Seniors Challange Bag

Back in February I was figuring out a challenge to give to my Seniors Class. The challenge was for them to use their scraps of fabric, cut them into strips, then do something extra with the strips & make the finished product into something usefull. This little carry bag was my attempt at my challenge for them. All of the fabrics were already in my stash, as were the handles, and the only thing I had to buy was another reel of quilting thread. I thought I was being smart & using what I had in my stash, but there was not enough of the orange thread to finish the quilting. The paisley design is my own digitized one. I had been playing with creating my own pattern runs & the little scallop around the edge ( which is not really visible in this pic) is my own attempt at digitizing a pattern run.

Well, this little bag is finished, the term is over, & it is time to come up with another challenge for them. I have thoughts for a new one, probably to do with colour. Hopefully it will help them to understand the terms of contrast, harmonious, triadic, tints & shade.

Another Shoe Bag

Last week I thought I had better get in do another shoe bag. The exhibition is getting closer by the day & I still have 5 to do. So this is my first attempt at digitizing ballet shoes & I am pretty happy with them. The polycotton fabric I am not very happy with as it has wrinkled a bit, even with a good stabilizer behind it. I must just use a good quality cotton for the rest of them. I have a few weeks holidays from classes so I must make an effort to get the rest done. I still have to sew the bags up, this is only the digitizing.

A drawn Thread Mesh Experiment

It has been a while since I have posted anything to this, I have been stitching, just not posting here. Anyway, here is a little experiment I have been working on getting ready for a major piece later in the year. I have wanted to play with drawn thread meshes for some time and this is one of the first. This one uses handdyed fabric, hand dyed & silver threads, though I am not sure the silver is real visible.

There may be a few more pics in the next few days if I can get this computer & camera worked out. Since my PC has been fixed, everything has changed. I get a different program popping up now not only when I scan things but when I go to download pics from my camera. It is like a whole new learning curve again. Oh well, I guess I will have to just work it all out.

Scissor Fob

It has been a while since I have posted here but at long last I can post a pic of my scissor fob. This was created for an on-line textile friend. It has been made for a while but I did not want to post a pic here until she had recieved it. Just so that I did not spoil the surprise, because i know she reads this blog. We decided to do a little swap just between the two of us. So this was made using my own hand dyed linen fabric & threads. They were left overs from my "Seahorse Sanctuary" using Hardanger techniques.

At long last! I finally have my own PC back with all my favourite programs installed. Now why would I not have it you all ask? Well, it is like this. The last day of summer (February 28th) littereally went out with a BANG!


The bang was created by a huge thunderstorm which decided it wanted to light up my backyard with a lightning strike. The lightning hit a huge gum tree in our neighbours yard, splattering the bark all over our yard, and putting a split in the tree.

These pics were taken the next day and you might think they are a bit fuzzy. In fact the fuzz is caused by the fog that we had, heralding in the first day of Autumn. Such a contrast to the day before.

The SES guys came to check out the tree & said it had to come down. YIPPEE!!!!! We were all dancing! No more gum leaves to clog up our gutters & drains & more sun for my orange tree to grow! So here are a few pics of the guys cutting down the massive gum tree.

The red rectangle at the bottom of the pic is the roof of our neighbour's 2 story house, and the little orange spec in the middle of the pic is the brave man who was cutting the tree down!

The storm also took out a few electrical items in our house including our internet connection & router. So for the last 10 days I have been begging, borrowing & stealing the use of someone elses PC.

Christine's Band

Band Round Robin

This is the band I have done for Miss Muffet's band sampler. MM has done the Wessex Stitchery at the top & I have done the Drawn Thread in purple.

My instant reaction when this arrived was that it needed orange. However, orange is not my favourite colour to work in & there was not quite the right shade in my stash. I did however have the same shade of purple, even if it was a thicker thread than I normally use.

I deliberated for some time whether to use this thicker thread and in the end decided to just go for it. I usually like to work in much finer threads that this. However I feel that this thicker thread has added some texture & contrast to the piece and also blends with what MM has done.

It will be interesting to see what other people add to it.

This afternoon was a bit of fun. I am trying to prepare for another piece of work, ready for an exhibition in October. I have an immage in my head that I want to produce, and part of that involved doing some resist dyeing. So I have tried out two different resists, one using cornflour and one using stitching. I also wanted to try out some colours with the dye to see which would give the best colour for what I wanted. The stitch resist worked the best and the best colour ( I think) is a mix of two different colours. The fun part will be to reproduce the mixed colour ion my actual piece!

