TAST rolls on.......

I took the opporunity to have a quick five minute on my new toy to make the background for this weeks TAST> Buttonhole wheels.

A great texture adding stitch, I love Sharon's examples especially the last one.

Smocking........

Saturday was Embroiderer's Guild Day, always exciting, but I could have done without the added excitement of a puncture!! It was a Smocking workshop with Heather Spaulding, I arrived three quarters of an hour late thinking that I would never catch up. What a lovely day. Heather was a very good teacher and had prepared packs for us to make a bag. There was a piece already pleated on one of those marvellous (but expensive) little machines. Throughout the day she took us in twos and threes to explain the stitches and to make sure we had understood. Unfortunately in my panic I went without my camera so I can't show you Heather's wonderful examples, but she had flower panels and abstract pieces and the one that I really lusted after was a chatelaine for her sewing bits made in back organza and gold thread.
This is the front for my bag (which I finished off last night).
We just used a couple of stitch yesterday but I found this site which has lots of stitches and clear instructions.
I found the whole day really satisfying, there were many shared stories of domestic science classes at school and my main memories connected with smocking are the fronts of my dresses which my mother made for me, which were so heavily worked they felt like body armour.
Now I just have to pluck up courage to cut the tacking threads and then to find time to turn it into a bag.

A question of gender?..............

Thanks to Sue Bleiweiss for her generously shared instructions and inspired by the many wonderful ones I have seen on my travels through the blogs I have made my first padfolio, using my favourite dusters and emulsion and ink techniques shared by Purple Missus




Flushed with pride I showed it to my husband who instantly said "it fold the wrong way". I assured him I had it right and showed him pictures, he still insisted it folded the wrong way. When my son came to visit I showed it to him and he agreed with my husband that it folded the wrong way. We came to the conclusion that it is a male/female thing akin to double breasted suits and buttons which go the opposite way round. Strange. So now I will know should I ever make one for a male I must remember to make it fold the other way.

No, now I'm really in love......

Today I became the proud owner of a Pfaff 350p Embellisher. I have dreamed of owning an embellisher for some time now but on Saturday at the EG SE area day I watched a demonstration by the lovely lady from Winifred Cottage and that was it, I decided the time had come. Today we went to Sewmaster in Guildford and

I haven't had much time to play but this is what I have done so far.

This was the "wrong" side a piece that I had done by hand (see the postacard in the previous post). I was amazed how quickly it was smoothed out and how much more robust it became.



This was the raw ingredients of my first experiment. A cheap duster and some bit pulled out of a cheap scarf.

This is the resulat and is destined to be the background for this weeks TAST, buttonhole wheels.

This is two threads joined together, making a whole new piece which could be added to something else.

This is just pieces or organza from my bits bag.

Such fun!! The Pfaff has no foot lever so I keep finding myself reaching behind to lower the foot with no result. The other habit thing is trying to cut off the thread when you have finished.

I love it, I will try not to bore you to death as I get to grips with it.

New toy..

These are the results of my two experiments with fuseFX which I bought yesterday
This one is a postcard which I had made

and this one is part of a UFO which now has a new lease of life. I used the fuseFX to trap threads and then ironed it onto the UFO.

I am in love........

Today was the meeting for the South East Branches of the Embroiderers Guild. What a loely day, which re-affirmed my belief that women who ply the needle(of whatever shape) have something special going for them. I loooked with pride at the diversity of our stand and the thought came to me that all these wonderful things came from the simple action of threading a needle(or not so simple depending on your age!!!)


The people I met all had a joie de vivre and humour about them. Such a delight from our usually negative thinking every day world.(I hold up my hand!!)

The theme of the exhibition was Festivals and we had everything from flower festivals through the Festival of Britain to Glastonbuty (which was the winner of the displays. Well done Worthing branch).

Branches were celebrating their 25th and 30th anniversarys (we are mere striplings at 7 years) Silver and pearl, lovely displays.

Now why, you are asking, is she in love. Well apart from the Guild branches there were Stallholders. Yes, I spent money. Something I have been coveting ever since I saw one is a Bobbin Saver. (I am using this link because it is the best picture I could find I bought mine from Winifred Studo) If these means an end to those masses of wasted thread it is a treasure.

The other thing I found was on my third visit of the day to those awfully nice people of Art Van Go. I as just paying for some bits and bobs when I spotted fuse FX I wish I ahd bought more than one packet as I am sure it is going to be a favourite. I will have to wait until daylight tomorrow to photograph (how I miss my scanner) my first impatient try outs of this wonderful Stuff.

I leave you with just a fraction of the wonderful "squares" wall which just show what you can do when you thread a needle.



I

Two for the price of.....

I really am treading water on TAST at the moment, because summer's here (somewhere) I have been playing more golf than normal so the days have been flying by. (The only thing I don't like about golf is the time it takes) I have also still in the doldrums with anything I try to create. So here are my Arrow stitch and Sheaf stitch, perhaps next weeks promised difficult stitch will get me motivated again. I still don't have my scanner working, never realised how much I used it.

Flying by....

Time and the Tour de France..... I enjoyed yesterday morning in the sunshine waiting for the Tour de France to whizz by.


This was the road near us yesterday, it had a real carnival atmosphere with chairs on the pavement and early morning "brunch" being served and people airing their knowledge of the significance of the "Yellow jersey" and words like "peleton"

The support procession was quite good but the actual race went by in a flash of brightly coloured lycra. I decided to watch instead of photograph so this is all I took.


And so to TAST... this is my bullion stitch, it is done in a Stef Francis thread on a needle felted background.

they are quite tiny and in the continued absence of my scanner the photograph will have to do, it's not too bad if you click on the image.

Half way through...

and Half a Chevron. It is amazing how quickly the 26 weeks of TAST have slid by.


I like this stitch, it has a good flow it.

EG yesterday and a talk from Kathleen Laurel Sage, she does not appear to have a web site but her work is often featured in Stitch. She showed us beautiful panels,made out of layers of organza, stitched mainly with a flower motif and then cut away. She also gave us a slide show of her equisite vases, again made out of organza. She is a very entertaining speaker so it was a very enjoyable day.