A Beautiful Gift

The first of two posts today.

I am currently experiencing major problems publishing blogs from Windows LiveWriter into Blogger. According to a forum on the Microsoft website this is due to changes by Microsoft and Blogger and nobody seems to be doing anything about it. Until it is sorted, I am copying and pasting from WLW into Blogger's own (awful) "Compose New Blog" so if the layout comes out all wrong, I apologise. It appears to be impossible to get consistent paragraph layouts with this and it's a real pain. 

As this is the final week of my regular 3-weekly chemo cycle, I am feeling considerably better (just in time to feel horrible again after Friday!) so the timing of this was perfect: on Monday my hubby agreed to take me out for a bit – I have hardly left the house these past weeks and months, except to follow that well-worn path to the hospital and all its attendant joys!

One of the friends I gained while in hospital had contacted me to tell me that she had several pictures in an exhibition held in Dunsford Church over the weekend. Dunsford is a very picturesque village in the Teign Valley, and every two years they put on an art exhibition which is open to all comers, and my hubby and I are both keen to enter something next time! We spent the afternoon in the church having a good look around and meeting some interesting people, and we were very, very impressed with the standard of work, in all media. The bulk of the exhibition was pictures, but there was a large craft section with items laid out on trestle tables the entire length of the church on the further side. Wood carving, embroidery, quilting, stained glass, pottery, etc. etc. At the further end of the table there was a special section showing a collection of the most exquisite textile boxes, many of which featured cats in the design. They opened in the most intriguing way and I fell utterly in love with them! The lady who made them is called Suzanne Shave. She doesn't seem to have a website (yet) which is a shame because it would be great if you could see her other work.

My hubby was as taken with them as I was, and he offered to buy me one! I reminded him that he never did get around to buying me a birthday present this year (there being plenty of other things occupying our minds!), and he agreed to buy my favourite box from the collection, and it now graces our sitting room mantelpiece. Yesterday I took some photos of this beautiful object to share with you now.

The cats on the boxes are all inspired by cats belonging to the lady who made the boxes, either currently or in the past – or should I say, cats to whom she was enslaved? This particular box is in honour of two very handsome cats, Laurence and Leo.

Here is the side view of the box. Suzanne told me that she sources her materials from wherever she can find them – charity shops a lot of the time – she buys scarves and cuts them up. You can see the combination of hand and machine embroidery on this box, and the addition of clusters of small gold beads.

A view from the top, showing the fastening which keeps the box closed.

Underneath, the box has four dinky little stumpy feet! Not strictly necessary but they add such charm to the piece! You an see that they were constructed from rolled up fabric, like the toggles on the closure thread.

The box, open. For the purposes of the photo, I put a couple of small bottles underneath the sides to stop the box form opening fully. Normally the sides would rest on the table.

Looking inside the box, you can see what amazing attention to detail Suzanne shows, with the quality of her finish.

I told my hubby I thought it would be fun to make a few little textile cats to go inside this box, and he suggested taking a leaf out of Suzanne’s book and making representations of all our ktities, past and present! What a lovely idea.

It would be fun to open the box and find it full of cats! I attended several courses on fabric box making back in Plymouth days when I belonged to the Westcountry Embroiderers, and the amazing teacher always said that a box should contain a surprise.

Having had experience of making boxes, I know just how much work has gone into the construction and embellishment of this one. Suzanne said she was delighted it was going to such a good home – to someone who appreciated the work, and who was also a cat person!

Isn’t this a beautiful object? I love its construction, the unusual way it opens, its bold colours and the stylised cats which seem to fill both sides of the box. Happy cats!

Recycled Mini-Album–Sun, Sea and Sand Pt 1

The latest page is a remembrance of summer holidays at the seaside, and has just one photo, of the family holidaying with friends, in the 1950s.

The first photo shows some of the supplies lined up, to make a seaside-themed page.

Some time ago, I was experimenting with painting foil with acrylics, and made the two ATC-sized samples you can see on the left, which were then mounted to be part of a display at a craft show where I was demonstrating my stuff. (I don’t seem to have done a post about making these.) Anyway, I thought it would be fun to do the same technique here, and create a fishing net, this time from a fruit net instead of scrim. The small bag contains some spacer beads from a necklace I bought at the village fete and took apart, and these will make great floats for the net!

