BLOG 109

My husband has been away on the family farm in the Forest of Dean, helping out with TB testing. So you would have thought that having the place to myself from Monday to Friday would have generated a great body of work, or at least given me the time to think up and start a new project. Well it didn’t, but I have to say that the garden is looking a lot better now. The weather was so lovely that it was too good an opportunity to miss, to be out there fighting the constant battle with the weeds.

But that’s just the thing about creativity; you don’t know when it is going to strike or what sets it off. And I won’t beat myself up over this lost opportunity and just bide my time until my creative juices are ready to flow again. Fortunately, in my chaotic world, there is always something hanging around to be finished and that is what I will concentrate on until I am certain where I want to go with my fabric endeavours.

Proddy Rug

There has been a little progress on this project. I’m not sure whether this is my thing really but I will persevere with it in the spirit of ‘I’ve started so I will finish’ and, because it has been designed for a specific place, it is a means to an end. I won’t be doing a stair carpet however!! The border is turned onto the front so that the first strands go through all the layers and give a neat finished edge. Ignore the green design on the pics below; this was printed on the original sack and isn’t part of my design.

 

                             Outline and border

 

                                      More detail

 

                            Infill

Memorabilia box

The other project that I am keen to finish is my very own memorabilia box. I need to complete the decorative top so how do I go about it?

Firstly I sort through my supplies and pull out anything that could possibly be of use, from fabrics to threads to sheers to yarns. I place them alongside the box, so I can see straight away if they are right or not. 

 

                      Palette for decorative top

I don’t know about you but I have lots of narrow pieces of batting which I hang onto so I can use them to make wider pieces and therefore cut down on waste. I want to place batting behind the stitchery so I need to join 2 strips together.

To do this, I over-lap the edges of 2 long pieces of batting and cut through the 2 layers using a rotary cutter and ruler. This produces 2 perfectly straight edges which I then butt up together. I use the widest zigzag stitch on my machine to sew and hold the edges together securely.

 

                             Zigzagged edges

The sewing sequence for my decorative lid

 1 I placed a painted silk background onto medium vylene and batting. With a water-erasable marker, I defined the size of the rectangle I want to fill.

 

                                      Background

2 I sewed a few random rows of free-motion stitches to hold the layers together.

 

                                  Random lines

 3 I added pieces of sheer fabrics to start building up a richness of colour.

 

                                         Sheers

  4 I sewed straight lines of decorative stitches across the layers to define a grid.

 

 

                                Decorative grid

 5 I used different free-motion stitches and threads to fill in the spaces.

 

                                   Infill stitches

 6 I added borders.

 

                                    Borders

 6 I stuck the lid in place and I now have my own memorabilia box!

 

                                        My box