Feathers into heather.

I was really hoping feather stitch would turn up in March,(aquamarine in the jewel of the month) as it does make lovely seaweed!!! However here we are in February which is amethyst. In anticipation of amethyst I had made a piece of glue gun jewel intending to use it as a background and my first thought was to do ostritch feathers, something really OTT but I just couldn't get it to have the softness I wanted and it just looked more like fern. So fern's it would have to be and then the heather started to grow. So here we are.

8p dusters

This is the packet of dusters I bought for 99p(about $2 I think),see bird below.
These are some dyed pieces using silk dyes.



and this is a cover for my notebook, (Yes, I now have a notebook, more of a scribble book really but it's a start)
I can take no credit of the lovely shading on these, that came from a piece of rainbow dyed sheer fabric I have been hoarding.




It was really an excercise for me to practice "vermicelli" stitch on the machine. It is getting better but there are still a lot of those nasty little pointy bits.

Happy Birthday

Well here we are one year on. I followed what I believe is a tradition and looked back to the beginning. It has been an amazing year and I have come across many people who have inspired and excited my interest and led me off into new worlds. I feel all the sites in the side bar have given me some way of improving. My "Woman of the Year" has to be Sharon Boggon who has taught me so much through her Encrusted CQ class and through her blog In a Minute Ago.It is a delight to be part of Take a Stitch Tuesday.

My main interests at the moment seem to be needle based, when I started my blog Altered Books were my main focus and looking back has made me want to do some more. I particularly would like to try and combine the needle arts with the paper arts.

There are so many people who are so generous with their time and talents. As my birthday present I would like to share two I have recently "met". The first one is Dotee who has written a tutorial for a little frienship doll. I made this one and it has already gone to a very special friend.


The second link is where I made my birthday "card". ZEfrank has all kinds of interactive "toys" on his site this is my favourite "The Scribbler". I am so excited by it as I feel it has great potential as a design tool for someone like me who does not draw very well. (I am practising!!!)

So there we are, off into another year. My thanks to anyone who has visited and for
all the kind and encouraging comments a special gratitude.

Oh no....

I have accidentally erased lovely and interesting comment, I think her name was Kyla, she has just started Sharon's Encrusted CQ and she has also bought an embellisher. I was going to visit her blog and say hello and chat about these fascinating things. So if you visit again please forgive me and leave a note and I will try not to be so stupid this time.
Photo is from art-e-zine.

Question?

Why do we like the needle arts so much? I think this morning , for me, goes a long way to answer the question. After Sharon's round up I went to my workroom to tidy up a bit, after my marathon tidy a couple of weeks ago I don't want it to let it go just yet, (it will happen I'm sure!!) Tidying finished I picked up a piece of cheap duster I had painted. I bought 12 in a packet in the 99p shop because they looked like felt I thought they might be worth experimenting on. So this morning I reached for my new felting needle and I started what was intended to be a sort of landscape. I took the piece to the machine to add a bit of texture with free machine stitching and suddenly there was this bird. I ditched the landscape and went with the bird and here he is, sort of the last swallow. There are two scans because I suddenly realised that the scanner light had caught the bead of his eye and just to see what would happen I re-scanned it the other way round and sure enough it gives him a different expression. Marvellous!

"Sunday,sweet Sunday.....

......with nothing to do" goes the song. On the other hand for anybody taking part in TAST it is get up early, make the tea and sit down to Sharon's wonderful roundup of the weeks doings. It all just gets better and better, looking through the Flickr site is a real feast for the eyes. I am finding that one of the bonuses of the roundup is that as you wander through the blogs other peoples favourites catch your eye and you wander off into other exciting places.

I would like to thank all the people that enjoyed my piece of silliness with the eyelet stitch. Cooking sherry indeed!!!! Great invention!

One of the things I forgot to say that one of the prompts in my thought process (if I can call it that)
toward the eyelet piece was the title of my favourite canvas work book. The Liberated Canvas by Penny Cornell.