Fabric Postcard

Well it has been one of those days today, wild, wet and windy, and parts of Sydney are flooding. A far cry from last week when the ground was dry & parched. I was supposed to go to my embroidery group today but with car shuffles going on, and the weather, I decided to stay home, stay dry and create.

One of the on-line groups I belong to has monthly challenges of which I haven't participated in much lately because of my course. So this year I decided I would try to participate, trying to stretch myself in some way, shape or form. This month's challenge is "Alphabetica" so I thought I would practice my digitizing and produce my first postcard. Next time I will try something that I have not done before.

Hi to everyone from LMT. This postcard is for all of you.

Shoe Bags 4 & 5

Yesterday was the first day I had home for a while that I could sit & play with my machine. So I decided to churn out another two shoe bags. I have to do about a dozen of them before August so I thought I would make a move. So that is five done, they just have to be made up now but that will not take very long & when I have them all stitched I may just set up a production line and do them all at once.
I have been doing other stitching as well but you will have to wait a while before I post those.
It has been raining most of the day today YIPPEE!!!!!!!. Some people may wonder why I am happy about the rain but I guess if you are reading this from Oz then you will understand. For everone else this part of our great country is in serious drought and we need the rain DESPERATELY!

Well, it is that time of the year when I have to think about my classes. My Seniors class is the one that I have to think about the most. Remember, they are Seniors, that means they are older than me and have had way more life experiences than I have. One lady has even worked in the textile trade all her life and she is now in her 80's . Most of them come for a day out, some come to chat, and the odd one comes to learn. It is still my job to inspire them and maybe teach them a new skill. Now do you see my delema?

So, my way of getting around this problem is to give them a challenge at the beginning of each term.

This term's challenge is to use scrap fabrics, cut it into strips, then do something with it. Of course, I have lots of magazine pics and a few things of my own to inspire them but it will be really interesting to see what they come up with.

So I went through my own fabric stash and chose the ones in the top pic, I have then cut them into different widths and stitched them together to form one large piece of fabric which is the bottom pic. I now have to think of what to do with it. I have an idea but that means a lot more work. But that is OK because this thing is talking to me already. I feel lots of machine embroidery about to happen.

I thought it might be time to give out a taste of what I have been stitching lately. I have pulled out a piece of Drawn Thread that I started in 2005 and am trying to finish it. There seems to be a lot of finishing of UFO's, WIP's or whatever we like to call them being finished this year. So this will be one of mine to finish.It should be finished very soon. Well, the stitching will be finished tonight but there will be some finishing that needs to be done, like shopping for fabric for lining. Anyway, the corners were an experiment & I am very happy with how they turned out. Watch this space for a pic of the completely finished item!

Band RR book Cover

Since I came back home I have been working on a book cover for the band RR. It has been digitized and stitched out on my sewing machine onto hand dyed calico.

I started working on this last year and I was trying to achieve a blackwork look by machine. It sort of worked but the positions of the stitches leave a little to be desired and to change that I would have to change the whole outline of the letters. That would mean basically starting from scratch and I did not want to do that.

It was done on my Artista program & I have a lot of learning to do on that one!

Stitching Sisters Band Sampler

Even though I have been away on holidays it doesn't mean I neglected my stitching. This is for a Counted Band Sampler Round Robin I have joined in with an on-line stitching group for the next 18 months. There are 9 of us in it with two months given to stitch our bands.

I have decided that each band will be of my own design and hopefully stretch me in some way.

This one is my own designs and it is the first time I have done one of the filling stitches. It also gave me a chance to practice my doves eyes that I learnt last year and realize that I need to practice my picots.

The threads are also some of my own hand dyed ones.

Christmas & New Year was spent a little further up the coast at Scott's Head. It is one of those little sleepy coastal villages that quadruples in size at this time of year.

The beach here goes for miles and at the other end there is another town which has a river

estuary.

This is the view from the other end of the beach and the beginning of the estuary. I haven't walked the full length of this beach yet, it is a long way.

This is just one of the frangipanni trees in the garden where we stayed. The colour is just beautiful and this town is the only place I have seen orange frangipannis.

This is the grevillea that was growing outside our bedroom window. The wattle birds and the blue wrens would come & sit but never would stay still long enough for me to take a photo.