Also in my stash, I found some pieces of blue card left over from another project, with a rather interesting edge to them, which looks like waves, so I cut them to size, inked them with Salty Ocean distress ink (appropriately), and layered them together with my ATG glue. I added a bit of inking to the top as well, to indicate the sky.

Next step: the foil. I crumpled up a piece of kitchen foil and applied it with generous amounts of regular matt gel medium.

To create the glaze to colour the foil, I mixed a small quantity of phthalo green and Winsor blue, thinning it with some acrylic polymer. (If you use water, you start to lose the adhesive quality of the paint and it won’t stick on.) I didn’t mix it too thoroughly, so that there would be some variation between the blue and green on the foil.

The foil painted with the glaze. It’s quite shiny, but this doesn’t show up ion the photo.

I painted the net with what was left – the blue and green combined with the orange made a nice dark colour. I made a lot of mess on my craft sheet (and my hands!) doing this, and the final stage was to use the net to wipe the remaining paint off the palette. No waste!!

I tried drying it gently with my heat gun, and it started to shrink up (being plastic) – this was actually a good thing because the mesh became smaller, and it had a firmer texture. I must try melting the stuff a bit more and see what happens. Next, I laid the net down onto the foil, again using copious amounts of gel medium. I then added some glass bead gel medium to the bottom of the net, which, when dry, will look like foamy sea water, and some coarse pumice gel medium to the right, to create some sand, which will be painted when dry. I do love these textured mediums! I have used the pumice one to create earth, and the bitumen roof on my beehive explosion box, as well as sand. With the right colour added, it’s very convincing!

Some linen thread and the beads to make the floats.

The floats added to the net, stuck down with a generous amount of matt gel medium. All this gel medium will dry crystal clear, sticking everything down and just leaving the texture.

The excess will be folded round the back or cut off, once the gel medium is dry.

While waiting for the left-hand page elements to dry, I turned my attention to the right-hand page. For this I am repeating what I did on an earlier page, using Versamark to stamp, and then brushing on some Perfect Pearls for an iridescent background against the black page, heat setting it to finish.

I used the Berry Twist Perfect Pearls at the top, and the Biscotti at the bottom – sky and sand! I tore off two strips of the blue card with the wave pattern at the top, and inked them with Salty Ocean distress ink as before, before laying them down with the photo, using regular matt gel medium.

The pages so far. I have laid the left-hand piece in place, but it is not stuck down yet. I added a bit more of the glass bead gel medium along the bottom of the blue card on the right-hand page. Waiting for everything to dry, which is taking quite a long time!

I have completed the border though, using a wavy line to suit the theme, but not so specifically sea-like that it won’t work on the page I’ve drawn it on (larger page on the right, further on in the signature). I still want to do a bit more work on the right hand page as well, and there is some text to be added. Watch this space.

Felt Poppies Hair Clip

The second of two felt-making posts for today.

During the third of our felt-making classes we made flowers, and this was what I made:

At this stage, the pieces are not fixed together, but arranged as I thought I might fix them. I decided to make a hair clip from these poppies. Before the felt class last night, I quickly assembled it, not realising I’d put the clip on back to front, meaning I had to do it up with my left hand! The teacher said that we need to watch that when making things like hair clips and brooches. I hope I won’t make that mistake again! Anyway, they all loved it.

Today, I took the clip off and sewed it on again the right way round, using thick button thread. Looking at it, the back was a mess. It would be OK just for me (except I’m a bit of a perfectionist!) but if I wanted to make these for gifts or for sale, they’d have to be a lot neater than this.

I thought I could apply my newly acquired needle-felting skills and felt on a back piece to cover all that mess.

I began by laying down some green wool fibres to match the back of the leaves.

I partially felted the whole thing, using my single felting needle, making a rough oval shape.

I didn’t want to felt the whole thing because I wanted to feather it onto the piece at the edges, but it needed to be substantial enough to handle. I had to felt the centre part, which would cover the clip, because obviously you can’t needle-felt through metal! I began with the single needle, turning the piece over frequently.

After a while I had a good go with the Clover tool, which is better for covering a larger area. However, its needles are rather small, and it took a while.

During the afternoon I had attempted, without a great deal of success, to use this tool to try and improve the look of the poppies, which had flattened quite a lot when drying; I had hoped to needle-felt the petals together a bit and force them into a more upright shape. In the end I achieved this with a running stitch. Had I known it, I would have done a lot better to use the larger, single needle.

