I'm Back!

We had a wonderful, relaxing two weeks down at Dalmeny, near Narooma on the South Coast of NSW, about three hours from Canberra. We will be retiring there in a couple of years, and every visit down there it gets harder to leave and come back here to the real world - as in work!

This is a photo we took on one of our morning walks, looking south along Yabarra beach. If you look carefully, there is a group of houses just about the centre of the photo, slightly to the right. Our house is the last one visible on the right of that group. You might have to click to enlarge.

Every day I went for a walk along the three beaches opposite our place - Yabarra, Duesbuerys and Kianga - it is about one and a half hours round trip at a leisurely pace. Here are some photos I took one day.

They could be useful as inspiration for some embroidery.

I also took my embellisher so I could play - here is a piece I did by creating a grid of hand dyed woollen yarn then embellishing it onto hand dyed cheesecloth with a very fine layer of merine felted in. I think I wet felted it all too, when it was done - I actually can't remember now! It looks a bit washed out in the photo - the colours are quite soft, but not that bland in real life!

I did a bit of hand stitching, and also knitted some slips to use with the embellisher. Other than that, I read a lot, walked a great deal and imagined when I would be doing that every day, not just for a couple of weeks a year - roll on retirement! I am constanty amazed at the number of people who ask won't I get bored? It doesn't matter how emphatic my "NO" is, they still look at me knowingly, as though to say, oh you don't think so now, but just wait until you have been retired a couple of years!

A Stitch in Time

At the beginning of the year, I resolved to make a journal quilt each month, and to make a postcard sized companion piece to send to my good friend, Gay, in North Carolina. My January journal quilt was made from selvedge scraps and expressed my sentiments about my stash and how big it had grown - it also featured a dear little miniature Olfa rotary cutting pin. I only had one of those, so had to decide what to use on the companion piece for Gay.


Well I had a little treasure I wanted to use. I bought this little needle case on Ebay. It opens up to reveal a row of needles - very sweet.

Trouble is it just didn't fit with the rather modern looking journal quilt. After considerable dithering, I came to the conclusion that I needed to make a more old fashioned looking piece to reflect the vintage of the little treasure - so I turned to crazy patchwork and a suitable, more classic phrase. I had planned on tucking the little case into a pocket just below the piece with the text on, but that didn't work, as it stuck out too far and obscured the text. I dithered endlessley, and eventually decided to start again - but I just didn't want to leave the piece, as I liked it, so decided to push ahead - I just needed to figure out how to get it to hold the needlecase.



So, I decided to put it on the back. But then I had to figure out how to attach it. I decided on a little envelope - it was a toss up between lutradur and sheer heaven - but I went for the latter. It looked a bit raw in its natural state, so I gave it a spritz with Moonshadow Mist, then attached it by making holes with my trusty Japanese screw punch (which I bought, before they doubled in price!) and stitched it with some perle cotton.
Voila!!
I was going to wait until Gay got this in the mail to post, but a) I suspect she is beginning to think I was never going to get to finish it, and b) she complains I don't post to my blog often enough - well I have to have something to post don't I? So here it is!! Miss you - wish you were closer so we could have our play days together.

Nuno (sort of) Felt

For no particular reason I decided to have a play with some bits and pieces and do my own version of nuno felt - or at least what I think that is, which is wool felted over fine silk so that the wool grabs the silk and pulls it up, sort of like ruching?
Well I didn't have any fine silk, but I did have some hand dyed cheesecloth, so laid that down then arranged strips of torn silk, some merino wool tops, and some other bits and pieces - what are those shiny curly bits called? - oh, and some of the silk ribbon I dyed last week, chopped up - oh well, easy come, easy go! The first picture is all that laid out.

Then I covered it with some nylon curtain stuff I got from the felters group - they told me that is what you put over the top before you wet it down and start massaging it all, which I did. When I had done enough so that it wouldn't all move about I rolled it up inside a bamboo placemat with a wooden rolling pin inside and rolled it back and forth. That didn't last long, as I have problems with my back and neck and it has been particularly tetchy this week, so after half a dozen rolls I thought, forget it.
I rinsed and dried it (outside - its a stinker here today, so took no time at all to dry), then went to my trust embellisher and needled it all over from the front then some from the back. Then I took it back and gave it another wet felting (coz I just can't stand those needle holes showing!) - I kind of massaged it rather than rolled it a lot. It was shrinking up pretty well, but I decided it needed more, so I got out my trusty washboard and rubbed it on that - well, that did the trick - it shrank up before my very eyes!
Here is what the finished piece looks like from the front

and this is the back. I quite like the back - the colours are nicely muted and I like the ruched texture.

Look what I got!

I responded to Doreen's message about her lovely ATCs - and look what arrived in the mail today! Isn't it gorgeous?

I sent Doreen one of my ATCs in return, plus a little bundle of my hand dyed silk ribbon, but being a few sandwiches short of a picnic, completely forgot to scan them first - oh well, hopefully Doreen will show you what the postie brings her in a day or two.

Bleach writing

Last week I mentioned this terrific tutorial on writing on fabric with bleach. I had a go yesterday, but first, I couldn't find my little bottle with the nib that I was going to use (well, I could find the little bottle, but I could'nt find the nib) - so then I thought I could use one of those water pens or, if you can get them, the Clorox bleach pens- but wouldn't you know it, I used it on some commercially dyed fabric, and absolutely nothing happened. this is particularly annoying given that if I spill so much as a drop of Domestos (a gel type bleach) on my bathmat or bath towels when I am cleaning the bathroom, it immediately strips all the colour out. But no matter how much I 'painted' onto the fabric, nothing happened. I have had better success with using it on hand-dyed fabric.

On this piece, I 'drew' around some gum leaves using my home made bleach pen - and it worked fine. I think I will add machine embroidery to this. I will have to wait until next weekend now to actually do the bleach writing, as I will have to go the art store during the week and get a fine point nib.

Microwave dyeing silk - aren't these yummy?

I came across a post about dyeing silk in the microwave
and remembered that I had a selection of silk dyes that I got at a workshop, but never did anything with them as I realised I had to do some sort of complicated (so it seemed) steam setting process - so that was the end of that. Then I found out you can do it in your microwave! So, I pulled out my silk dyes and a roll of 4mm white silk ribbon I bought years ago - I think with the thought that I would dye my own colours - and off I went - what fun.
Here are the results of some playing yesterday. I just randomly played, but as I got into it, started really thinking about and trying to apply colour theory to mix colours and create complements.
I am definitely going to do more of this - it was quite addictive. I will send some to the first three people who respond to this post - I don't actually do much silk ribbon embroidery anymore, so won't actually use it myself - I just enjoyed creating it!

Tesselated quilt

Well, I have achieved one of my weekend objectives - and it is only Saturday afternoon! This quilt top will get added to the pile I have waiting to be quilted. It will have to wait until the cooler weather, as my 'quilting room' doesn't have air con (but it does have heating!).