Sashiko 2

I have finished the second piece of Sashiko embroidery and I am pleased with the outcome.
Well it is not hard to do seeing as the design is already printed on the fabric but believe it or not I think I did half as much unpicking as I did stitching.
I kept seeing stitches that were crooked and so the reverse stitching process would have to happen.
I found working on the dark background harder on my eyes than working on the white one.
Even though Sashiko is just running stitch I didn't find it boring because of the rhythmic movement that I had going.
The only problem now is after 2 weeks of hand stitching my hands (especially my thumbs) are telling me enough is enough.
I'll have a few weeks break ---------and---



----then I will have a look in the UFO box and see what else I can find.

Sashiko

Recently Paula showed on her blog a piece of Sashiko that she had done and this reminded me that I had several pieces that I had purchased at a local craft show about 6 years ago.
Now me being me (and probably you as well) I put them into the cupboard to do later and immediately forgot about them.
They would probably still be there except for Paula.
I finished this in 5 nights while watching TV which is a first for me(stitching and watching TV that is) and I have started the second one.
The top and bottom border lines are straight even though they are looking crooked in the photo--I didn't set them right before I took the photo and I am not going to do it again because you get the idea anyway.
The fabric is white and the thread is navy (duh) oh and don't think I am clever with the stitching because the pattern was printed on the fabric when I got it.





If you want to see the one that Paula did then go here but you will have to read her wonderful story before you get to it.
And by the way if you haven't visited her blog before then you must go and check it out.
She is the most talented lady that I "know"--she will have a go at anything to do with a needle and thread and she writes the most wonderful stories on her blog that will have you rolling on the floor laughing.
This lady can make a story about dirt (and I mean the mud variety) sound like a comedy and you will imagine that you are there at the time it is all happening.
Thanks Paula for bringing a breath of fresh air into my life.

Trades with Anne

Ebony and I have done another swap with Anne in France.
Below are the ATC's that Anne sent to us-the one on the left is mine and the other one is Ebonys.
If you click to enlarge the photo you will see the fine stitching that Anne has done with one strand of thread on the one for me.
I am always amazed at the beautiful work that Anne does.





Below are the cards that we sent to Anne.
Mine is made from a paper serviette and a cut out butterfly and Ebonys has a sticker and lots of glitter--she just loves all that glitter.

Thank you Anne for trading with us again.

I won again

Well I really am on a roll ---I have won another giveaway.
This time it is a wonderful piece of Marylin Huskamp's work and it is in one of my favourite colours--lime green.
The flowers in the centre were hand painted by Marylin and even though you can't see it there are lots of sparkles on the lime green fabric.
The lovely ribbons at the top are to hang it on the wall.



She also included this lovely fabric covered notebook (and some buttons and glitter that I did not take a picture of.)

Thanks Marylin the hanging looks right at home in my craft room.

June Group ATC's swaps

All the Atc's have arrived for the June swap in the small group that I belong to.
We were given a bundle of ribbons to use in whatever way we wanted to.
These are the four cards that I received from the other members and it is amazing that they are all so different.
Top left is Annie's and top right is Carole's

Bottom left is Debbi's and bottom right is Ann's.
If you want to see the one that I sent to them go here.

June Calendar Girls Postcards.

This is the calendar page that was chosen by Sharon for our June swap.

Here is my interpretation which will be off to Neki in the morning.

Seeing as I have been playing with my faux Encaustic technique I decided to give that a go.

The only resemblance to the original picture are the colours but I did enjoy trying to get the colours into position without ruining the ones that were there before,

And here is my card that I received from Jenny which is worked on the embellisher.

Jenny took the original picture into Photoshop and played around with it and came up with this design which she then interpreted on the embellisher.

I love it Jenny.

Fibre Fever June Pages

This is the page I received for June from Wilma in the Fibre Fever group.
The colours are so bright and vibrant I just love them.
I am sure that Wilma has a blog but I cannot find it listed anywhere on the group page.

Here is the page I sent to Lise whose theme is flowers.

I have used a piece that was stitched out on a Bernina embroidery machine that I did when I worked for Bernina about 9 years ago and it has been in a box waiting for the right time for me to use it.

I decided that now was the right time and I echo quilted around the embroidery then added some antique braid around the border to finish it off.

I hope Lise likes it.

Ebony's Trades

I am a bit late in posting these on my blog but here goes anyway.
The first ATC was from Val who enclosed this one for Ebony in the parcel that she sent to me.
It is beautiful Val and Ebony loves it.





The next one is from Claudia who is about the same age as Ebony and she does beautiful stitching--just look at the blanked stitch edge on this.
Ebony thinks that Claudia is very clever and so do I.




This is the one that Ebony sent to Claudia--no stitching on this as she is a bit off stitching at present--more into paper art stuff.
The background is a piece of scrapbook paper and she has embellished it using some of the lovely pieces that people keep sending her.