You can see that the Clover tool has a clear plastic shield around the needles. The green flange above the needles can be turned; in one position it locks the shield to protect the needles (and your fingers), and in the other position, the shield can be retracted against a spring into the handle. As you press the tool up and down on the felt, the needles do their stuff, but the end of the shield remains in contact with the surface so you can’t accidentally pierce your fingers.

As I felted the back piece, it became apparent after a while that it was a bit thin, so I added some more fibres, and resumed felting.

Once the middle was sufficiently felted, I slipped the piece underneath the metal clip.

Taking extreme care so as not to break my needle against the hidden metal part, I began needle-felting, getting as close to the edge of the metal as possible. I pulled off some of the outer edge and feathered what remained, gradually needle-felting outwards towards the edge of the piece.

The back piece did not cover the exposed ends of the clip, however. The clip has a hole at each end, through which you can sew it down, and the stitching was showing and not looking very nice, so I made a couple of end pieces, again felting them in the middle, and leaving the fibres at the ends to be felted onto the piece.

The next photo shows the end piece being felted on. I added a bit more fibre to cover the edge and to blend it in nicely, again taking great care not to strike the needle against the hidden metal.

Nice neat back! The little stab marks from the needle will disappear eventually. I think this is a much better finish.

Here is the finished piece. You can see that I have embellished the centres of the poppies with some little gold-coloured glass beads, which I think really lift the design and give it a bit of focus. Originally I was going to embroider French knots using a shiny black embroidery thread but in my huge box of threads, I had every colour but black!! I tried embroidering with black stranded cotton but it simply didn’t show up. Then I thought of black beads, and again, in all my stash, not a single small black bead! Why is it that you can have a whole room full of stuff, and still not have what you want?!! Anyway, it was a blessing in disguise, because I decided to use the gold beads instead, and the result is actually much better than if I’d used black.

Finally, a detailed shot of the beadwork.

This project illustrates very well the way wet felting and needle felting can be combined to good effect.

Fourth Felt-Making Class

The first of two posts today on felt. In the penultimate session of our five-week course, last night we did needle-felting. This is so different from wet felting that it could really be considered an entirely separate craft, but the principle is the same – forcing the wool fibres to lock together to form a firm fabric – only the method is different. I love how you can bring the two together to great effect.

We began with the teacher giving us a demonstration, and showing some pieces she had made, including some small 3-D animals (which she said we wouldn’t be doing at this session) – much as I admire the skill in making these, and can see their attraction, I have no desire to make them, and would prefer to use needle felting for embellishing previously made wet-felted pieces, or for making stand-alone embellishments for other purposes. She described how you can use all your little bits, off-cuts and other stuff you might be tempted to throw away – nothing need be wasted!

She also showed us some images on the computer, of various people’s work, all of which was very impressive.

Some time ago I was given a needle-felting kit, so I brought this along. Included in the kit was a tool known as a Clover tool, consisting of a holder and several fine felting needles with a retractable guard to protect one’s fingers; the teacher said this was fine for covering a wider area, but not so good for more accurate work. The teacher had some individual needles for sale on her table and I bought one – it is a lot more substantial than my tool, and I was able to achieve good detail with it. I shall be ordering more of these from the Internet.

I decided to try my hand at improving my first piece, which came out looking vaguely like a field of poppies. I added more wool where necessary to tidy up the design, and added some shading to the brown centres of the flowers. In this photo, you can see the needle sticking up. The needles are extremely sharp, and have barbs along their length to catch and snag the wool fibres and felt them together. You work on a thick piece of foam, and stab down vertically. It makes a satisfying sound! You do have to concentrate, though, or you end up stabbing yourself… Ouch! I felt that! (Sorry…)

I also added more orange wool where necessary. You can see that my poppies now have more definition, and the shading of the centres makes them look less flat.

I was just starting to add some red accents to the flowers, to separate the petals and add some detail (see the above photo), when the class came to an end, so I still have quite a bit of work to do on this piece. I am intending to add some stems and leaves in darker green, and to make some separate leaves which will then be needle-felted onto the piece, and I will also cover up one or two places along the edges where there is some white showing.

Here is the round-up at the end of the class. In the first one, the teacher is discussing one particular piece.

As you can see, there is a variety of work on the table – some people created a small picture, while others created small stand-alone items, and a couple of us resurrected our early pieces to add embellishments and definition.

