My New Book

Yesterday I had a fabulous day. A group of five of us from our local sewing group went on a day out to Crowle Home in Meadowbank. It was my first time and I was in Heaven! The Emporium and the Fabric Cave are treasure troves for any type of needleworker. Everything from beads, buttons, embroidery threads, needlework kits, bias binding, batting, crochet threads, fabric, books and all kinds of goodies. Everything is donated and at reduced rates, with some fabulous bargains to be had.

I spent a grand total of $25 and brought home lots of goodies. There is enough thread to make my Tenneriffe lace until I die, numerous rolls of cotton tape for name tags for 20c each, a piece of lovely wool fabric to make a jacket, numerous spools of  beautiful variagated machine embroidery thread, brand new, still wrapped in plastic.

Then there is the treasure of all treasures, my book on fabric flower making shown above. As you can see it is very old with the price of  7/6. Australia changed to decimal currency in 1966 so the book is older than that, but there is no date on the book anywhere. Cost of book .......... $2. Bargain! This little gem is staying in my book case forever.

Great day yesterday, thanks ladies!

My New Book

The latest edition to my library. It's in Italian, but who needs to read when the diagrams & photos are so clear? Watch this space!

Loopy Lace Page 13

Made by Dale Rollerson, a background has been created using black felt gilded with gold foil. The letters were digitized, then stitched onto black felt, burnt out, then applied to the background. Other small digitized lace motifs were stitched & applied, then all were covered with a layer of "lace". This lace layer was made by using a fancy machine stitch on Water Soluble Fabric.

This was the last page that I received for my "Loopy Lace " book. It's been nice to go back over them all again after so long. Now stay tuned to see the pages that I made during this Round Robin. There were 16 in all, counting this first page of my own book.

Loopy Lace Pg 12

A "Loopy Lace Angel" by Robyn Eccleston. A spider web image was manipulated on the computer, then printed & stitched as free machine lace onto a painted nappy liner applied to black felt.

Painted nappy liners are not something I have played with, at least not in a creative sense. Mmm............ maybe one day, but there are too many things at the moment that are higher on my prioity list.

Loopy Lace Page 11

Page 11 is by Anita Jenkins. Digitizing software was used to create the gold patterns which were then stitched on to felt & later burnt with a heat gun to produce the lace effect. The border was created using FME over threads sandwiched between two layes of water soluble fabric

Loopy lace Pg 10

This page is not signed and also has no notes, so am not sure who has made it. The background is hand painted card with a fancy machine pattern stitched in straight rows of orange. Another fancy stitch has been used in curves in a thicker thread which means it is probably bobbin work. An overlay of orange tissue paper covers the painted card, with just a small window to view the stitching.

I am not sure where the computer has come in, possibly in the curved rows of stitching. They could have been digitized. Still, it is a page that some nice person made for my book.

Loopy Lace - Page 9

Page 9 is by Kirry Toose. A graphic face stitched onto tulle then appliqued onto wool fabric. A digitized spiral motif, repeated along the sides, was stitched onto felt which was then burnt to give the lace effect.

Burning of felt with a heat gun is not something I have tried. I would imagine it would smell & I am not sure my sinuses would approve.

Loopy Lace Pg 8 "Betwixt The Two A Century Has Past"

Page 8 is by Gloria Allport, and contains beautiful antique lace as well as more modern digitized lace. Both laces have a sparkle, the digitized one being stitched in a bronzed metallic thread on water soluble fabric. All has ben stitched onto black felt.

Loopy Lace Page 7

Page 7 was made by Margaret Roberts of Digital Gran fame. There are no notes with this page, and nothing in my file so I will take a guess at what was done. Margaret, if you get to read this, please correct me if I am wrong.

It looks like Margaret had some fun with with her digitizing program as I can see some shapes that have been repeated. They are different sizes & different colours & look like they may have been produced with a kaleidoscope tool. All have been stitched over some free standing lace made on water soluble fabric, with ribbons & fancy knitting yarns included for texture. There are other small digitized shapes repeated over the base fabric to give background repetition & continuity. All have been stitched onto a background of organza layered over felt.

Loopy Lace Page 6

Page 6 came from Leonie Bryant, who created an image with a paintbrush tool using a few different colours. This was then printed onto hand made paper. The fish were created from fabric, then FME lace was created around them using water soluble fabric. The fish & lace were hand stitched to the paper, then everything was stitched to felt.

Using a paper background is not something I have tried, though I have used small pieces of paper in my work, like this bookmark. Paper tends to blunt everything, including scissors & sewing machine needles. I do have special scissors just for paper, & I could mark a packet of needles just for paper, but the reality is I love fabric better.

Loopy lage - Page 5

This page came from Toni Valentine who used Photoshop to blend layers of a photograph. The image was then transferred to pelmet vilene using image transfer paper. Pieces of digitized free standing lace were added.

By the time this page was produced, I had already played with the same type of image transfer
paper on a page that I had produced for someone else. I have pics of those pages too, so I'll post them at some stage too.

Loopy Lace Pg 4 - Reflective Alliteration

Pg 4 was made by Sue Martin, who also used digitizing software to play with letting, circles & pre-programed lace fill stitches. Stitched onto fabric backed with something farlly stiff, like heavy vilene & backed with more fabric.

Loopy lace Pg 3 -

Page 3 was made by "Vonraj", who used an image as a source of inspiration in her digitizing software. The image was digitized a number of different ways including fill stitches, lined stitches & patterned lines. All the pieces were then pieced together into a crazy patchworked effect of a mini quilt.

