Balloons and colours

It was my daughter's birthday last week (on Mother's Day actually - we had a joint celebration). Some of her friends sent her a bunch of balloons. I was idly looking at them the other day and realised they formed a sort of colour wheel. There was some brightly coloured cellophane with them, which is the type that melts well. I cut a piece and folded it over on itself then ironed it between parchment. It melted up nicely. I put a piece of dark fabric behind it for the scan to show up the holes. The balloons have taken on the look of melted crayons. Not sure what I will do with this - maybe an ATC or postcard, with some stitching?

Alcohol inks on plastic

I had a go at painting some of the gutter guard mentioned in the last post. I used Pinata alcohol inks.

I couldn't find any 'metallics', so had a go at laying down a base coat of white, topped with a golden yellow. The result is not bad - although in close up (not to mention daylight!) I see that there are little bits of white on the edges. I could always go over them again. I might have a go at weaving some threads and torn strips through this stuff and see what I get.

I got Tracy Bautista's book, Collage Unleashed yesterday. Only had a chance to flick through so far - too many ideas to absorb at once, and the whole effect is slightly overwhelming, almost chaotic - I think I will have to take time to really study each page and really LOOK, so as not to be overwhelmed by the visual impact of the whole thing.

Bad blogger!

Well I have been most remiss - five weeks since I have posted - it really isn't good enough - what on earth have I been doing with my time? Not enough creative stuff, for sure. I will try and do better in future. I haven't been completely idle, however. On Anzac Day I felt the urge to pull out my wool and knitting needles and get back to some of the freeform knitting and crochet I started in a class with the delightful Prudence Mapstone - oh dear - that was three years ago now! Here are the scrumbles I made in the class. Well, I didn't get them all done in a day's class, but got started, and added more later.

And here are the ones I started on Anzac day and have been working on since. They are pinned out onto a bag frame. The arrangement isn't right yet, I don't like that white blob on the round piece in the centre - will have to move that, or else embroider, crochet over the white bit to tone it down and make it blend in better.

The bag frames are very useful (although not cheap). I got mine from Threads and More when they were at the craft show in Canberra last time.

In her book, Never too Many Handbags Prudence gives lots of ideas for making bags out of scrumbles. She also mentions using gutter guard as a substitute for the pre-made frames. This is neat stuff. I got a roll at the hardware the other day.

It wasn't very expensive and there is miles of it on the roll. It is quite sturdy and firm, but still flexible. As well as being a good base for a bag, I could see it would be great for 3-D things, like boxes. Apparently you can colour this stuff with alcohol inks - not sure that normal paints would do it. Given that it is an unpreprosessing brown, I could probably only make it black, or maybe a bronze, coppery colour. Don't know if alcohol inks come in metallic colours? You could also weave things through the mesh, I suppose?

There, I have broken the drought and blogged again!

Happy Mother's Day to all.

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.