A Little Needlcase

I had some fabric scraps left over from a major project I had  done and decided to make a little needle case with some of them. Good even weave linen is way too expensive to toss away, even the tiniest pieces. I also had plenty of left over threads from another project so decided to use those as well

I had no idea what I was going to do, so just did an outline in button hole stitch. I then added a row of eyelets and a row of satin stitch. It was looking dull so I worked a row of back stitch in pink to give it some life.

I had done another little needle case before with horizontal rows of stitching, so I had a brain wave that I could do diagonal rows in this one. Mmmm.......... I just started stitching Kloster blocks, then another row so that I could cut a little hole and put in a filling stitch.

Then came the half eyelets and a row of reverse faggoting in pink.

OK, it had some life, so I just kept repeating, and behold, before I knew it I had the outer layer of my needle case.

I added some navy lining, and some Dr's flannel from my stash. Mm.......... my sewing skills have fallen and the lining could have been straighter, so I added some button hole stitch to try and hide it.

Anyway, it is done, fabric scrap used, and it will be given away to a new little sewer in the making.

 

A Pulled Work Needle Case

This little needle case was born out of a creative  exercise with my Stitcher's Plus group. Robyn taught us how to do a pulled back stitch eyelet filler. That was way back in February.

I had some fun using different threads on a scrap of fabric, then used a fine variegated thread to fill in the spaces between. It needed something else so I worked some fine Casalguidi type stitching over the top. The hem is a common one found in pulled work.

So another UFO bights the dust. There are still more where that one came from.

A Pulled Thread Needlecase

This little needle case was born out of a demonstration.

I was asked to demonstrate at an exhibition of works by Laura Leverton and Christina Barton, held at 76 Queen Street Gallery in Concord West. The exhibition was mostly pulled work, and I was just beginning to experiment with pulled work. What to do?

I looked through my fabrics, and found a scrap of linen that I thought would work. It was only small, so I had to set it in some fabric that would then let me put it in a hoop to work. Now what to stitch?

I had Googled some ideas, and came up with just stitching straight lines of stitching, so off I set. I left enough room for a hem, and started stitching.

There is some satin stitch in there, lots of four sided stitch, and lots of eyelets. My favourite row is one with half eyelets that gives a negative space of a zig zag line. My second favourite is one which combines all three of these stitches, and was inspired by the work that was on the walls.

I hemmed it with a four sided hem, lined it with some cotton fabric, added some Doctors Flannel, a hand made twisted cord, tassel and toggle closure.

Wallah! My new little needle case is now in use.

'Holiday House" - A Challenge

At last I can finally reveal another finish. This one was a challenge for Stitchers Plus, a creative stitching group that I belong to. Our challenge was to stitch a house, any type of house, it was our interpretation. They must all be on the same angle as well. Please note the angle at the base, it is not 90 deg. The idea was that all the houses could be placed in a line to form " Thread Needle Street", and the angle would make the street curve and make an interesting display.

At the time the challenge was handed out, my mind was in a whirl, but went straight to our holiday house on the beautiful Mid North Coast. That afternoon when I came home and Googled 'Houses', I found soooooooooo much inspiration! There were tree houses, beach houses, colonial houses, Australian houses, Victorian houses, gee........... I could go on forever! In the end I went with my original thought.

The finished piece is in reality nothing like our holiday house. There are certain similarities, but not a lot. I played with a photograph of the front of the building, cut it down, eliminated lines, changed angles etc etc. It was meant to be a creative piece, and I was only after inspiration.

I have played with pulled thread stitches in this piece. I have wanted to play with pulled work for quite some time, and this was the first time in colour. It is interesting how the eye sees colour first, so the texture of the stitches used can be a little lost. I think I have managed to keep the texture, using certain stitches in certain directions to give certain effects. The colour changes also adds some light and shade. giving some dimension. I still think the piece needs some more dimension though. I wanted to put some plants in the garden and some window pots, but time got the better of me. I might still add them now, but we will see. It means pulling the piece apart to add them in I think,  and I am not sure I want to do that just yet.

