Shoe bags

This morning was a bit of fun stitching the front of shoe bag number 1. All that remains now is for it to be stitched up. Only about 11 more to do!

Garden Day
Yesterday was garden day. We may still be in the grips of drought in this country but the 7 inches of rain last week has my garden singing. It took me 2 hours to pull all the weeds from one plot alone. Lesson learnt ? Don't forget to STRETCH ! I thought I nearly lost this iris to the drought but I am pleased to see she has survived and showing her full glory.

On the stitching front I have played with designing more digitized FSL, ( I am hooked!) and of course there was more stitching on major work number 2.

Digitized Lace

Ever since I got my computer program for my sewing machine I have been dreaming of making free standing lace. I joined a group of people who do just this and have been slowly working through the exercises. This pic is exercise two.

My inspiration came from a day out last week to the Art Gallery of NSW. I came home & drew up my design on a computer drawing program, imported this drawing into my machine program and went to work.

Attempt number 1 is at the top of the photo. I used an inbuilt design to make the mesh background but it was too dense to show off my scrolls so I tried again.

Attempt number 2 is in the center. This time I used my own mesh design but an inbuilt pattern run for the scallop edge. As soon as it starting stitching I knew it would fall apart so it was back to the drawing board.

Attempt number 3 uses my mesh & my scallop. It took ages to get the scallop right so that it would run neatly around the edge with no gaps & no jump stitches. I was pretty happy with this one, it at least passes the wash out test, but I know it could do with more work.

So what have I learnt?

* the importance of underlay
* the importance of start & stop points
* Patience is definately a virtue
* All good things comme to those who wait.

I think there are lessons in everthing we do. I sure had some with this.

Test Shoes

These shoes are my test, getting ready to make items for sale at an exhibition next year. I have been asked to make shoe bags for the sales table so I decided that I could do something a little more fancy than we had last time.

These shoes have been drawn in a computer drawing program, imported into my Artista program, then digitized, then stitched on my beloved machine. I just wanted to see how they stitched out & so far I am very happy with them. Of course the colours & the fabric will change, but that is the fun part of sorting through fabrics & threads. At least I know that the digitizing part has worked.

I am definately getting better at this .......................

Mountmellick Stitch

Today I had a little play with Mountmellick Stitch. One of my Thursday students brought in a project that she wanted to make. It uses all kinds of stitches but she was stumped on Palestrina knots & Mountmellick stitch.

I was fine with the Palestrina Knots but had to search for Mountmellick stitch. It was a stitch I had not done before. It did give her instructions in the magazine that the project was in, but as usual they were not very clear. My good friend Miss Stitcharoo came to my help with some better instructions.

I played first with a hand dyed perle 12 thread, & went very quickly from very wide to much narrower. I then changed to another hand dyed perle 8 thread which worked much better.

It is a great textural effect & I think I could use this heaps in my work.

Some of you may wonder what this orchid has to do with needleart, but to me it is inspiration. Besides that, I grew it and am very proud of it!

I haven't posted for a while, things on the family front have been really busy. It isn't that I haven't been stitching, because I have! I have been working on Major work number 2 and that is going to be some while before it will be finished. I have vowed to myself that I will only post a pic of the finished piece.




I have also made myself a new skirt, it only needs the hem done to be wearable.

The fabric is pictured here, bought on a day out with the girls in Cabramatta. For those of you who don't know, Cabramatta is the Vietnamese quarter of our fair city & is just great for shopping for fabric. The food alone is worth the visit!

Enough time playing with blogs, back to work.