Birthday Card

Fused felt & shiny bits and then ran it through the cuttlebug with the tattered florals die.

The leaves are made by trapping shiny bits between two pieces of organza and then putting on an embroidery hoop.  Did the outline in satin stitch and then free machined the centre bits.

Humbug & Pyramid Bags

Nicks very kindly lent me a book yesterday by Margaret Beal which rather spookily I had just reserved at the library the day before.

In it was these little bags.  It's a bit difficult to explain here how it's done but I do love the idea of them.  Especially the small ones within a larger one.   No end to what little bits you could put in them.

Fusing Felt & Organza

This is a technique where you cut small triangles of fabric that will melt and lay them onto a piece of felt.  You then lay on a metal rule and run a fine tip soldering iron down the edge of the rule to bond the pieces to the felt. 

These are a few experimental pieces using a different combo of colours & fabrics each time.

More Free Motion Stiching

This time on water soluble film.

My lovely friend Julia came round to give me a tutorial and this is my finished first piece.

A grid was drawn onto the water soluble film which was about 4 inches x 4 inches.  The grid was then free motioned stitched with a straight stich.  Stitch setting was then changed to a zig zag and circles worked over the whole grid.

The most important thing about this is that all the circles must at some point connect to each other and the grid otherwise when the water soluble film is dissolved it will not hold together.

This is a picture before being immersed in water.

This is a picture after.
















Now I know it's not brilliant but I am chuffed with my first effort.

Japanese Bookbinding Wedding Album

I saw a tutorial on Youtube about Japanese bookbinding and fancied having a go.  And seeing as though there is a wedding due I thought I'd make it for the happy couple to use as a guest book or an album for some fun photos.

The pages inside are alternate vellum and lovely quality paper.

The basic cover is mountboard covered in a cotton material.   The front is decorated with painted tyvek, ironed and then stitched.  The heart is two pieces painted tyvek with wadding inbetween and sewn.  There is also some embossing on it but couldn't go mad with it without the tyvek shrinking.  An air dry clay heart in the centre.

The back is the free motion stitched piece in the last post.

The invitation had a flower on it made out of ribbon so I thought it would be a nice touch to reuse it on their album so unravalled it, ironed it and then threaded through the holes.  Voila!

More stitching

Really enjoying this.  The pink & blue piece was another practise piece but the turquoisey one isn't finished yet but is being made for a specific project.  Well that's the plan anyway.  Lol.

Free Motion Stitching

Have always wanted to do this but my attempts were very poor. Anyway, it turns out that in our circle of friends is a lovely, generous and multi-talented lady by the name of Julia Martin who is City and Guilds qualified. She very kindly offered to teach me and this is my second piece which I am so chuffed with I decided to mount on a canvas.

Squares of shiny fabric have been secured to felt with the slightest touch of a fine point on a soldering iron. Black organza has been laid over the top and then free machine stitched with a gorgeous variegated metallic thread. Now my first piece didn't quite go to plan as I went a bit off piste from the instructions but it was a valuable lesson learnt.