These are the small pieces, together with a couple of little pictures.

This landscape picture from the second session is being embellished with daffodils. She is going to add more flowers, getting smaller into the distance. The flowers are wonderfully tactile, and give great focus to the picture.

I loved this small piece with its spiral design. You can see that it is quite thick and substantial. The teacher said you could make a set of buttons like this!

Finally, the little gingerbread man that the teacher made during the evening, and which began as her initial demonstration. He is even wearing a little scarf, and he has very bright eyes. This piece, and several other small pieces, were made using a cookie cutter as a template – you lay the wool fibres over the top, and stab through with the needle, working up to the edges of the inside of the cutter until you have sufficient felt to work without the aid of a template.

What a lot of variety in our work tonight!

I was extremely impressed with how easy needle-felting turned out to be, and how quick; it also uses remarkably little wool! Also, how much less work it was to do (as I also discovered with wet felting). I had been a bit concerned that I might not be able to manage it, and was very pleasantly surprised. I love how painterly needle-felting is; you can take the smallest wisp of wool and build up shading very gradually, or make a well-defined edge. You can be as precise as you like! – quite unlike wet felting which by its very nature is vague because things tend to move around. If you make a mistake, you simply cover it up with more wool. You can use needle-felting to add definition and emphasis to a wet-felted piece, or you can start a piece using needle felting, to attach the different elements together to prevent them moving, and then wet-felt it, which will make it shrink and become firmer. So much potential and variety, and so many ideas spring to mind!

Charity Shop Stash

Last week my hubby finally agreed to take me shopping in town – this was long overdue but he has been very busy. I had to have my eyes tested and went to the bank and other boring stuff, but I thoroughly enjoyed being left to my own devices for the whole day until I ran out of steam mid-afternoon and called him to pick me up!

One of the things I wanted to do was have a good trawl through the charity shops for any useful fabrics for the T-shirt upcycling I have planned for the New Year. I managed to pick up several really cheap T-shirts, and found some real bargains in other clothes, and household fabrics which can be cut up and repurposed.

I got a couple of men’s shirts in that gorgeous striped and checked fabric – the checked shirt is actually pure linen and feels fabulous; the other is cotton.

Plenty of fabric to create panels to let into the t-shirts.

One of the T-shirts will be a shabby chic makeover with pink and cream, and I found this stunning pink pashmina-type scarf which, if you look closely, you can see has a delicate woven pattern which is in reverse on the back. For pennies I got several crocheted doilies, all in a nice cream colour. If I don’t use all these straight away, they can be used for pressing into texture paste to get some interesting results.

I wanted more lace, and managed to find what looked like a brand new petticoat made of nylon satin (quite nice) with lots of deep lace on it in pink.

I also found a small blue table runner with a deep lace border all around.

For another project (not sure yet how I shall use this) I found a cross stitch tablecloth with lots of motifs on it – this is a repeating geometric shape:

and there were also some narrow motifs suitable for borders.

At village fetes and charity shops, I’m always on the lookout for old jewellery which can be taken apart, and the beads etc. used for embellishments. On this occasion I found a charm bracelet with lots of useable stuff on it, and some chain which can also be repurposed. Some of the charms are suitable for making moulds from. I bought a couple of cheap necklaces with lots of components – shell discs, sequins, small beads.

My best find of the day, though, was a gorgeous pink and white satin counterpane quilt with an embroidered panel down the centre, consisting of three separate motifs.

There is loads of material in this as it’s double (if not king) sized, and if I unpick it carefully, there is plenty of pink ribbon and I should be able to use the wadding again, too. Here is what it looks like along the sides:

The back is plain pink.

When I got it home, I had second thoughts about cutting it up at all because it’s so pretty as it is, but I don’t need it as a quilt, and I have to be firm with myself and do what I originally intended! I will get a huge amount out of this, which can be used for all sorts of projects, not just an upcycled T-shirt.

When I go into a charity shop, I feel like my hubby when he goes metal detecting – that sense of anticipation, and never knowing what you will find!

Sorting my Embellishments

I've now separated out all the beads and shells from the cheap jewellery I bought at the village fete on Monday, and it's a lot easier to see them, and the potential in them for embellishing my projects.

I thought I'd keep the chains, as they might also be used to decorate something.

Now I've got to find somewhere to keep them all - where I can find them when I need them!