STORM AT SEA.

Well here we are , another new year, and lots and
lots of sewing to look forward to.
I thought I might tell you about my design process for making something new,



Quite often I will have a rough idea, and while I am asleep an idea will pop into my head and it will haunt me every night and I will go through every detail  in my sleep, and the only way to break this cycle is to start making the thing

And this is my latest thing, its a fabric book about the waves in a storm at sea, clearly in my head it is four inches wide and twelve inches deep, so all stitching is teenyweeny,  I have travelled around my sewing room picking bits and bobs and some indigo dyed stuff and scraps and beads and sequins and beautiful threads until I have assembled a basket of stuff [a technical term] and off I go.......

lots of snipping and layering, does it look like waves?
.........needs sequins doesn't it,
I have an aweful lot of other work to finish this year, and here I am on another project....

I am hoping these Chinese knots sort of look like bubbles--sea foam- I will add glass beads, too I think and waaaay more thread.

you shall have a fishy....
these are less than an inch long...

Iv made the executive decision to make only two signatures of four sides so that it will be quicker to finish than some of those eighteen page monsters Iv done in the past,
and I need to get it done because new ideas are starting to pop into my head,......

And I really want to make a stitch journal of all the variations of shisha stitching that I keep finding on pinterest,
 And an orangey book,
and some funky clothes..
and fabric beads.
and finish my new York beauty,
 and the david hockney challenge
and some embroidered buttons.
and I quite fancy making a big pocketty bag too..........




ooh and I want to make some of those phillipa Naylor circles too......

seasonal panicking

Its been some time since I last posted but theres a quiete moment between visitors, cooking, and wrapping, so here goes,

been bussily making little pressies for my friends,

learned some new stitchs, that one in the top left.

improved my French knots....NOT.[ still a bit loopy]



had some lovely sewing times at my friends homes,

been playing with dissolvable[ completely addictive]

thankyou so much to everyone who has given me a lovely present, can you see the sequins on these wonderful mittens

I will never lose a bendy tape measure ever again

this lovely card says, stitch me- or put me in your December journal, this will be the 4th year that iv made a journal for December and the first year that I don't have a chest infection.
Again, thank you everybody for your lovely gifts and I hope you like yours, and this year in particular- lets all hope for peace.
I am going to start blogging again and will show you all my stitchy stuff,  bye bye.

HERE WE GO AGAIN

..

 

been trying some new sewing adventures recently one of which is stumpwork, do you like my fish? tiny but soo cute
,
Now, I can be 3D......cool.

the little fishy has decided to be in a much bigger picture, and have more adventures.......

also been playing with the dyes again, with a lot of help from my naughty friends again.

arnt they busy,

changing the subject completely ,went down to Peterborough to visit the make-it show, lots of lovely threads and sewing stuff,and on display was this amazing little allotment garden- all made of tatting, must have taken ages.

I got quite excited when I saw all the freeform crochet,



and the new horizons display of cubes,



and quilts, I liked thi one very much.

and up close, the texture was beautiful,

And then I came across Tamar threads, beautifully died by Katy Choroszewska.

Katies mola work with kantha stitching is the finest I have ever seen, I would love to take her classes but she lives in devon- so, too far for me,but isn't it wonderful. 

Breathtaking..

And this is Katie.

dyes her own fabric too.



look at those stitchs, marvellous...
theres so much sewing I want to do and learn, and the more I do the more I discover more sewing, theres some marvellous stuff out there and I hope Im that good one day, but now its time for bed, so good night dear reader, to dream of threads and needles and little fishes having adventures,.



normal service is resumed

Massive apologies to everone who reads this, Iv only just realised that most of the text disappeared from this post,so iv just edited and added all the text back again, hopefully it makes more sense now, or maybe not, so here we go.

Hello dear reader, well, as usual I have flitted about so much that I haven't blogged as often as I should, most of my flitting was done in the company of Julie makinder, and Wendy snape- who both do more punctual and interesting blogs than me, but anyway, we all recently had a day out and went to the beetroot tree, meeting up with more friends and making more friends, so greetings to Maggi and Linda, good to see you, 

the exhibition was very good, and I particularly liked a piece called- the calm before the storm, but we couldn't take pictures of the exhibits, later on I wondered into the garden and found this lovely rusty man on a motorbike,
it was a beautiful lush secret garden, there was a horse sculpture too ,  but the photos moved down, as Julie has reported  we went on to shop a little, we had a lovely day.

A couple of days later, I went to utoxeter with Julie and Wendy, during the day we looked at the quilts and the embroidery - and did a little shopping[ theres  surprise]there was a beautiful stitched coat on display and the tent makers were there,and I saw this ladies marvellous hair, I want hair hair like that.



later on we found the embroidery exhibits, I was very impressed with this, but the glass has reflected back,

the whole piece was very impressive

these three ladies with their built up skirts were really well executed too

and this beautiful stitching of roof tiles was really amazing

do you like my new book cover for my diary book? the cover was getting battered  and s a kind wendy had thrown some  moda  indigo crossing scraps at me and I had an indigo dyed pillowcase hanging around, so bish  so a lot of kantha stitching aiming for a boro look and- bish bash bosh it was done.

see, I do finish things sometimes, and I added a wooly dangler too.

Apropos of nothing.... did I mention the seascape I started at the first meeting of the textile group- layers of stitch?
cos what do you do when you havnt finishd something?
 Start something else ![obviously]

and oh look, heres  the iron horse in the mysterious garden of the beetroot tree gallery. ,Ihave no idea why the photo moved down here,

and here are two very nice brooches my friend was wearing that I am definitely going to have a go at,,and one last thing ,,,,the tiny stitched dragonfly at the top of this post?
sewed it from a tutorial on pinterest, pretty and effective- and easy- why not have a go?
p.s. please do add a comment- its nice to know theres someone out there.....

they call me mellow yellow........

remember this? a calico pinafore dress having a bit of a swim in a flower vase?
[sunflower yellow by dylon]
 

well, it turned into this
I added the lace and the bow afterwards
,originally they were dyed with the dress but they sucked up so much dye that they were the colour of the rape fields that we are currently surrounded by so I had to paint over them with decolourant
, now pay attention cos this is where it gets complicated,.
 

I then added all the bits and bobs to the frock. 

then I had the wizard idea of making some freezer paper stencils and painting more decolourant onto the frock, giving me ghostly flowers, nice huh?

then I had an even more wizard idea of re-using the stencils and adding more flowers, this time with markels

looking good, im pleased with this, its got lots of pink markel flowers all over it now I intend to add cloth flowers and stitch to it, now normally I leave markels to cure for three days and jobs a goodun, but im not sure how long you can leave decolourant on fabric, so I heat treated the flowers[irond them],and popped the dress into a quick cold wash to get it out....... 

GAAARRRHHHGGGG,
WHERES THE PINK FLOWERS GONE?

OH  BOO HOO HOO,
washed out completely, gonna have to do them again, might use blue this time, and some sort of fabric paint,
I own enough ,time I tried using them, ah well its all an exciting journey isn't it,anyway,
I spotted jill dian izzards fabric books on her facebook  page and got quite excited at her little cuff books, well, a friend gave me a pair of cuffs recently, I was trying to scrounge the whole shirt but she knows me too well,

And here it is,2inches high, and 3 inches wide, and I had two endevours to watch and the house to myself,
life is good,

 

oh, I love scraps and bits,

I just picked up a pile of scraps and went for it, yay, love it, love it love it.

poppy was soo impressed,

and finally, isn't this nice? this is my good friend trudis new skirt, Im hoping, when she gets tired of it that she will remember me, hint hint, bye bye.