Another fabric bowl & what's starting to look like a craft room ...

Hello on what's been a beautiful autumn day. Bright blue clear sky, a chilly start but warming up in the afternoon. I've been on a long walk around a local nature reserve, not wanting to stay inside when it's so lovely outdoors.

In the last week or so, I've been finishing this fabric bowl, and have started making another.

But mainly I've been having a bit of a change-around in my house. I've hauled furniture from one room to another, clutter-cleared cupboards and bagged up things for the charity shop, and generally hoovered and cleaned all those dusty corners.

I'd finally made a decision about turning the dumping ground of the front bedroom into a craft room. It's taking shape, though it really has taken some effort.

Larger pieces of material are stacked on shelves, grouped into colours. Lower down is my Sissix machine and die cuts, and at the base of the shelving are beads and jewellery making supplies. There's also space for a storage tub of crewel wool and another of ribbons & cord.

This corner's home to a huge roll of polyester quilt wadding, plus storage tubs of cardstock and envelopes, and an old laundry basket full of brown paper and packaging materials, most of it waiting to be upcycled or re-used for postage.

I've strung up this 'washing line' and used mini pegs to hang felt and embroidered birds from it, plus other little dolls and oddments.

There's a padded leopard's head, a tweedy bird and my Woman of a Certain Rage doll, complete with scowling face!

This is a small quilt I made, and it's good to display it on the wall instead of leaving it folded up and out of sight.

I love this crazy lady with her hair standing on end as if it's full of electricity, and also her gold embroidered angel wings. Though what kind of angel she'd make I couldn't imagine.

Another wall hanging, this one made for a church display on the theme of 'creation'.

There's so much stuff on top of shelving units and wardrobes. This will never be an Instagram-ready craft room. Nothing matchy-matchy or aspirational here. But if it can be a useful, practical space that'll be the main thing.

Right, that's all for now. Oh, just more thing. A very silly paper doll I made today, to go inside my mammoth junk journal. She's got a magazine illustration for a skirt, a chocolate wrapper bodice, foil from another chocolate bar for her collar, and stick-on gems for her jewels. She's all dressed up and raring to go!

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