BLOG 465

Blog 465

I am still waiting for the bias tape to arrive before I can go any further with the Poinsettia wall hanging project but, just for the record, here is the book and project which inspired me. And it is so important to acknowledge where inspiration has come from. I have witnessed many occasions when some of my own patterns or methods has been passed off as someone else’s without any acknowledgement!

 

             Book

 

              Inspiration

 

 

Following the refurbishment of my play room, I decided to go in there and just, well, play! I have a new friend in there in the form a Calor gas stove and I love it! I call it Flash because that’s what happens when it is turned on and it causes me to have many more hot flashes than I normally do! But I am not complaining. Flash and I are all set to have a wonderful autumn and winter in there.

                Flash

 

 

I have a huge glass-topped light box in the room so to start, I brought out my box of sheers and donned my respirator and started to use my soldering iron. I had no particular aim in sight, just a wish to see how I could use sheers to create fabric.

              Sheers

 

                Respirator

 

 

Ideally, cutting with a soldering iron needs to be done against a metal template. I have precious few metal ones apart from an elaborate heart wall decoration so I used a section of it and cut out several strings of flowers in various colours. I just wanted to see what they looked like together and to see what happened when they were over-lapped.

                 Metal template

 

             Flowers

 

Then I wondered if I could free-cut flowers? And the answer turned out to be … not very well! I turned round to pin them on my design wall as I worked on more and that was when I saw the art cushion that I needed to finish. I asked myself ‘what if…?’ and before I knew it I had finished the cushion front. I had intended to silhouette some grasses or cow parsley over the top but shaded flowers worked much better. This was a just-by-chance solution to an unresolved problem! Here is the sequence.

                  

          Free-cut flowers

 

              What if?

 

                 Perhaps

 

               Overlaid design

 

             Completed front

 

 

And finally, someone was explaining recently how she had been on a workshop to learn how to use a darning stitch to create a landscape. I was quite intrigued by this and came straight home to try one small enough to make one of my luggage labels. Here it is in progress. It’s not at all easy but small enough to handle and take with me when I go places to sew. I will complete the background and then silhouette a tree in the foreground to cover all the mistakes! I won’t be doing another one!

              Darning a scene

 

 

BOG 464

Blog 464

And finally, my room is finished! The design wall has been recovered with thick sheets of polystyrene and a flannelette sheet has been stapled over the top. I won’t be bending lots of pins any more as I used to with the old cork wall. And then, like an artist finding it difficult to start on a new canvas, the bare space was suddenly unnerving so I quickly pinned on some work in progress so it wasn’t so threatening!

 

             Design wall

 

                In progress

 

I have had a busy week with one thing or another so progress on the Xmas wall hanging has been slow until today! I pinned the poinsettia fabric to the RS and sewed all around the petals where I wanted this fabric to go. I also mistakenly sewed round one of the under petals which I want to be a darker red. This wasn’t a problem really as it was just a case of taking out the offending stitches!

               Poinsettia fabric

 

 

 

         Defining the petals

 

 

           Defined WS

 

 

            Defined RS

 

             Corrected and trimmed

 

I used the reverse of the chosen fabric for the under petals so that I didn’t introduce another patterned fabric into the design. I chose to use a free motion method rather than a conventional foot for sewing the shapes. This meant that I didn’t have to rotate and unsettle the background fabric at all during sewing.

                Under petals

 

               Reverse of fabric

 

 

 

             Under petals

 

 

Here is the sequence in building up the rest of the picture. I used a sheer fabric with sparkly stars on for the background and another shiny fabric for the centre of the flower. Note also that I sewed along all the extra lines of the pattern where they radiate from the aura of the candle. This is now ready for the black biased binding.

 

              Aura

 

            Ledge

 

            Background

 

 

        Extra lines

 

 

              Completed picture

 

 

 

                                                    

BLOG 463

Blog 463

And didn’t it rain?!! Rain is always good for me as it means I can’t get out in the garden. It’s that time of year when I am supposed to be cutting back all the shrubs, knowing that whatever I do this end of the year will benefit the garden in the spring! There is still a lot of colour in the garden and plenty of leaves on the trees so I don’t want to be too premature in my savagery of the borders!

 

There is just the re-vamping of my design wall left to do before my playroom is totally finished, but when the polystyrene sheets arrive next week, I should be up and running. I can’t wait to see what creative ideas surface!

In the meantime, I have been content to do some more labels for my collection; these are small enough to start and finish in no time at all. The first is a left over motif from Tessa’s quilt that I made (a patch for each day of her breast cancer experience). This is followed by a little cross stitch design made by my sister Gwyneth for a greetings card. I always felt it was too good to send so I kept it and now it has found its place in my collection.

           Tessa’s patch

 

          Gwyn’s cross stitch

 

 

 

When I went to art classes, so many years ago, one teacher included many different techniques during the course. I came across some silk painting that I tried, not very successfully it has to be said, and I selected a small portion for another label.

          Silk painting

 

 

The final label is a technique that I was shown with ribbon and decorative machine stitches. Once sewn, the ribbon is stitched by hand at intervals to produce a textural surface. (I don’t want to do this again as I didn’t enjoy it!) The labels are waiting for the edges to be satin stitched.

 

             Ribbon and stitch

 

 

 

         Textured surface

 

PROJECT: Christmas Candle wall hanging Part 1

 

The pattern is taken from a Christmas book by That Patchwork Place and I am doing it as a project with my local craft group. This will be another of my Xmas gifts this year. I have outlined this method before so here it is in a nutshell.

*Trace the pattern onto the WS of the foundation fabric (calico).

*Start anywhere on the design and apply the fabrics RS up onto the RS (unmarked) of the foundation as follows:-

Place each fabric in turn RS up on the unmarked side. Pin in place and sew (by hand or by machine) along the marked lines ALL ROUND the shape where this fabric will stay. Trim away any excess fabric on the outside of the stitched line on the RS.

*Build up the design in this way to cover all of the foundation fabric.

              Pattern

 

               Pattern onto fabric

 

            Placed

 

 

            Pinned

 

 

             Sewn WS

 

 

           Sewn RS

 

 

 

              Trimmed

 

             Corners

 

              Flame 1?

 

            Flame 2?

 

 

              Work in progress

 

 

 

 

 

BLOG 462

Blog 462

 

And finally, the Serviette Box is finished! This is going to make a lovely gift for a friend, especially with the robin serviettes that I have chosen to go inside.

 

 

              Serviette box

 

 

            Serviettes

 

And another ‘and finally’, my playroom is up and functioning, hurrah! This is such a comfort to me as I am at my most prolific at this time of year. I have yet to get started mind you but I have no excuse not to now! I also have a beast of a heater now and will not need to wear a coat when I go in there during the winter months!!

      

           Playroom 1

 

 

              Playroom 2

 

At our fortnightly get-togethers at Suzettes, my project has been to sew flowers onto a dissolving medium. As I have quite a collection now I thought it was about time that I did something with them. I dissolved away the medium with hot water and here are the results. This time they are drying on a plastic cutting board and NOT on a paper towel like last time because the paper stuck to the flower and took ages to remove! I left them to dry in the sun on a window sill. I am very pleased with them so far and will probably make another bell-pull type wall strip to hang on the wall when the others are finished. I particularly like the way the shear fabrics add a blush of colour beyond the edges of the thread work.

             Dissolved

 

 

          Drying

 

 

           Foxglove

 

 

              Sunflower

 

              Echinacea

 

 

 

            Nasturtium

 

 

                                                                                                    

           Hyacinth

 

            Potential setting