Our group now has another challenge going on for next year,2015, but more about that further down the track. In the meantime I have plenty of other stitching to keep me busy.

Coral Calypso - an Exhibition

A week ago, my local embroidery group held an exhibition. We only hold one once every five years so that there can be enough work to show off a really fabulous display. I personally had 10 pieces in this one, the most I have had in any exhibition I have been involved in. So here I will show you the ten, some you have seen before, some not, and some you have seen in progress.

Piece 1 - The above white table mat featuring reticella, measuring approx 50cm x 36cm, this piece is my pride & joy. It took five years from conception to completion, including designing, sampling and one failed attempt where at the last minute I changed the design, and didn't think it through before starting to stitch. The consequence was my reticella design wouln't fit the space. You can read about that story here and see the result here. Then there was the twelve months that the piece sat there waiting for me to cut into it. After one failed attempt already, I was scared it would happen again, even with all the extra counting & thread marking I did this time around. Luckilly all that counting paid off & the design worked, to the point that I am extremely proud of the end result.

Piece 2 - Is an experiment in combining pulled and drawn work as well as in design. I had come across a book showing how to create and use mandalas in patchwork, & thought I may be able to use the same concept as a base for some drawn work. The piece of fabric was a scrap that I had aquired from somewhere, and there was not much room for sampling stitches, that is if I wanted the end result to be square. The square also presented a problem with designing, as I found six sided shapes didn't sit well, they needed to be four sided. So I played with a drawing program I have, overlaid a number of four pointed star shapes, then set about eliminating lines until I was happy with the resultant design. Then came the fun of stitching. Pulled work is not something that I have done much of, so the stitching had to be simple. Satin stitch, eyelets & four sided stitch, it is amazing the effects these three simple stitches can have when combined together, used in differnt counts, or used where some threads have been removed. Over all I am happy with the result.

Piece 3 - This little bag is also a combination of pulled & drawn work. It bagan as a holiday project, one where I threw a piece of fabric, some threads, and mabe a book or two for inspiration, into a bag & see what I could come up with. As soon as I started stitching, I realized the fabric was open to pulled work, but I had only brought drawn books with me, so I started on drawn work which kept me busy for my holiday. The pulled work background came later, and the lining & twisted cord came two days before it had to be handed in for exhibiting. Nothing like leaving things to the last minute. Am I happy with it? Mmmmm,......... it's cute and functional and I intend to use it as a little work bag.

Well, the above pieces were all new, the rest have been seen here before, but I will show you them again anyway.

Piece 4 - A cream table mat also started when on another holiday.

Piece 5- My first piece of reticella, which has now been in a few different exhibitions. Might be time to retire this piece, even if I am still very proud of it.

Piece 6 - My Seahorse Sanctuary, which took pride of place by the front door. A piece of creative drawn thread work done a few years back for a course.

Piece 7- My first full piece of Tenneriffe lace. This piece was designed for, and given to a special friend for a special birthday. I so want to do another piece, one for me to keep. A slightly differnt design though.

Pieces 8 & 9 - Bookmarks, both of which are a form of drawn work. The one on the lft is filet, while the one on the right is an all over filling, something that I want to play more with.

Piece 10 - A bobbin lace fish that went to Japan for an OIDFA dispaly. A huge challenge for me to work as he is double sided

For those of you that made it to the exhibition, I hope you enjoyed what you saw. For those of you that didn't, you missed some stunning pieces, so I hope you enjoyed seeing what I had displayed. Anyone see a common theme happening here in my work?



Pulled Thread Exprimenting

I have been experimenting with some pulled thread stitching lately, wanting to find out what stitches produce what textures. It is amazing how thread choice, plus the number of threads stitched over, will change the whole look of a stitch. This is only a sample, stitched down the side of a major piece I am working on. No tidbits of the major piece though I am sorry, I am hoping to have that finished for exhibition in August next year. So if you can all be patient, I'll show it  to you all sometime after then.

A Tissue Cover

I have been busy stitching a cover for those little tissue packets we all tend to carry in our purses. One of the ladies in my embroidery group has been showing me how.

