rubykittyruby

  I don't know about you, but I could happily spend hours browsing on Instagram.  It can be intimidating to see unbelievably perfect creations, but on the whole the photos are inspiring.  I saw these lovely fabric dolls sewn by 'quaintmarie' - link here - and despite my many works-in-progress I had to try making something similar.  Firstly I cut out a basic paper pattern. I stretched a piece of calico over an embroidery hoop, then selected scraps of material and arranged them on the calico.  Putting the paper doll on top, and as I don't have a fabric marker pen I used a bright yellow thread to tack around the doll's outline.   Then I stitched the pieces down and embroidered on top of them.   Once I was happy with that, I added backing fabric and stuffed my doll with leftover thread and tufts of wadding.  I plaited three different colours of embroidery thread and attached a loop to hang the doll from.  Overall, I was quite happy wit...

It's a grey Sunday afternoon, and we've had drizzly rain all day.  I walked to church and back this morning, then it was pyjamas on at a ridiculously early time and to heck with anyone who called around unexpectedly!  I spent the afternoon stitching, finishing what I'd intended to be a journal wrap but which might end up as something else.  I'll photograph it tomorrow when the light's better.  Yesterday I added backing fabric and hanging loops to my mini banner, the one I made after the Stitch Art workshop at Leeds Art Gallery.  I also added a few beads to the bottom of the banner, to help it hang nicely.  The beads are fairly ugly grey metallic things that'd come in a scrap pack.  They're quite weighty for their size, and I'd wondered what possible use I could find for them.  Well, as usual, if you hang on to stuff, eventually that becomes clear.   These are two more attempts at dyeing white crochet cotton with Inktense.  I applied...

  I mentioned yesterday that I'd been playing about with my new set of Inktense paints.  These are the skeins of white crochet cotton that I experimented with dyeing.  I painted two skeins with a mix of yellow, red and orange, and a third with blues and green.   The results were mixed, but overall positive.  As you can see, the colours aren't in-your-face vivid, but soft and rather pretty.  I probably could achieve bolder colours with applying a second layer.  How I'd dyed these was to use a water spray and mist the skeins first of all.  Then I applied the Inktense and allowed the crochet cotton to dry out on top of the radiator.  Then, as the Inktense needs a decent amount of heat for the dye to set, I carefully ironed the skeins.  That worked with the orange-yellow skeins, but when I wrapped the blue-green skein around the plastic holder some dye did come off and stain my fingertips.  Maybe I hadn't ironed that as much as I s...

Tomorrow is International Women's Day.  Which inevitably produces a grumpy response from blokes along the lines of 'When's international men's day, huh?'.  To which the obvious answer is, 'Everyday is international men's day, fella.'  Anyway, if you want a daily dose of inspiring, courageous, clever women and are on 'X' (a.k.a. Twitter), try following @TheAttagirls.  I've only recently come across the account, and it's a treasure trove of often forgotten women's history.   Leeds Art Gallery have a new exhibition on, called 'Found Cities, Lost Objects', and I had a peek at it yesterday.  It's an exhibition about discovering cities through the eyes of women, and there are really good, thought provoking artworks on show.  Apologies for my dodgy photos, by the way.  I was taking them quickly and they were more 'memory prompts' for me than anything remotely professional looking.  I was at the art gallery to take part in...

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 wit...

An embroidered fabric cuff is an easy project, and doesn't require any fancy stitches or expensive purchases.  If you're a seasoned crafter you're likely to have the materials already to hand, and possibly the only thing you might buy is a hair band.  But more of that later.   Let's start with the previouis fabric cuff I made.  (On the right in the photo above.)  I was pretty pleased with it, but decided it was too wide (though very good for keeping your wrist warm on a cold day!).  I learned a few things from making my cuff, mainly forget any notion of minimalism.  This cuff works best when you go heavily on the embellishments.  You've a small area to stitch on, so don't skimp on making the most of it.   I made a second version (above left), and here are the instructions if you want to make something similar.   You need to gather together:  2 pieces of felt, measurements discussed below, but mine were 8 inches x 1 ...