My experiment from the Opus exhibition turned into a beach scene, I think it was the way the cream spiral stitched piece stood up like a shell (it get a bit squashed on the scan.) I really liked working with this technique and hopefully will return to it at some time.

Opus school exhibition

Good day yesterday, one of those clear crisp proper winter days, I popped up to London to visit the Opus School exhibition at the Mall Galleries at the bottom of the Mall. There was some wonderful stitching and, the pieces my daughter liked best, great felting. When I visit an exhibition like that part of me thinks "I will never thread a needle again" and then the other part comes rushing nome to try out something that has caught my fancy. Today it was material manipulated with lots of tiny running stitches. Here is what I played with last night. I am quite intrigued with it, it is a bit like scrumbling


I also made a quick visit to the National Portrait Gallery,one of the wonderful things about our museums that, unless it is a special exhibition, entrance is free so you can just pop in whenever you like for as long as you like which means as soon as you feel that "I can't take in anymore" feeling coming on you can leave. I find I now look at portaits with an eye for the textiles which are being represented and marvel at the way painters can convey satins and velvets, lace and rags, and I am always fascinated by the jewels.

Once upon a time........

.......there were three eyelet stitches,they lived on a small piece of canvas. Two of them plodded on, doing what eyelet stitches do, though they often dreamed. The third one was always a bit of a rebel and kept trying to be different which caused him a lot of problems.

Time went by and then one day something amazing happened. They came to the edge of the canvas! The rebel jumped for joy, jumped right of the edge, gave a couple of twirls and turned himself into a butterfly, which he thought was very clever. The second one stretched out in all directions and suddenly found he was round, he rolled away and probably visited TAST people all over the world. The third one stretched out and found that he could fly, he found a place he liked in the sky and became a star which shone happily ever after. THE END.



Don't ask, just indulge an old lady!!!!!!!!!!!

Incidently, now it is February, the birthday stone for this month is amethyst so that is my TAST colour, quite a relief, really, after all that dark red.



Just to prove I am still drawing.

Hmmm eyelet.......

I had a look at pieces of canvas work I have done and eyelet doesn't seem to figure in any of them so we shall see.......

Look what came this morning....

Isn't she beautiful? I just keep marvelling at the delicacy of it. Thank you Marian for making my day.

Knitting back in fashion....

It would appear that there is a renewed interest in knitting over the last couple of years. When I was young I was a great knitter. One time I went to visit my brother we had been there a little while when he leaned over and said "Are you alright?" "Yes, I'm fine " I replied "Why". "Well you've been here ten minutes and you haven't got your knitting out yet, so I thought perhaps you weren't well" !!!
But it was true, I was never without a piece of knitting and Saturday evenings weren't the same if I didn't have a new project.Shawls, baby clothes, a flower power jacket in the 60w, always something on the go. Some years later I knitted an aran sweater for my daughter in a weekend and had tennis(knitters)elbow as a result and since then have done vey little.

I was just browsing the V&A site, (the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is a wonderful treasure house of fine arts and fashion.)and I came across this section in which they have published free patterns from the 1940's. Who remembers socks knitted on 4 (often slightly rusty)steel needles?

My picture is from "THe Needlewoman" at a slightly later date that the patterns at the V&A.

Carried away by Chevron...

This weeks TAST stitch is Chevron Stitch, I really had to sit down with this one. When I came to try and draw it, being left handed and having to turn everything round and couldn't work out how to start.


I went to bed quite liking the ferris wheel idea but was thought it would end up a bit like week 1 herringbone. I then started to think Chevron,heraldry, middle ages, a bit more drawing and I am thinking a grille in a church and from there somehow lept to a church chest, garnets, treasure chest.So here we are.

I think I got a bit carried away but everything is chevron stitch except for the straight stitch on the righthand side of the chest and the three little stitches holding the lock in place.


I like this stitch a lot and will definitely play with it some more sometime.