Worked on Dublin fabric with Perle thread in a pulled thread style of embroidery, they look so much prettier than plastic with brand names written all over them.

 

This is how they look flat, before being stitched up.My apologies for the quality & colourof the top pic, it was taken with my phone. The actual colour is more like the bottom pic which was done with a scanner.

In Loving Memory

Over time, people come into our lives & touch our hearts. Quite often it is too late before we realise just how much they mean to us. The little pouch above has been made by one such person, an exquisite stitcher, who gave her knowledge freely to anyone who would listen. May you rest in peace, knowing that your stitching legacy is alive & well.

In Loving Memory
of
Heather Daphne MATTHEWS

Missed dearly, loved always, never forgotten

Experimental Fun

A few years back I salvaged this piece of disgustingly (to me) coloured fabric. I thought it might be good to play with some experimental drawn thread work on it. It sat in the cupboard for a long time, then about a month ago I needed something to take to my creative stitching group, so out it came, along with some coloured threads that I thought would go. On the day, I just threaded a needle & started stitching, letting the needle go where it wanted. I soon discovered that the fabric would pull to a certain extent, so a piece of experimental pulled work it became. The most fun I had was with the eyelets.

I'm not sure what I will do with it yet, it might somehow get turned into a little notebook cover. Time will tell.

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 Fabric Challenge

Back before Christmas, I was packing my stitching bag to go away on holiday. I had already packed some stitching , but thought it might be fun to add in a piece of fabric & threads to see what I could create without planning. So I went searching for a piece I knew I already had sorted complete with threads. I didn't find the piece I was looking for, but instead found the above piece of mauve linen, & yes there were threads packed in that little bag as well. OK, maybe not quite what I had in mind but the purpose was still the same, create something with given threads, no reference books & use only the knowledge I had in my head. The above pic is just a snippet of what came about. The interesting part was the discovery of what the fabric could do, the fact that it was very open & would suit Pulled Work beautifully. My knowledge of Pulled Work is very limited ( something that I intend to change in the near future), so I had to settle with my knowledge of Drawn Thread Work. Now I am back home, my Pulled Work books have come out & now I have a definate idea of what this fabric piece will end up like.

Pulled Thread Bookmark - June TIF Challenge

Yesterday I finally finished the TIF challenge for June. Only nine months late, but who is counting.

This bookmark started purely as a sample for stitching eyelets onto this RR Sampler, then ended up being part of the TIF challenge run by Sharon B last year. The stitching has been finished for quite some time, all it needed was a backing fabric to be slip hemmed onto the back to hide the reverse side. Now it can be ticked off the list. Yippee!

Counted Thread Experimentation

I have been slowly working on a band for the Counted Thread Band Sampler Round Robin that I am in. This is Mandy's sampler & before this sampler first arrived, I had ideas as to what I was going to do, then when it arrived I felt that what I had planned would not fit in well. It took me a while to get started & I am just letting the sampler tell me what it needs. The first thing was colour, somehow I needed to bring all the colours together. So I searched my threads and pulled out all the colours that were already in the sampler, then made a decision as to which ones I would use. I settled on a yellow, a hand dyed orange, and some greens. I felt these colours whould not only work together in a band, but help to reflect the colours already present elsewhere in the sampler. I haven't finished yet, I still need to work more eyelets, and then I think the band will tell me it still needs something else. Time will tell. I'll post a pic of the whole thing when my section is finished.

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.

TIF Challenge - June

All year Sharon B has been running the TIF Challenge. I had good intentions of completing something every month but things have got a little out of control lately & I have let the TIF challenge slide. I have completed January, February, March & April, but got stuck at May. I have an idea, & got all my fabrics ready to do the challenge, but that is as far as it got. Now the challenges are up for June & July & I am getting further behind.

The June Challenge is about "Stash Busting - Stories That Are & Stories That Are Possible'. So while I have been working on the RR of my previous post, I had to sample a new stitch, and guess what I dug into to do this sample? Da da........ my stash of course! OK, so while I was working the RR sampler, I also started turning my sample into a book mark. It only took me a month to think that this was actually stash busting, and that there is a story behind the stash of fabric and also the thread. So here goes.