She is one happy girl

Somethings are Meant to Last and Others Aren't

Today is our Wedding Anniversary---47 years--yikes---and they said it wouldn't last.
Well we sure showed those doubters didn't we?
One of our wedding presents was a carving set with bone handles.
I thought that I would show you what it looks like today.
The handles are broken--maybe that is from all the carving that I did on those wonderful roast dinners that I cooked :-}
I haven't used them in years but I can't bring myselt to throw them out--well not yet anyway.
At least the marriage outlasted the handles.




Now all we have to do is make it last for another 3 years and we can celebrate our Golden Wedding Anniversary.

Fabric page swap

Recently Val asked me if I wanted to do a fabric page swap with her and of course I said yes.
Val wanted a page that was 5" x 5" of any theme and she would make me a 6" x 6" butterfly page.
I received Val's page last week (it only took 4 days from the UK) but I wanted to wait until she received mine before I blogged about them.
Val has used some hand dyed fabric as the background and she has free machine embroidered the butterfly and flower on it (click on the picture to get a better look at her fabulous stitching).
What a beautiful page Val and your butterfly is perfect.





This is the page that I sent to Val.
Most of the laces on this are antique except for the two motif ones and the piece of wide ribbon on the left side is also antique.
The lovely wide piece of lace on the right side came off an old wedding dress remnant that someone gave me.

This was a great swap and we will do another in the not too distant future.

ATC's for June swap

This is how I finished off my ATC's for our small group swap.
I have shown you the ribbons previously that I had received and how I have made them into a background fabric.
I felt that the only way to embellish them was with a flower which looks white in the photo but it is in reality a very pale mauve.
I added a pale mauve flower in the centre and held them all together with a brad.
I mailed them out last week and Debbi let me know that she had received hers today and was quite amused because she had a similar idea as to how to do hers.
If you go to her blog here you can see how she made hers.
Wouldn't it be funny if we all did the same?

More Faux Encaustic

A few posts back I showed you the Faux Encaustic samples that I did at our Paper Arts Group.
Whenever we learn new techniques we then use it to make ATC's to swap at the next meeting.
Here are some that I did over the weekend but this time I was able to get more design-pattern-movement- call it what you want but I was able to create better scene type things.
Instead of putting the crayon on the "foil covered iron" and then plonking the iron onto the cardstock like I was shown in the demo-------
I put the crayon onto the "foil covered iron" and then turned the iron up so that the bottom plate was facing upwards and then I moved the card over the iron which allowed me to see where the colour was going.
I love the top middle one because I can see a house in the distance (no I haven't been drinking)-- and in the middle one on the bottom row in the pink section at the back I can see Leonardo da Vinci
Can you see anything hidden in them.
(If you click on the picture it will enlarge it so you can see a bigger view.)

I have made 14 of them and they will be swapped on Tuesday at our next meeting.

Fabric Manipulation

Yesterday at the Guild our Creative Embroidery group had a session on fabric Manipulation using pleats -tucks-crinkling and a lot of other things as well.
I decided to do crinkling (even though I had done it before) because I was too lazy to do all the measuring and stitching involved with the other techniques.
I had a lovely piece of hand dyed silk that I had purchased from the Thread Studio years ago
that was from Colourstreams-the colour is Marakesh but I don't think this is available anymore.
I have silk threads and silk ribbon in the same colourway and these are still available.
The technique was from a book called Texture with Textiles by Linda F McGhee.
I'm not sure what I will use it for but it will have stitching on it.





Don't you just love those colours.

The Quilt

Well here it is- the "Australian Wildflowers" quilt.
I apologise for the bad photo angle but I had to climb up a tall ladder to be able to take the photo but you get the idea.
The first small border was from a piece of hand dyed fabric that a member had which when cut in strips allowed us to produce the lovely shaded effect that we achieved.
When I was doing the second larger border I goofed up real good.
I was supposed to do the side strips first -but-moving along in my merry old way I started with the top--duh.
When I realised my mistake (with the help of a friend) I realised that I didn't have enough fabric to cut another strip and we didn't want to have a join in the border so we came up with the idea of putting in a corner block.
I would like to say that I knew what I was doing and it was planned that way but I would be lying and what the heck it has turned out ok in the end.
We finished it off with a dark green binding.
We are all very pleased at how it has turned out and I think it will be a great money raised for the Embroiderers Guild.

Well done everybody.

Base Fabric for June ATC's

Several posts ago I showed you the bundle of ribbons that Annie had sent me to use in my June ATC's.
Well I have made the base for them and here it is--well one of them anyway.
I had thought of several ways to use the ribbon but in the end decided on this technique.
I chopped the ribbon up and placed it between sheets of Solvy and stitched like crazy and here is the result.
You are now going to have to wait to see what I have done---they are finished but I'm not showing you yet.

Several people had suggested doing embroidery with the ribbons i.e French knots etc but unfortunately it was not that sort of ribbon.

It was more like a stiff paper ribbon and was not very flexible so in my mind it needed to be made into a base fabric.

Come back soon to see what I have done.