Thank you to everyone who liked the picture my cats, bless them they are getting old, like me, my x-ray showed old age, I didn't know it showed on the inside as well!!!

Money matters....

I see we can expect a new line of TV advertising. Persuming that they lift the ban on Gambling advertisements I am sure it will be swiftly followed by a new line from the loan companies....."It's so easy to pay your gambling debts, just give us your house and all your money for the rest of your life".............

Guild day

Embroider's Guild today, talk was "20th century collectables" , just made me wish I had hung onto even more "stuff" than I have. Paticularly the Woolworths china we had when we were first married which now, apparently, fetches £10 a plate!!! Told anyone who'd listen about TAST, stitched a bit,admired other people's expertise, set the world to rights, laughed a lot,acquired some knowledge from generous members (tips on mounting fabric) in other words what I've come to expect of a day at the guild!!
Wonderful.
I think this is the time to reveal my difficult working conditions.

I bought the basket so that I could bring things from my workroom to the living room, well, it's a bit nippy down there in the winter and I do like to spend time with my husband. Electra, my old lady cat decided that this was just what she had been waiting for and immediately claimed it as her own. She will only sleep in it if it contains something I may need to work with, if I empty it she refuses to sit in it. Thomas just likes to sit on my knee period. So the minute I pick up a needle he knows I am going to be there for some time and he arrives.
This photograph is filed under "quailty time"

A piece of felting and a surprise...

I love it when this happens. This weeks stitch for TAST is Open Cretan Stitch, a stitch I have attempted before but not used much. Still being a good girl I went to my notebook,

I really do find this helps me think out exactly how the stitch is constructed because when you are drawing what's on the surface you have to think what is happening behind.

Because of the happy accident of the needle felting kit having come in sort of garnet colours I wanted to use it for the background. So I made a background which I am now wishing I had photographed before I started stitching. It was quite abstract and sort of nebula-ish nebula (I love that picture).

I started with the open cretan stich following the lines in the background. Suddenly I looked down and what could I see



A SHOE, definitely the shape of a shoe. So driven by the piece I carried on and so here is The Red Shoe.

Look what we've got.......

This will confuse the geraniums!
Incidentally if I can take a photograph and send it winging round the world in five minutes, why does it take over four weeks for my x-rays (which the operator boasted were going straight on computer, and I saw them) to reach my doctors which is half a mile down the road????????????

I'm hooked......

or should that be "punched". Here is my first experiment with my new needle punch, it is only 3inches square (about 8cms)

and I only broke one needle!!!!

Had this little dangly thing hanging in my workroom for ages decided my felty thing finished it off quite nicely. So here's my felty, dangly, thingy

Excitement

I have just received a needle punch kit from those nice people ay crafty notions (ordered it late Friday arrived today) the funny thing is that I left them to chose the colours for the fibres and look what came, garnet, or as near as ..... Will have to go and play as two more "garnet" TASTs to do. Would be great to produce a background for whatever is the next stitch.

getting detached

This weeks TAST stitch is Detached Buttonhole Stitch, I started by drawing the stitch again, i must say I really find this useful in thinking out the actual mechanics of the sketch.


As you can see there is a sketch of what is supposed to be a pile of jewels (still continuing my January garnet theme) This I thought might be a good idea using what is usually a scattered stich as a filler. I was wrong! Well for this idea anyway,I couldn't represent the facets well enough but I did like the way, on felt , it made a lovely cushioned stitch which I'm sure I can use somewhere, sometime.


So I abandoned it and went to bed to think again, I did a bit more research on garnets and found that one type is found almost as though the had been scattered on rock. This gave me the opportunity to go to my newly tidied work room and make some rock with some bondaweb, silk handkerchief and some silk tops.


I attached the beads with detatched chain and then made some more "garnets" with cotton perle using an idea I had found in "Stitch Magic" by Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn. One of their suggestions for experimenting with a stich is to pile one on top of the other, I found this makes very acceptable "beads".

