that I had learned back in the "good" old days that left your shoulders aching and your hands all wrinkled.
The colours are lovely and the variations are subtle.
I am sorry about the big long line of pictures but blogger is playing silly buggers today.
I did try to arrange them a bit better but to no avail.
Purple----------



Blue---------


Orange and gold---------


Soft blue and green-----------
Orange and gold again----------

A grey/green-----

I am not sure yet as to what we are going to do with them.

Fibre Fever page for May

My swap partner for May in the Fibre Fever group was Helina and her theme was Songs of the Beatles.
I had thought of doing Yellow Submarine until I saw this fabric with strawberries on it and decided to do Strawberry Fields Forever.

Helina has received the page so it is ok to show it now.

I will show my page when it arrives.

Is it just me

----or are others having a problem as well.
Sometime during the last few days something has happened to my Bloglines feed notifier.
I have a bloglines icon that comes up in red which tells me when someone on my feed list has updated their blog.
Well over the last few days the icon has not shown up in red :-( and I was thinking that no one had updated their site.
Then whenever I go on to check just in case I now have to fill in my personal details each time and also identify one of those silly word verifiers.
This has become a damn nuisance.
Can anyone tell me what is going on or am I the only one that is affected by this.
Grumble grumble grumble.

I'm Late and I'm Early

I'm late with the week 11 Tast 2 challenge stitches and I am early with the week 12 ones.
The stitch for week 11 was Bullion buttonhole which is the one on top row and is worked in Perle 5 thread.
And the stitch for weel 12 is Sorbello stitch which is the one I worked in a Perle 5 thread which I had dyed myself last week :-]
I first heard of Sorbello stitch when I did a workshop with Jan Beaney a few years ago now.
This is my official sample which is starting to look very nice now.






This is my Sample sample-the one that I practice on first.

Oh and the green thread is again one that I dyed last week.

If you want to see how the stitches are done-drop over to Sharon B's blog and take a peek.

Journal Workshop

Carole from Madness and Mess is going to do a Journal workshop starting on the 14th of June
and I have just signed up for it.
Carole does beautiful work and creates the most amazing stitcheries.
If you haven't visited Carole's blog before do yourself a favour and head on over there now and check it out--Oh and sign up for the class while you are there.
The badge for the workshop is on my side bar.

The Green One

This is the green bag--well turquoise to be precise.
I had made a green dye from the turquoise and lemon-yellow dye powder and I added that to one side of the zip lock bag and added straight turquoise to the opposite side then added the soda ash and water.
The darker green piece on the left hand side was a taupe colour before I dyed it so that is the reason that I got this colour.
Again there are silks-cotton and lace etc in this bundle.

The piece with the brown on it is a silk fabric which had a design on it that was brown.

There are doylies and cotton motifs in there as well.

Perle 5 cotton and some rayon ribbon and a lace flower.

The piece underneath everything else is the felt bit again and there is silk ribbon and their are several laces on the top that were supposed to be 100% cotton that are used for heirloom sewing but I think someone was telling fibs when they labelled this-but I do like how they turned out.

OK there you have it-now all that is left is I have to stop admiring them all and make something with them.

To Dye or not to dye--- What was the question?

The colours used this time were Lemon/Yellow and Fuschia.
Here we have a lovely crochet doylie and several pieces of bridal lace and then the piece on the top left hand side is felt.
In this lot the red is the more dominant colour.





You can see here that the yellow and the red are equal in colour---

Now the colours are more apricot-with the yellow now starting to take over--

Finally the silk ribbon and the Perle 5 threads-notice the darke red one.

Another bag had Fuschia and Turquoise Procion dyes in it.

This is all the bits of silk ribbon-threads and laces that came out-aren't the gorgeous.

Here is one colour way--some doylies and silk fabric- a piece of damask and some "stuff" I don't know what it is called that is on the top right hand side of the photo.

And this pile of different fabrics in a beautiful pink colour--the one on the left is the felt piece.

Tomorrow I will show the green bag.