However this little baby kookaburra graced us with his presence one morning. He sat on our balcony for ages and did not fear us as we took heaps of photos of him. My eldest son tried to feed him bread but of course he was not interested. He would have much prefered a worm, lizard, cicarda, cricket of a piece of ham. All the Christmas ham was gone by this stage so we had nothing else to offer him.

Well it has been some time since I added to this. I guess that is because I was busy getting all my course work finished and hung for presentation and assesment. I might add at this point that I have been getting great feedback about my work and I received a Grade 1 pass for it all. That was the highest level pass that they gave so I am pretty happy.



When that was all over it was a case of getting ready for Christmas & holidays away. I spent a wonderful week at Forster on the N.S.W North Coast which was soooooooooooo relaxing! Normal deal, long walks, swimming ( well maybe dipping the toes in as the water was freezing at this stage!) eating out, sleeping, reading and of course some stitching. The body just needed to STOP after a very busy year and it was the perfect week.



This is the breakwall at the entrance to the Lakes where we would walk nearly every day. It was very common to see the dolphins swimming here and one morning we saw some snorkelers riding the currents. It was amazing to watch them as the currents were moving so fast. I'm
glad they waited for the tide to come in!

If we continued to walk up the breakwall we would come to the bridge that goes across to Tuncurry. Sometimes we have walked across here & have seen turtles & stingrays swimming in the water. There are always fish & pelicans to be to be seen. The water in the center is the beginnings of the lakes.












This is the main beach at about 8am. We would walk along here, up over that headland right up to the next headland. There are lots of beautiful vantage points along the way to take in the views, lots of seats to just sit & take it all in. In the past at the right time of the year we have seen whales swimming off that end headland. The walk to the end headland takes a while but the view is worth it. You can see for miles in over 180 degree spans!

Advanced Certificate Major Work No 2

One of my aims for this year was to get through the Advanced Certificate in Traditional Embroidery Techniques Course that was being offered buy our Embroiderer's Guild here in Sydney. It was lots of work, having to produce a portfolio, a visual diary, two major works, and a study in the history of our chosen technique. About 6 weeks ago I was having reservations about finishing major work number 2. I was at the point that I didn't care any more, I had achieved what I wanted and that was all that mattered. I had discovered that there was a lot more to this drawn thread world than meets the eye.

Well, today I am happy to say that my Major Work number 2 is finished! With one week to spare! All I have to do now is present my work! Yippee! So without further ado, here is is for everyone to see. I have used my own hand dyed fabric & thread and hours & hours of labour!

Linnwood Verandah Tile Challenge


This afternoon was planned with some stitchouts of a piece of lace I have been digitizing. I set the machine up, downloaded the design, and off I went. Well, there is more to this digitizing world than meets the eye! As the design had no mesh backing behind it, I had used lots of underlay and lots of connectors which also had lots of underlay. Not so good in the machining! All it did was stitch up & down in virtually the one spot, the WSF plus gold thread got jammed under the base plate & the whloe thing ripped!

I tried again, this time with a nomal thread rather than a metallic, and I also increased the size of the design, thinking this would help. Unfortunately it didn't & the same jamming problems kept happening. Oh well, back to the drawing board! I knew I kept all the levels of my design in seperate files for a reason! It will make it easier to go back & fix.

So, Miss Muffet, if you are reading this, the Linnwood Verandah Tile Challenge is still happening, it just has to go back to the drawing board.

FSL Digitized Chrismas Bell

This was my first attempt at stitching out this design. The red was interconnecting well and I was hopeful. When the gold border started happening I knew it wasn't going to hold together well. The outside edge didn't even connect with the red center. So I let it finish stitching, and before I washed it out, I manually stitched another row of zig-zag so it would connect the outer border & the red center together. It overlapped on my screen so the only thing I think could cause this to happen is "pull compensation" or the WSF was not tight enough in the hoop. I thought I had the WSF drum tight so I must look into pull compensation. Something else I need to learn about.

Back to the drawing board to fix up the file. I then stitched out a second one but in different thread. The design stitched out well.

Now to the wash out test. The red bell shrunk heaps and the gold one only stightly. As they were both stitched on the same WSF I can only conclude that the thread played a part. The file was only changed slightly to bring the border in closer, so I don't think that played any more part other than to have the border connect to the body of the bell, which was the problem in this red one.