Question: When does detatched chain become fly stitch? :-)

M&S goes green.......

From today's Guardian online "The programme, to be announced today, promises to "change beyond recognition" the way M&S operates. Initiatives within the 100-point plan include transforming the 460-strong chain into a carbon neutral operation; banning group waste from landfill dumps; using unsold out-of-date food as a source of recyclable energy and making polyester clothing from recycled plastic bottles."
Perhaps to this they can add "noise pollution" and stop playing music in their stores!!!!!

Creativity everywhere...

I subscribe to a site called damn cool pics. He finds pictures which make me a laugh or just amaze me. Last December he published pictures of designs made in coffee. This morning one of my bloglines sights gave me this great link to latte art I was able to share the photos with my daughter who is a great coffee lover (double machiato). Unfortunately I can't remember where I found the link so if it was you please contact me so I can say thank you and I thank "tonx" for these great photographs. I'm a tea girl myself, I love the smell of coffee but don't like the taste but I can see how appealing these would be if set in front of you..

It's that time of year.....and the Playoffs.

First thing this morning I was down at B&Q buying storage boxes for my workroom, I am bursting at the seams and can't move. In front of me in the queue was another lady doing the same thing. She looked at me smiled and said "It's that time of year"

Checking my bloglines this evening I found that Gerry at http://sewing-southpaw.blogspot.com/ was similarly occupied.

I have found that the only way that works for me is to thow it on the floor. Then you have to pick it up. I stopped to make our evening meal at 5.30pm and I dread going back in the morning. One wall is done but there are still three more to go.

I have a slight problem is that in the morning I have to catch up with my NFL Football. I have been a fan for quite a few years. I can't catch a ball to save my life therefore the first time I saw someone throw a Hail Mary pass, which was caught, I was hooked, to me it was pure magic, how could that guy throw the ball to somewhere that someone was going to be.!!!! But the season is so short (in England soccer seems to go on all year) and the timings so difficult. I stay up for the Superbowl but I can't make that kind of committment every weekend so I have to watch the repeats the next day. So if I want to know how New Orleans got on my room will have to wait!
I claim allegiance to the Washington Redskins, they were hot stuff the year I started watching but as they haven't done too well of late so I tend to support whichever team appeals to me for whatever reason. This year I have been rooting for New Orleans because I figure that the people there could do with something to celebrate my other teams are the Seahawks and of course the Pats.

Butterfly Heaven

That is the title in my mind for my TAST buttonhole stitch. As I have mentioned the challenge gets to us on Monday evening so on Tuesday night I went to bed thinking of how you do buttonhole stitch and how I could experiment. For some reason Wings came into my head, and then flying cubes. True to my new self (well it is only the second week of January, give me time to revert...) I started trying to draw what was in my head and by whatever magical process it is that goes on suddenly I knew what I wanted to do.







The scan is not A1 I may try to replace it with a photograph tomorrow.

So what have I learned about buttonhole stitch, I think the main thing is that this is not a stitch for cutting corners. It needs to be coaxed. For the caterpillars I worked them in buttonhole and then wrapped them with the same yarn. The jewel under the ring is held down with buttonhole stitch which I am telling you because otherwise you wouldn't know I had been so thorough!!!!

A puzzlement....

Can someone please put me staight on the correct blog etiquette when you wish to acknowledge a complement or answer a question raised on your blog comments. Do you
a) reply on your own blog (if the person does not re-visit they won't know you responded)
b) go to their blog and leave a comment (then it looks, to other visitors, as though you're ignoring it)
c) or both (which is time consuming but probably the right way) Any help would be appreciated.

Dumbing Down

Isn't it amazing that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) which used to be a by word for quality in broadcasting can devote hours of prime time television to so called"reality" shows and yet it schedules a the 650th edition of "the Sky at Night" at 1.55am. Patrick Moore is one of our National Treasures,he has been presenting the show for nearly 50 years, a record by anyones standards. Come on Beeb you can show a little more respect than this.

