Busy, Busy

I've been carrying on with creating projects to use some of the captured flowers that I did.

First a panel to incorporate into a project at some point though I know not when or what. I captured a bunch of flowers together for this and then cut a stylistic vase shape from some fabric to which I added some Strass stones. The whole was then fused onto a background of black silk.



I made a trinket box out of an empty salmon tin and decorated the lid with one of the flowers which had been stitched around with gold metallic thread, cut out and attached via some Swarovski crystals at its centre.


The captured flowers are also good for greetings cards.


So, these are very versatile. Fabric postcards, bookmarks, panels, trinket boxes, greetings cards and there must be loads more projects these could be incorporated into not to mention that they are great fun!

I made my second fabric postcard but this time not with the captured flowers.


I got this idea from the Beginners' Guide to Machine Embroidery. Basically, you zigzag stitch slighly wavy lines in a grid on muslin. This pulls and distorts the fabric to create an interesting effect. You can then colour in the 'squares' with fabric paints. I took it a stage further and went over the wavy lines again with one of the decorative stitches, called patchwork, on my sewing machine (oh, yes, my sewing machine and I are becoming quite good friends now after 20 years of me being scared to death of it).

Lastly, I made a couple of hats. The first continues my fascination for seeing interesting effects come out of variegated yarn with relatively long distances between colour changes such as in the entrelac shawl in a previous post. This is the Fake Isle Hat by Amy King and, although it looks as if lots of different balls of yarn were used, only two are used and the myriad of colours comes from one with long colour runs together with a solid one. The variegated one I used this time is Rico Designs Creative Poems Aran.


The other hat is Evangeline, a '20s style cloche hat by Just Call Me Ruby.


This is knitted in Adriafil Primula, a gorgeous squishy soft merino, and is another hat for Becca's Chemo Hat project.

I've also decided to knit a few lace bookmarks as they are such quick projects and are great for little extras and small gifts. This is the first one and is Heartstrings' Oak Leaf Bookmark.

Raviolee Dreams' Giveaway

Today in the post I received a sea themed crazy quilting kit from Nicki Lee of Raviolee Dreams.



I've been wanting to try CQing for ages and have been collecting Nicki Lee's hand-dyed laces with this in mind for some time. Being a bit of a magpie, I'm just as attracted to these pretties as I am to beads and baubles and other shiny beckoning objects.

I am delighted with the kit. The fabrics are beautiful and the laces, beads and baubles more than met my expectations. She even included some extra beads and baubles which, in my excitement, I added to my sea-themed bead collection before taking the pic.

Anyway, if you want to win some of these beautiful laces plus a wonderful book on Crazy Quilting, you will need to hurry over to Nicki Lee's blog without delay (the draw will take place on Saturday March 20th) where she is having a giveaway to celebrate the opening of her Etsy shop. Good luck!

Captured Flowers, Goddesses and a Lovely Purchase

This last week or so has seen me make my first fabric postcard. I combined this with my first attempts at capturing real flowers between fabric and organza. This was the result.


This is the back thanks to a kind friend from the US who sent me a special rubber stamp for the purpose.


I also made a bookmark using the same technique.


I have a load of flowers that I prepared at the same time ready to go into projects so have a few more in the pipeline that I hope to work on this weekend.

Recently, a dear online friend and I agreed to swap goddesses. Here is what Purr sent me. She's called Diversity and reflects amongst other things my love of lace and cryptic crosswords! Isn't she fab!




And here is Lavender Goddess who I have just finished and is now ready to go.


She's a closet goddess which is not to say that she tries to hide the fact that she’s a goddess but that she is useful for hanging in a closet or a wardrobe to add fragrance. She's also very glad to hang in a cupboard full of fibery goodness to protect against pesky moths.

Her arms are made from a plastic bangle (about 65-70mm diameter) blanket stitched around with Valdani hand-dyed variegated thread. Being such a large ring, I had to join on thread a good few times and I stitched the ends into the seam before turning the seam into the inside of the ring when it was finished.

Her body is made from a piece of silk strengthened with iron-on stabiliser and the two sides put together and blanket stitched around with two strands of embroidery thread. The bottom bit of her is blanket stitched singly rather than together and press studs (aka poppers I believe) have been added to the inside so that she can be opened to replace the lavender when needed. Inside there is a muslin sachet cut to the same shape as the bottom bit of her and this fastens with a velcro strip so it is easy to replace the lavender and rezip the velcro. The silk has been machine embroidered on both sides with lines of machine embroidered stars in gold metallic thread.

I've saved the piece de resistance until last. This felted bag is not made by me but by George at Rose Coloured World.




I saw it on her blog and couldn't resist so asked if it was for sale. It's even more lovely in reality. A gorgeous turquoise little number lined with Kaffe Fassett fabric and with two handy little pockets inside. I love it!