About 8 years ago I wanted to make a hardanger sachet, (above) so went about designing it & worked out that I needed a meter of Belfast linen. Any hardanger worker will know that a lot of the designs are worked on the diagonal, and this one was no different. So consequently I had a lot of fabric left from my meter, just odd shapes. The shapes were definately big enough to do something with so they went back into the "Stash" for later use.

About 4 years ago I dug into this "stash "to see if I had enough fabric to make my tissue box cover. Yes! One piece was just enough! The pattern for this was also a strange shape, with funny corners cut out. To do the drawn thread work, I had to withdraw the threads & work the ends back into the fabric. When the piece was finished I had more odd shaped pieces (just smaller than before) , but this time with ends woven back into the fabric. These woven ends can be seen still dangling in the pic below.


OK, some of the pieces are big enough to make small doileys, parts will make book marks & some really small parts might just squeeze in a scissor fob or tassle, so back into the stash they went. It is one of these pieces that I pulled out to sample "single cross eyelets" on for the RR. The sample has since decided to become a book mark.

Then there is the story behind the thread. This story begins also with the meter of fabric and the hardanger sachet. I wanted the stitching to be pink & green , & was game enough to dye my own thread. The problem was that when I dyed it, I wasn't happy with the colour, so wound it all up on empty machine thread reels & placed it in my thread stash. When I started sampling the single cross eyelets, I pulled out this thread from my stash to use, after all it was just going to be a sample.

Now the book mark is nearly finished. It has used fabric & thread from my stash, and combine this with a new stitch to me, I am very happy with the result, even the colour of the thread! So the story began eight years ago with a meter of fabric, and will continue well into the future with many stories to come. The book mark will mark my place in many of the novels that I like to read before going to sleep, as well as references to new & wonderful stitches that I want to try.

Sarah's Band Sampler

Another band for the Stitching Sister Counted Thread Band RR finished. This one is for Sarah in Texas. This one was a little more difficult for me to design for than the previous ones that I have done. Initially I thought that I would work some cherry blossoms, or maybe some Chinese scrolls, but when the sampler arrived, I didn't think these were suitable at this point in the sampler. Sarah had already worked scrolls in the previous band, so they were out, & the cherry blossoms were curvey & I felt this needed something geometric. So I looked to the card that came in the package for inspiration.




My eye instantly went to the key design in the border on the Emperor's robe, so I took one section, mirrored it, then flipped this to form my basic motif, which when repeated, reminded me of Chinese lattice work. Design decided on, I now needed to think of stitches. The fabric lent it'self to pulled work, something I have not done very much of, so I found a stitch called "Single Cross Eyelet" which I thought would work. So I graphed the key pattern over three squares on a graph, supposedly working the eyelets in a checkaboard pattern, only to find that this made the whole design much wider than what I intended. So then I marked the key pattern in just a single row of eyelets & it worked fine.

I worked the eyelets in two strands of DMC Stranded thread, & when they were finished I felt they were a little bland. I tried to outline them in back stitch but the eyelets are worked over five threads & this did not work out mathematically, so I tried over one thread (yuk!) and also over all five threads ( also yuk!). In the end I woked tiny cross stitches in blue over the single cross formed in the center of each eyelet.

So now this sampler is ready to continue on it's journey. Sarah, I hope you like what I did.

A Pulled & Drawn Piece

Today I made the final cut to my latest finshed piece. This is the piece that I started way back in December and was supposed to be like this. I showed a small snippet of it in January after I had discovered my mistake when I made a slight adjustment in design. This small adjustment led to the counting error & the fact that my border design would not fit. I had a great long list of things to try to fit into the resultant space & ended up with this Pulled work stitch. The fact that I was four threads out ruled out a lot of the things that I really wanted to do.

On the positive side, I have delved into the world of Pulled Work & I have learnt to check the whole design again after redesigning. Now the piece is finished, it may not be as I would have liked but it is finished, & now I can move onto the next piece which has yet to be designed. I think there might be a few "filler" pieces to keep me busy over the next few weeks.