Loopy Lace Page 2

Pg 2 of my book was made by Marj Long. Clip art icons were played with in a drawing program so they overlapped. The image was then digitized & stitched onto tulle, which was then applied to black felt. The background was scrunched paper that had been printed with a scanned lace image. Other lace motifs were stitched onto felt & cut out with a soldering iron, then placed around the edge of the background.

Scanned images printed onto coloured paper as well as playing with a soldering iron are two textile encounters I have yet to try.

Loopy Lace Page 1

Page one of my book "Loopy Lace" was my first attempt at creating a piece of digitized lace. I'd wanted to create a hexagon background but everything I tried ended up with massive amounts of jump stitches that were too small & tedious to remove. Then there was the problem of the lace actually holding together once the water soluble fabric was dissolved. I ended up with just rectangles that were copied, pasted, & rotated. Not what I wanted but it worked.

The coloured sections were me having fun in my drawing program again, playing with circles & what I could do with them, elongating, rotating etc. Once the basic "petal" shape was achieved, it was imported into my digitizing program where I used a kaleidoscope tool to create the 7 petals. The fun part was making the machine stop stitching so I could change the colours. This had to be done in my program or I would end up with a single coloured piece of lace. Something else I had to work out.

The lace itself is mounted into a piece of painted card (not seen here) so that it could be added as a page to my book.

I might also add here that I am closer now to achieving my digitized hexagon background. What wonderful help the internet can be.

A Fabric Book Cover

Over the last few days I have been having a discussion with one of my on-line stitching friends in England. Mandy is making book pages & I promised I would show her the pages I received in a past RR. When I went looking, I realized that this RR happened way back in 2005, before I even started blogging, so I thought I could reminisce a little & show you all the lovely book pages I received .

OK, the back story is I was encouraged to join my first on-line group by a real life stitching aquaintance. This group ( sadly no more) was about using computers to create textile work & sounded interesting. I had dabbled a little & could definately learn more. I had also just recently begun to play with my digitizing program, so I was hoping to use this to the max & learn as much as I could about it. When I joined the group, they were just about to start the book RR. We were to decide on a title of our book, the layout, page sizes etc, then make the cover & the first page. This was then sent to the next person on the list who would make & add in a page to suit the book, then send it on to the next person. So the process would go on until my book arrived home.

The pic above is the cover I made for my book. I used a drawing program that was compatible with my digitizing program, drew up the basic loopy lines & added lettering. I remember this was a learning curve about how to get the lettering to follow the curve of the line. Once drawn, it was then digitised & stitched onto fabric. The little dots of colour were just glued on, but the FME lace at the sides was sticthed onto water soluble fabric, dissolved & layered over another base fabric. It was one of my first attempts at FME.

Looking back, I would definatly do a better job now, but at the time I was very proud of what I had done & had learnt more about my drawing program.

A New Aquisition

Check out this new aquisition to my library. I have borrowed this book many times from the library, then last weekend a very special friend gave me my own copy. Although it's been pre-loved, the book is in excellent condition, and will now take pride & place on my own library shelf. Thank you, thank you thank you Miss R.

A Parcel At The Door

Look what arrived at my door yesterday. This beautiful book on Bedfordshire Lace. Now I have plenty to keep me busy & inspired. Mail order is wonderful.

2009 Challenges

Each year at this time of year I like to set myself some new challenges for the following year. Sometimes I achieve them & sometimes I don't, but at least it gives me something to aim for. Usually I give myself too many challenges & that would be the main reason why I do not achieve what I set out to do. The list that I set myself for this year was a perfect example of that, way too many large projects. So my list for 2009 reads like this.

1. One quilt. This is left over from this year. It was supposed to a present for a family member who was celebrating a special birthday. Needless to say the birthday has been & gone & all I have done is purchased & washed fabric. I have promised it by November 2009.

2. A piece of reticella, which is also another challenge left over from this year. I've started to have a look at this already, but the fabric that I have chosen to work the piece is different than I used for my failed attempt earlier this year. So consequently I have had to do more samples to make sure that the fabric/thread combination will work, as this fabric is a higher thread count than before.

3. To start learning Bedfordshire Lace. This is a form of bobbin lace that just makes my toes curl. I have the book pictured above, which seems to take the learner from the beginning. To achieve this, I will have to finish the piece that I currently have on my pillow, or aquire a new pillow from somewhere. I will also have to go back & revise all the Torchon techniques that I have previously done so as to refresh my memory on how to work some of the stitches. Note, the operative word in this challenge is to "Start" learning.

OK, so I have only given myself three challenges for 2009. Personally I think that is enough, considering I did not get though all that I set myself for this year. I do tend to overdo it occasionally. So that is why I have steered myself away from signing up for the Stitch Explorer challenge that Sharon B has going. I will follow this one with interest & may even participate in my own way. We shall see. There is also the fact that I really want to explore pulled work. I have in mind to do a sampler of stitches, but this might be just one of those things that continue from year to year. It may even get to be started in 2009. Just another "We shall see".

So watch this space to see if I achieve all the challenges that I have set for myself for 2009.

A New Book

Look what I acquired! I am so excited! I have wanted to do some Teneriffe lace for some time , and even borrowed this same book from the Embroiderer's Guild library. The library book has been sitting on my coffee table, just looking at me waiting for me to start, but I have other more pressing matters at the moment. The book also has to be back at the library in a week. Then yesterday I attended my local lace group and one of the ladies had just come back from overseas with two copies of this book that she was hoping to sell. One was instantly mine, brand new, at a bargain price. So now it can reside on my coffee table, taunting me to start, and the other copy can go back to the library for someone else to enjoy.