Embroidery and yet another named storm

It's mid-afternoon on a Saturday when storm Darragh is doing its thing. Thankfully it's not my part of the country where it's at its fiercest, but even so there are very blustery winds and constant rain, and the daylight's already poor enough that I need the overhead light on. Actually I might put the twinkly fairy lights on too, just to make it extra pretty in here. The photo above is of my 'doodle cloth' - inspired by Jessie Chorley and her book 'Journal with Thread'.

I've also been working on an embroidered heart. Not sure yet if I'll turn it into a pin cushion or applique it on to a page of a fabric book.

The tiny seed stitches give a lovely texture, and I've mainly used that and overcast stitching. I've added buttons upcycled from clothing - which mainly came from charity shops - and added a butterfly which came from a broken piece of jewellery. There'll be sequins and seed beads to represent colourful glass pin heads, and I might add a silver coloured charm too. Maybe a tiny pair of scissors or a reel of thread.

Maybe you're also hunkering down indoors to avoid the worst of storm Darragh? If so, what else can we do but crack on with something crafty? I'm stitching away while keeping half an eye on a Christmas episode of 'Poirot'. Nothing like a good murder-mystery to while away the time. I'll leave you with twinkly lights, now turned on and strung over my fireplace. Sadly, it's not a working fireplace any more and houses an ugly gas fire that's hidden behind the pot plants. But the fairy lights still add that magical touch.

Comments

Threads of Freedom and charity shop bargains

It's Saturday afternoon, and I haven't done half the things I'd meant to. Partly because I spent most of this morning messing about with paints, stencils and the gell plate. Never mind, everything on today's 'To Do' list will join tomorrow's 'To Do' list ... it's hardly life or death if I don't haul the hoover around the room or pull up weeds in the front garden. I thought I'd show you what I made on Wednesday. I'd gone to my monthly StitchArt group, and this time we did something a little different. There's a project called 'Threads of Freedom' which is working with various community groups across the city. It's about creating little stitched pieces, some of which will be included in a textile panel to go on display at Leeds art gallery. There was lots of fabric we could choose from to sew with, and I picked this vintage tray cloth with the roses embroidery. My own embroidery's not a patch on those flo...

Another week's flown by ...

Saturday's rolled around again, and it's not been the most eventful of days. Cleaning and hoovering, a walk to the shops to buy groceries, an hour on the allotment, then home to do some odd tasks in the garden. The strawberry plants are sending out runners, so I've been dealing with those, plus deadheading the perennial sunflowers, and cutting back the gone-over flowers on the sage and marjoram. I'm sad to see those blooms gone as the bees loved them. This afternoon I spent a few hours finishing 'Dawnlands' by Philippa Gregory. It's a really good book, a page turner where you care about the characters and want to be reassured everything's going to work out well for them. Plus you become enraged about the corruption of the so-called justice system at the time of the Stuart kings and queens, about transportation of prisoners to the West Indies, and about the vile nature of the sugar trade in the 1600s and the vast profits made from it....

Folding a zine and an alternative use for a bank card

Hello again, and excuse me while I scratch my insect bites. I don't know what it is, but at this time of year I'm invariably itching like crazy because I've been bitten by bugs. It seems to coincide with blackberry-picking season, but whether that's purely coincidental I don't know. Whatever's biting me, I'm obviously a tasty morsel in their world! I might try using a highly scented oil like Tea Tree oil, see if that deters them. Anyway, let's get on to more pleasant matters - I'm having a go at making a zine style booklet. Because I didn't have any paper large enough, I joined together two A3 sheets of sketchpad paper, using torn pieces of book pages for the joining. I thought that'd look less noticeable than packing tape or similar. Having chosen my colour scheme I used acrylic paint and an unwanted plastic bank card to apply the paint. Plus a stencil, sponge and modelling paste. Applying paint with a ATM card wa...

rubykittyruby

Search This Blog