Weekend round-up

It's Sunday afternoon, my mind's turning to 'what's for tea?' and there's a decent drama on BBC iplayer that I can binge-watch this evening.  So life's not too bad in my corner of the world.  This is a mixed-bag of a blog post, a jumble of projects completed and ones that're works-in-progress.  I was supposed to be attending an embroidery workshop yesterday, but unfortunately it was cancelled.  The tutor's car broke down in the wilds of North Yorkshire, so I settled instead to some sewing and listening to podcasts.  This little stitched piece is just basic running stitch and back stitch, and is meant to be stylized cow parsley.  I've got scrapbooks into which I've stuck images from magazines or flyers, anything that catches my eye, and the idea for the cow parsley came from a page in one of those scrapbooks.  

I think it was an Angie Lewin lino print that gave me my jumping-off point.  

It's a calico background that's been painted with acrylic after having PVA glue applied to it.  I added short lengths of blue-green material that's supposed to represent blades of grass, and the cow parsley flowers are made of clear glass seed beads.  

It'd bought a job-lot of cardstock and envelopes from Facebook Marketplace a while ago, and included were a stack of blank greetings cards with oval cut-outs.  So I used double sided sticky tape and enclosed my stitched piece in one of those cards.   

Okay, on to the next thing.  I've very nearly finished this fabric pouch.  This was another piece of material painted with acrylic, and I stenciled and stamped it too.  Then more of my basic embroidery.  I added this pink backing material and decided to sew it into an envelope shape.  It only needs a fastening, then it's all done'n'dusted, but I can't find a suitable closure in my jumble of craft supplies.  It'll have to wait.  

This is the back of the pouch, and you can see how mad I went with the stencils.  But they're fun to stitch into.  

Let's move on to another pink creation.  

Another example of acrylic paint and PVA applied to calico.  I began sewing into this, with no idea how it'd end up looking.  

As usual, I got partway through the process and thought 'it's a dishrag' and considered binning it.  But I kept going.  I ended up with a rectangle of something I kinda like, and I even managed to add a couple of shisha mirrors.  My technique's far from perfect but it's improving.  

I might add to this, but I'll put it aside for now until I can figure out what I want to do with it.  Maybe incorporate it into a cushion cover or use it as one side of a zip-up pouch?  

Let's keep going, and my next thought concerned this fabric roll I made not that long ago.  I really like it, and it makes a handy portable sewing kit holder.  But the thought I had was that it'd work just as well turned into a journal wrap.  

So I wound it around an A6 art journal, and it does look good.  But the actual fabric wrap is a couple of centimetres too short in length, and the ribbon's not long enough either to wind around a chunky book.  Which led me to think I could make another fabric wrap but slightly different dimensions, to fit snugly around this particular journal.    

I cut a rectangle of ever-reliable calico and have begun arranging various pieces of material and braid on it.  

I particularly like the red/pink/purple side of the colour wheel.  All those shades of raspberry, plum, cerise, dusty pink.  

Once made, the wrap's destined to go around this art journal.  It was the first one I made, and I was pretty chuffed with it.  I painted and patterned lots of A3 sheets of sketchpad paper, then cut them up and assembled them into signatures.  The aim was to avoid a journal that's got purely white, blank pages, and to provide a jumping-off point for drawing or collaging on a page.  

I haven't worked into it as much as I'd intended to as yet, but I've tucked various oddities inside, ready to be turned into something.  Including a cat-fish!   

Well, time's marching on and my mind's increasingly demanding I root around in the kitchen and decide what my next meal's going to be.  Hope your weekend's been relaxing, and you're all ready for Monday to roll around again.  Bye for now.