Back to class

I cannot believe that the first week of January is gone, Christmas seems weeks ago. Time is a very peculiar thing, goes to fast when you have things to enjoy and stands still when you want it to pass quickly.

Sharon has done her first round up of the TAST samples.( amazing woman how does she cram it all in?) I have been following Flickr and my bloglines sites all week and I am just bowled over by the variety and and the expertise. Some are so inventive and others exquisite in their neatness(a quality I lack). I don't want time to go any quicker but I am dying to see what's next.

Apart from neatness one of the things I'm bad at is retaining instructions. I have been making the same pudding on Christmas day for about 35 years but I still have to get the recipe book out. My usual trick is one I've done something I think I have it licked so I launch in and do it again and invariably leave out some crucial step, this applies to cooking, creative techniques, whatever.... It is therefore with relief that I can turn to the excellent note from Sharon as I start my next CQ block.
I bought the fairy fabric at the Knitting and Stitching show last year. The reason for the rather odd shape of the fairy pictures is that I wanted the whole "fairy ring"

Now to those notes...ah yes!...seam embellishment....how about a nice herringbone....................

I would like to say thank you to the people who have taken the time to comment on my stitching. Elizabet asked how I did the curves and I found I didn't really know. I made the sketch as I had this image of a looped ribbon and then I started the stitch in the usual way and just let the design dictate where the needle should go.

I love it when whatever I'm working on takes over. It is almost like it is saying "you could do this and then you could do that" and I run to find the bits I need to do its bidding. I had that experience a lot when taking Sharon's Encrusted CQ class and it was really exciting.

One of the things I have found so far with TAST is that it has kick started me into other things and my head is buzzing with things I want to try.

Amy has some beautiful postcards on her blog which is one of the things I have been trying out.

Blogger doesn't seem to want to do pictures at the moment so I will add later.

We're off...

Well here we are the long awaited day has arrived. Take a Stitch Tuesday started late Monday evening in the UK, which is going to be great because then I can go to bed and think about the stitch I think what Sharon has started is something amazing, especially after all her technical problems over Christmas.

It may not look much but this is a "design" folks.It is , I think, the first time I have ever plannesd sowething instead of just diving straight in.



I wanted something that wasn't the usual straight herringbone, and this is the result of my doodlings.I am also going to try a bit of colour exploration using the colour of the gem associated with the month. Therefore January is a garnet. Usually dark red a beloved by the Victorians they are also found in amber and rarest of all lime green.

Here is my stitched "design"




Thank I remebered what Sharon said about working over the stitches, this is the result.



I really enjoyed producing something so different for me.

Happy New Year

Christmas come and gone, and here we are on the brink of another New Year. Strange time, looking back, looking forward. I would like to wish all my friends old and new a year of contentment, fullfillment, achievement and all the other ...ments they wish themselves.

I have spent some of the time during the holiday making fabric postcards. The idea was that I would try out all those techniques that I have been promising myself to try.


This one is using a nappy liner as a background (the scan does not do the texture justice) and this one is using a table napkin as a background.


I do hope that Sharon manages to sort her spammer problems before Tuesday, (who are these sad people?)

Someone just can't wait.......

Electra seems to think that the soul purpose me spending a day decorating the Christmas tree was so that she, when bored, could dismantle it!!! This is something she hasn't done since she was quite a young cat and as she is now an elderly lady. It is lovely to see she still has a sense of mischief.


I see that Sharon says she is deliberating what stitch to use to start TAST. Not starting at the very beginning then........

I'm so thrilled.....

I have just heard that my sister has a painting on exhibition in the Lowry gallery in Manchester. It was a competion with Football as the theme called One Love.It was to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Lowry winning a competion with "Off to the Match"? My sisters painting is called Who Me.....?, the gallery link is link is and the painting can be found in the shop under Art for Sale.

There were 900 entries and only 100 were selected for exhibition, I am so proud and thrilled for her.