Dyeing not dieing

Yes I have been dyeing again and I can say that I am getting better each time.
This time I was a brave girl and went solo--all alone--by myself.
As I have said before I am always surprised at the results that I get because I am not one to follow rules and to do this dying business you are supposed to be precise with your measurements.
I am using Procion dyes which I have had for over 10 years still in their little screw top containers-unopened waiting for me to be adventurous enough to try them out.
The thought of having to measure everything has always been the deterrent for me but after being with Suzanne last week I thought "what the heck no one is going to kill me if I stuff it up".
So I got 4 plastic zip lock bags and one big Jar and started stuffing fabric and threads into them.There were cotton fabrics-silk fabrics some linens and felt as well and also some cotton Damask.
Also I had Perl 5 thread-silk ribbon- lace doylies-motifs-scraps of heirloom sewing samples-plus some old tablecloths that had holes in them-some commercial fabrics that had writing on them-a piece of a white cotton skirt with lace on it.
I also tossed in bits of different braids and laces and cords.
I was really experimenting to see what effect the dyes had on different things.
The colours that I used were Lemon Yellow -Turquoise and Fuschia.
I mixed everything up like Suzannes had told me and poured the colours into the bag then added the soda ash water-gave it a poke to make sure it had soaked into everything and then I waited.
When it was time to take it all out of the bag I was amazed because there were four different colourways in the one bag.
What the.......................
Well as you can see in this first bag they are very strong Autumn colours--and notice the one on the left hand side-that is the felt one.

This is the second colourway.............

And then the third..........................

And lastly this one which has a strong rusty tinge to it.

These were all in the one bag--amazing eh?

I know that if you mix red and yellow you get orange and if you mix blue and yellow you get green--I know all that- and I can see where the colours have blended with the ones on either side of them but I am still amazed.

Tomorrow I will show you the other ones.

Official Sample

This is my official sample of Cloud Filling Stitch for the TAST 2 challenge.
This time I have used the variegated Perle cotton thread that I used for the lacing in my sample sampler and I then used a hand dyed 2 mm silk ribbon to lace it.



A close up----

I like this stitch very much.

Week 10 Cloud Filling Stitch

The stitch for week 10 on Sharon B's TAST2 challenge is Cloud Filling stitch.
I had to make several rows of small straight stitches that formed the base for the lacing thread to be woven through.
I decided to use a cream thread for this to give the impression that the lacing thread was floating on the fabric.
This is my sample sampler and now I am off to do the official sample.

In case you were wondering about the size of my sample sampler squares they are only 7cm square..

Playing at Dyeing

On Tuesday my friend Suzanne and I had a day playing with dyes.
I have no idea about dying but Suzanne does so I just muddle along and what I end up with is pure chance.
We were looking for subtle colours(don't aske me to name the colours of the dyes that we used 'cos I haven't a clue) anyway we felt that they were getting a bit dark -not what we wanted-so we washed them out a bit earlier than we should have done.
I am happy with the pieces that I experimented with but I haven't yet seen the ones that Suzanne did.
I love this soft antique rose colour- just what I wanted because I want to make some vintage stuff for the exhibition sales table.





This was a white hand croched doiley --I love it.




Here are some different fabrics--top left a fine linen-right felt-bottom left-scrim and a piece of furnishing braid.
The colours are a bit dark but I am happy with them.

This is felt and laces and they are beautiful--well I think so anyway.

Here is some braid and laces and I do know the colours here were purple and olive.

And some Perle 8 thread-------

We used jam jars to dye this stuff in and we poked all different types of fabrics-braids-threads etc into the jars and added the dyes etc on top of them.

Week 9 Raised Herringbone Band

Well here I am and it is 1.50am and I have just finished stitching my week 9 stitch for the TAST challenge run by Sharon B over at Pintangle.
This weeks stitch is Raised Herringbone Band and I must admit that I have been put off by the fact that the base of the stitch is Satin Stitch.
I hate doing Satin Stitch and I was going to cheat and work it over a ribbon but I decided to bite the bullet and do the Satin Stitch.
Now even if I do say so myself I think I have done a pretty even Satin Stitch in my official Sampler and I may even do some more after this--who knows I could grow to like it.
I used a variegated Perle 8 for the Satin Stitch -a stranded cotton for the Herringbone stitch and a metallic thread for the lacing.





Here is my sample Sampler which I practise on first and that is worked in Perle 5's and is laced with a boucle thread.

Now I must get to bed so I am ready for week 10 which will be there when I wake up.

I'm Late I'm Late for a Very Important Date

Week 8 on TAST 2 was Fancy Hem Stitch and I forgot about it.
What is my excuse--I don't have one I just plain forgot about it.
So I have had to rush - then after I had finished doing it I realised that I had read the instructions wrong in one place--too late it will have to stay and blind Freddy couldn't find it anyway.
The first sample is my official one---

And this one is my sample sampler.

