Burning Issues............

Hi everyone - hope you're having a good weekend.  Does anyone know where the good weather that was forecast has gone????  Cold, wet, miserable - and it's the end of April!

I was asked to take my "wares" along to a sale yesterday morning so I duly paid my money for the table and turned up at around 9.30am - after setting up (which normally takes about 45 minutes or so) thought I'd have a look round at the other sellers' goodies...........to say I wasn't a happy bunny is an understatement - there were three other people selling cards and seeing as there were only about 20 tables in the hall this was absolutely ludicrous.  It's not good for the people paying to come in and it's not very good at all for us poor folk trying to sell a few things.  One lady who passed my table was heard to say "not more cards!!!" - needless to say she didn't even bother to stop to look at all the other stuff that I was selling.

Anyway I thought I'd share with you a little project I started on Thursday when Jan and I did a workshop with the fabulous Margaret Beal working with organza, felt and a soldering iron.  It wasn't finished as we only had about 50 minutes at the show - so had a play this morning and this is the finished "sampler".  Basically it is cutting (to show different colour fabrics underneath) and making marks with the soldering iron and fusing together and onto felt.  Margaret had a few metal objects that we could "draw" around to cut out the organza or just to make marks and I said to Jan we could use our metal dies........so out they came and I had fun playing with cutting out some leaves and the large flower on the top left hand side.  I thought the abstract piece (bottom right) looks a bit like a landscape.  It was great fun and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  Unfortunately I just couldn't seem to capture the vibrancy of the pieces in the photos as the organza really does sparkle and shimmer, but it gives you an idea.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.  Thanks for dropping by and leaving me your lovely comments.

Lettuce edging and more.............

This is totally different to my normal posting about cards............... I have been doing lots of sewing recently and have just finished these two pieces ready to take to my class tomorrow morning.

The piece on the left is a strip from a pair of black opaque tights, satin stitched down each edge, then a thinner strip finished in the same way sewn down the centre. There is a tacking stitch down the length which, when gathered, gives this lovely frilly "embellishment" - it's normally referred to as lettuce edging and is great fun to do. The second piece is a piece of felt sewn from centre of the circle to the edge continuously going around the circle numerous (and I mean numerous) times - it gets to a stage where you cannot sew any more into the centre as the stitching is too thick so you cut out the circle from the piece of felt and continue stitching around the edge until it actually doubles in size and you can manipulate it into various shapes. I would hate to tell you how long this piece took but believe me it was ages!!! Now all I've got to do is find a use for it........... lol

Thanks for looking.

Empty Vessels!!!

On Monday I went to a one day workshop at Hansons in Sturminster Newton called "It's a Wrap - Vessels". The tutor was Lynn Horniblow who is also my tutor for free machine embroidery.

We had a great day. We started off with a square of felt (yellow in my case which didn't really inspire me) but by the time we had finished free machining the felt and adding a lining the piece was completely transformed. A white cord was added around the square which needed to be sewn over using a matching thread. The finished article is really pleasing and ideal for those little gifts. Who would have thought it started with a humble piece of felt!!!

Thanks for looking.

Pewter - more free machining

Following on from my post yesterday where I worked with metal and free machining I received a roll of pewter in the post and couldn't wait to have a play.

This is slightly different in that I have embossed the pewter in the shape of a flower and then used my sewing machine to create a texture on the rest of the metal leaving the flower smooth and three dimensional. The pewter was sewn onto a piece of black felt which really shows it off well.

Thanks for looking.

Evening bag

I have just managed to finish off my project that I started in my free machine embroidery class before Christmas.

I made the fabric completely from scratch on a base of black felt, then adding leaf shapes in various fabrics with a sheer over the top and then free machine embroidery over the top of that. The fabric was lined, pattern cut out and then each raw edge had to be zigzagged over three times (different lengths and widths of stitch) before sewing together. The actual shape of the bag is really nice but it was difficult to get a photograph that showed it off to it's best. The bag comes to a point at the bottom and looks somewhat medieval. Holes were made in each section for the cord to go through and from the left over fabric leaves were cut out to attach to the sides of the bag and then had beads sewn on to them.

I really enjoyed doing this project especially as the complete thing was made from virtually nothing.

Thanks for looking.