I've now printed out a template which I will use when I block them. It should help keep the shape more true to what I want.

Machine Drawn Thread

Saturday was a huge lot of fun. Some friends & I had arranged to meet at my house & have a sewing day. Two of us wanted to explore the world of machine drawn thread work.

I thought I would be well prepared and had a design all ready. I had chosen fabric delibrately with a huge slubby thread that would be easy to pull out. The end result was going to be a book cover and I wanted the design to sit a certain way. I carefully machined around the outline & set about withdrawing the threads. Traditional drawn thread work is 90% preparation & 10% stitching. Well................ this was 99.9999999999999999% preparation & 2 seconds of machining fun! So much for the book cover! I got one little section of my design done & it instantly became a UFO to be changed into machined cutwork!

Back to the drawing board! I cut another piece of fabric & just pulled the threads out right across the width. This still took some time & was still far more preparation than stitching!

The fabric was huge slubby threads one way & little soft fluffy ones the other. It was the little soft fluffy ones that I got to stitch over. I set the machine on the widest zig-zag & off I went! Those fluffy little threads got eaten up by the zig-zag big time! I had only to move the work slightly sideways & more would get eaten up!

Now the big question.................................would I do it again? Who knows! It definately has creative possibilities but experimentation is definately the key. After seeing my friend R's piece it is obvious that different fabrics will react different ways. I would have to know what I was going to end up with .

As for the day, it was a lot of fun. Lots of laughs, caring, sharing, cups of tea, lamingtons & home made bikkys . Gee, almost forgot the rocky road! Add some creativity and what more could I ask for? Hopefully this may become a regular activity!

Negative Spaces

There was some discussion yesterday on one of my groups about negative spaces. One of the girls was painting negative spaces but was not sure about how to apply it to embroidery. So I promised her I would upload some pics to show her.





This cushion I made a few years back when I forgot to take my regular stitching to my local EG group. It was lucky I had some fabric & thread to do something with & this was the end result. To answer the obvious question, yes I made the lace too. No, it was not made in one day, only born from forgetting my work!







The picture is also another example of the use of stitching the negative space. I did this one well over ten years ago & it became my holiday stitching project over about three years. The people we used to camp next to year after year used to comment " Haven't you finished that yet?" It now proudly hangs on my bedroom wall.







So JJ these are just to inspire you to take the plunge & experiment with the negative spaces in your stitching. I think you will surprise yourself.

Book Cover

Yesterday afternoon was another bit of fun. I have noticed in this digitized lace world they are doing anything from fillet crochet to cutwork to reticella and more. The list is endless, so I thought I would try for some drawn thread.

This piece was inspired by my drawn thread samples and started out with me just wondering if it could be done. With a bit of time & patience the answer is most definately yes. However, this design would not pass the wash-out test so I stitched it onto a fabric base, one of those I dyed back in at the end of August.

The end result will turn into a book cover for my resources & inspiration journal, just for my drawn thread.

Now it is back to the drawing board to produce the above design so it WILL pass the wash-out test!

Painting Day




Today was a bit of fun painting. I don't do it very often & I have been meaning to do this one for a few weeks. This piece is for my Seniors class which starts again in about 2 weeks. I like to give them a challenge for the first lesson of a new term & this piece of fabric is this term's challenge. I have painted it, & they will get a square each to do something with. They have been asked to bring a variety of threads & needles with them & to also think Christmas. I will give them a sheet which will give a list of instructions (ie the limits) & they have to provide the creativity. I find they really like to be told step by step what to do & this gives them a little bit of a nudge to step outside the comfort zone. What they make it into will also be their choice so we could have anything . It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

Shoe Bag 2



Shoe bag 2 has been stitched. Now it has been done I wish I had of changed the font of the stitching and reversed the shoe itself. It would have made it just that bit more different than the last one.

Oh well, we live & learn! The next one will be really different (I hope!).

Two done, ten more to go. But who is counting?

Digitized Christmas Bells




Over the last two weeks it has been a journey of discovery with more digitized lace. This little bell took quite some time to work out ( like about 4 days!) and all of 15 minutes to stitch out. I stitched out a total of six while I was reading a novel that had to be back at the library .

They are rather cute and are just the right size for my Christmas tree.

My mind is working on how to change this to a very special little Christmas bell. I have lots of ideas going through my head, one is already on the way. The others will just have to wait their turn.

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.