I think that I should have used heavier threads as the thinner ones tend to make the stitch look a bit messy.

Now to catch up on week 9.

Not much happening here....

Things are quiet here at present as it is a long weekend for Anzac Day so I thought I would show you a photo I took today of Ebony and her Mother.
They are both standing barefooted and as you can see Ebony is nearly as tall as her mother.
Ebony's mother comes from Kenya and she is very petite and at the rate Ebony is growing she will be taller than her mum before long---she is already wearing her mums clothes.

Doesn't this colour of pink look great on both of them.

A Very old UFO

Before I got married 48 years ago my mother and I were embroidering a tablecloth together.
I can still remember us sitting at the kitchen table stitching away on opposite corners of the cloth.
I have carted this unfinished treasure to seven different houses in 3 different states of Australia.
Many times I have thought that I would cut it up and make something out of it :- O
Something always stopped me -maybe guilt- maybe fear-maybe my mother was watching me from above-who knows.
Anyway my daughter Susan asked me at the weekend if we could finish it-so I pulled it out of its bag and we inspected it to see what we could do.
I don't have the original threads anymore so matching them could be a problem.
Two of the corners are completely finished and the third one only has white Flannel flowers left to do so that won't be a problem and the fourth one only has a few bits done on it and these can be removed if necessary.
Here is one finished corner--the desighn is Australian Wildflowers.
I can't believe at twenty one I was doing such even stitching.






This is the unfinished corner--------

And in the centre there three different designs and they are all finished.

One---------

Two--------

Three--------

The cloth has not discoloured it was always this dark cream colour but it has a few aged marks on it.

I have a friend who is an antique needledword dealer and she is going to have a look at it for me to see if they can be removed without damaging it.

Now to make it a fourth generation stitching project Ebony wants to stitch on it as well.

A definite family Heirloom---all we have to do is like the Nike ad says-just do it.

Everything Old is New Again

We have had Ebony staying all weekend and yesteday my daughter came down to show her a dress that she wore to a school formal 33 years ago when she was 15.
Ebony asked if she could try it on and believe it or not it fit her perfectly except for the length which was ankle length on her.
I can't believe that it fit Ebony so well seeing as she is only 10.
You can tell by the look on Ebony's face how she feels about it.
It is a beautiful cotton dress with tiny straps and embroidered flowers on one of the ruffled sections.



The back is shirred---

Um --do I detect a modelling career?

A close up of the skirt.

My daughter has carted this dress around with her since she joined the army at the age of 17 --to 6 different army bases and when she left the army and came back to Canberra it still travelled with her.

She has told Ebony if she would like to wear it to her end of the year school social then she can.

She also brought down with her two vests that I had made for her at the same time--and I thought I was a hoarder.

Fibre Fever Round Two.

I have joined the second round of the Fibre Fever 6" fabric page swap that started this month.
We had so many people interested in the swap this year that Ati had to divide us into two groups.
We have some very interesting themes in our group and I am looking forward to interpreting them each month.
My swap partner for April was Kath from Crete and her theme is Ancient Symbols.
I searched the internet to find a symbol that I thought would be appropriate and I decided on this one.
Seeing as April was Easter and that Kath lives in Crete what would be more appropriate than the Christian symbol the Chi Rho which is the first two letters in the word Christ in the Greek alphabet.
The background is purple silk with the X and P in gold and there is a gold cord around the edge.





My theme this year is "The country you live in" which I chose because there are a lot of ladies of different nationalities in my group and I hope to learn something of the country that they live in.

My first page came from Ati who is the group leader and lives in Norway.

Her page is beautiful and is full of Norwegian things.

Firstly the background was knitted by Ati and is the hand section of a mitten-- the section on the right hand side is the palm bit and the left is the top of the hand (does that make sense).

The red/white and blue ribbon is the ribbon that they use to celebrate Norway's national day.

The buttons are from Norwegian cardigans and sweaters and there is a small Norwegian pin in the bottom right hand corner.

But the thing that I really love are the skates and as Ati said when she was designing the page, the winter Olympics were on and what better thing to make than skates.

Her husband made the blades for her and then she croched the boots.

Aren't they so cute.

I am not sure but I think that Ati has croched the edge around the top and right hand side border as well.

What a way to start my new book--thank you so much Ati I absolutely love it.

This year will be very interesting indeed.