Personal Challenges

Well, it is less than a month to Christmas, (view my decoration made for 2007 above) & even less time untill I go on holidays again. So it is that time of the year that I start to plan for next year. OK, so what is on my personal agenda for 2008 ?

A wedding - one wedding gown & three bridesmaids dresses, due late in the year but planning has already started.

Two quilts, both 'big birthday' presents. One has already been started but a long way from being finished. Mmmmm........time is running out. The second is due later in the year (around the time of the wedding) but has not even been designed yet! Ouch............... have to get a wriggle on!

A piece of Reticella, like what I did here, just a bigger piece & a different design. The planning of this piece is just about finished & I might even get to put needle in fabric some time this week. Yippee! This will be my holiday stitching, and January, and February, and March and..............

Then there is the Filet Work that I want to try. You know, net based fabric with embroidery & needleweaving, very geometric, very me.

Enough challenges you all think? Of course not! Last Tuesday I was doing a little blog surfing & came accross Sharon B's "Take it Further Challenge. " You can read about it here. Well, being a sucker for a challenge, as well as wanting to be able to interpret design into stitches, and extend my design capabilities, I have signed up for the challenge.

What HAVE I done! Oh well, you all have something to look foreward to seeing here in 2008

A New Toy To Play With

Last Saturday was A Stitches Plus day. It was our last meeting for the year, so Christmas lunch (where we all brought a plate), & an inspirational walk in the bush was the order of the day. So armed with camera , I set off with everyone to photograph anything which caught my attention. There were amazing seed pods, beautiful & interesting Australian wildflowers, multi-coloured & textured gum leaves, interesting rock formations & much more. I turned on the camera only to find it would not turn on fully. Disaster! After much fiddling, changing of batteries, prodding & poking, I gave up on the camera & resorted to my very limited sketching skills.

Yesterday I took the camera into my local camera store to see if they could shed any light on the problem. After much prodding & poking by the technician, I was told that it would cost $$$$$ to fix & I could buy a new one for just a few $ more. So I am now the proud owner of a brand new camera which takes pics like this.

A daisy which is about 5cm in diameter.

A 2cm width sample of my bobbin lace.

Anyone like to guess what this is?All I have to do now is learn how to use it to it's fullest. The camera shop will give me free lessons so I think I will take them up on their offer.

A new blog to visit

Last Saturday, over our Christmas lunch meeting, my creative stitching group voted to start up a blog about what we do. I had been thinking about doing it for a while but needed to ask everyone else what they wanted. Of course I was met with questions like "what is a blog", but after much discussion most of us agreed it would be good publicity. So our new blog is up & running & can been seen here. I hope you all join us as we share our travels through the world of creative textiles.

Mixed Threads - An Exhibition

This my good friend Robyn Johnstone with her two works hanging at the gallery. She is another very talented artist & stitcher & in the two works that you can see here she has first painted, then combined surface stitchery with cut work & drawn thread work. Just yummo. Bug hugs Miss Robyn.

Mixed Threads - An Exhibition

How WOW are these? These two fabulous works are by Elizabeth Low of Australia, posted here with her permission. These great landscapes are stitched by hand, believe it or not, and they are just beautiful. They are currently on exhibition at Rogues Gallery, Long Jetty, on the beautiful Central Coast if you want to see them for real.

Three groups of the Embroiderer's Guild of NSW got together to produce work for this exhibition. The Stitchers Plus group, which I am a member of, was one of those groups. We had an official opening last Saturday complete with food, wine, & speeches. A really great afternoon was had by all. It is an exciting feeling walking into a gallery & seeing your own work & the work of collegues gracing the walls. More pics to come.

Cutwork Success!

I tried today at my second attempt of digitized cutwork. I had lots of help & suggestions from my on-line friends to make it better. I took some of these suggestions on board and managed to have success. I used the same digitized design as last time and it looks so much better. I have made myself some notes to use in the future & will add more still, as I think even this could do with a little fixing. I need to experiment some more.

A Digitized Cutwork Disaster

What is this disaster you all ask? Well, this is my first attempt at digitizing some cutwork. The idea was to lay down all the support stitches, cut out the appropriate area, then stitch the support bars and surrounding satin stitch.

OK, so it was all digitized, everything looked spot on. I download the design to the machine, hooped the fabric & stabilizer & off I went. Everything was good until I had to remove the hoop to cut. Once I cut, the stability was all gone. Obvioulsy everything all moved, maybe I didn't have it tight enough in the hoop.

I let the design continue without cutting the second side and as you can see it is beautiful. Obviously I need to sort out the support issue once I cut. Back to the drawing board again.