rubykittyruby

  I'm in a mood to tidy things up.  It's not often that mood strikes me, so I better make the most of it.  But more of that in a moment.  I'll start off with these embroidered birds.  I'd already made the blue tit, and followed that with a robin.  Now, there's a second robin.  I reckon the first was a more pleasing shape than the second robin.  Plumper and with more character.  But either way I'm fairly happy with how these turned out.  I'm thinking of the robins in terms of Christmas tree decorations, but are they Christmassy enough, do you think?   Sorry to drop the 'C' word in there, by the way.  It seems absurd to think about the festive season when we're not even into summer, but sometimes ideas pop into your head and you just have to go with them.  The other absurdly-timed idea involved a post on Ann Wood's website.  She wrote a blog post about making fabric triangles she called tetra charms.  The link...

I've been getting near to finishing this piece of embroidery, adding lots more seed beads and bugle beads, really enjoying stitching into the fabric and feeling the texture of it change the more thread's worked into it.  I'm thinking it'll turn into a wall hanging of some kind, and did wonder about making a simple frame for it.  Cutting one out of cardboard and maybe covering that with either fabric or gell prints. Then I remembered I've got a dish full of shells somewhere.  Could I cobble together a frame covered in shells?  That might be worth a try.   This blue rice bag is not completed yet either.  I wanted to make the four loops on it out of denim, upcycling the straps off a denim dress.  But they proved way too bulky and impossible for my sewing machine to cope with.  So I've made two loops out of patterned cotton and two out of a beautiful blue velvet that came in a Bazaar scrap pack.  I really need to crack on and get the bag lin...

  I said the other day that I'd post a photo of the ATCs - a total of 30 - that I made for a Facebook group swap.  Well, they're finally done and have been posted.  I'm glad to have got them completed before the deadline, even though some weren't exactly my best work.  Themes chosen by the group members were wide ranging and a few almost defeated me.  They included Buffy the vampire slayer, Victorian architecture (preferably done in pencil), life drawing (ditto pencil), a Harry Potter creature, Shane Warne, and a horror film character whose image I definitely didn't want lodging in my head.  I went a bit rogue with some themes, going for abstract images or - in the case of the pencil life drawing - just ignoring that and doing a version of a Matisse collage instead.  Sorry!  Overall, I don't think I'd take part in this kind of challenge again.  Partly because postage cost me £7.00, Royal Mail prices being as steep as they are, but also becaus...