That elusive certain something ...

Do you ever make something and think 'uhm, it's okay, but it's missing a certain something'? Some kind of spark that gives your sewing (or drawing, painting, crochet or whatever craft) life and energy. That added extra you can't define but know when you see it. Or rather, when you don't.

I've been making simple Jude Hill style pieces of stitching, some of which I'm more pleased with than others.

The one on the left - the moon with a face - wasn't right, but I knew what to do to stop it annoying me. The yellow material I'd used was too harsh a yellow, and the facial expression wasn't what I'd been aiming for. So I appliqued a more mellow yellow over the original piece, a slightly fiddly thing to do but I was much happier with the result. I haven't re-sewn the face yet, but probably will.

This other piece - in the photo below - hasn't proved so straightforward to put right. It looked too plain, and frankly too boring.

I added more lines of running stitch, then used upcycled sari material to liven up the left hand side of it.

Which was better, but still lacking something or other. Anyway, I've put it aside for now, and maybe coming back to it with fresh eyes in a few days or weeks time will help me work out what I need to do next. In the meantime I've bought the boxes and bags of Christmas decorations downstairs, ready for when I decide it's time to put them up. As they only come out once a year I tend to forget what's in them.

There's a brown and red felt reindeer, made years ago, and a pair of simple embroidered birds sewn last Christmas, complete with a couple of my handmade boho style beads. Well, there's no subtlety to festive decs, are there? It's all about the shiny-ness and the sparkle.

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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...

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