embellisher work

Here is a landscape I did on the embellisher - starting with a lightly wet felted background - I HATE the needle holes in skies if I just do the whole thing on the embellisher.
Next step is to add some machine embroidery - or maybe some hand embroidery!

If you were lucky enough to get an embellisher for Christmas, there are two books due out shortly to get the creative juices flowing - Dale Rollerson's Surface Tension, and Maggie Grey and Val Campbell-Harding's Embellish and Stitch

Colour chart

I sorted through the little sample scraps and created my own Ives colour wheel, using Joen Wolfrom's excellent book, Color Play, as a reference. I am generally quite good with colour. I must have an intuitive sense of it, as I have never had any formal art training. It is in the areas of design and composition that I think I need to do more work - but anyway, here is my colour wheel - I will put it up on the wall in my sewing room as a reference.

Now I am going to do some composition exercises, using paper and fabric. Stay tuned!

I may be going crazy

Well dear reader - flushed with success at my first post, I tried a second today and disaster struck. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say that I have spent many hours trawling through Google help (without success), as my blog 'disappeared'. In despair, I created a new one, and thought all would be well, but little did I know...the same thing happened.

I was about to give up on blogging, deciding it was clearly way too complicated, when miraculously, both blogs appeared again, and (as far as I can tell), are now going to let me post further messages.

So, here goes - this will be the third time today I have tried posting this message, or a variation of it, on two different blogs. If this doesn't work, I really am giving up!

This is a bundle of fabric samples that I carefully unpicked from some sample cards I bought more than 10 years ago - those were the days before Internet shopping, when you sent away for actual samples of things - imagine!!

I decided I could put these to good use doing some colour exercises, like the ones I did in Module 1 of Dale Rollerson's Playways - check out The Thread Studio website for more info.

I also plan on maybe using some in the Journal quilts I intend doing during 2007 - more on that later.

In preparation for Take a Stitich Tuesday on Sharon Boggin's website, I have been sorting through my fabrics and threads, and found these two pieces

They were 'play' pieces using a variety of stitches to create texture. I quite like them.

Alright - the moment of truth - I will try and publish this and see where it ends up. Wish me luck.

First post!

Like most people at this time of year, I am composing a list of New Year's resolutions - I already have a head start on some - learning to swim, losing some weight, improving my flexibility through regular stretching......but now it is time to decide to do some things to improve my creativity. 2006 wasn't a great year for creativity - work and life got in the way. I am determined that 2007 will be more productive, and part of that is starting a blog. I enjoy reading other peoples' and seeing their work - I hope others will enjoy mine. Having a blog will create a discipline to actually DO things, so I will have something to post - at least that's the theory!

Here is a postcard I made earlier this year, one of the first things I made on my embellisher, and finished off with FME, a few beads and a piece of oyster shell, from my favourite place - Wagonga inlet, on the south coast of New South Wales, at Narooma. We are planning on retiring there in three years - can't wait!