aconites

I finished the aconites for the
Stitch Club workshop by Vinny Stapley.

A nice memory of early spring
for the winter time when no colour adorns up the garden !

transparant

The new Stitch Club workshop by Vinny Stapley
is with tulle, lace and photo transfers on organdie.
I only have cotton organdie in a very dark purple colour
so that wasn't very useful.
But I do have thin cotton (not as transparant as organdie !)
and I do have very thin silk, so making the transfers
wasn't that big a problem in the end.

I don't have any old photographs
so my garden will have to do for inspiration.
Winter aconites are the very first flowers
that announce that spring is near,
even before the snowdrops are seen !
Last year I also took them as inspiration, so why not again.
Making the transfers went really smooth
and even cutting them out wasn't too difficult.
But then, after a laid out the design came the stitching
(no photo yet)
and that was horrible : like stitching in thin air !
In the end I took the tulle out of the hoop

to stitch around the edges
pfffffft !

To be continued !
(giving my fingers a bit of rest first)

last february day

On this last day of the shortest month
seven planets in the sky
and a new moon.
(sadly at that moment there were clouds here
though much later there was a beautiful clear sky)

A good moment to show the last Stitch Club workshop
by Darren Ball that I finished,
It was meant to be with a vintage photo as inspiration
but I don't have those, so I chose something else :
good "old" Maisy
(by Lucy Cousins)

My collection of old pictures, we used to adorn the little rhymes with
in the poetry booklets little children (girls) used to have.

Some sketches with possible choices, but in the end I decided on Maisy.

Some extra tulle layers and some machine stitching finished it off.
(though I'm not totally happy with the stitching
and working on the machine)

On to the next work !

10 grams (un-perfect)

February is nearly at an end and last Wednesday
we had our zoom-meeting with the
UN-PERFECT 10 GRAMS group.

It was a very special challenge this time
because we sent a flat piece of pre-felt
to another member of the group
and she had to use that for the "Carnival" theme.
I had to send mine to Germany,
and I got one from Switzerland.
(that last bit wasn't without silly troubles about import duties !!!)

You were allowed to add some fibers of your own
so in the end my piece weighed 12+ grams
(but : I used ALL of the pre-felt I got !)

This is the pre-felt Kelly sent me
(with also some dots on the other side)

Carnival is for me most of all the Summer-carnival parade
in Rotterdam, with lots of swinging and dancing brightly
dressed people.
Especially the big headdresses are impressive,
so that's where my inspiration came from.

The finished piece.

The process.
I cut strips and turned some around, the off cuts of the points
were later used for small balls at the end of the tying strips

(hmmmm "wearable")

And this is what I got back already from Silke

For her carnival means clowns with their red noses,
their funny trousers and their
BIG SHOES !

I divided all colours in two
for two perpendicular layers in the pre-felt
(I forgot to take a picture of the finished pre-felt
but the spacing of the colours was more or less the same in both layers)

So, not an easy task this time but all worked out well !
The sad thing was though, that during the "zoom" I heard NO sound
though all the others could hear me . . .
(grrrrr)

25 - 1 - 25 , pomegranates and doves

January is nearing the end
but I've been busy stitching on a new Stitch Club piece,
a workshop by Dijanne Cevaal
For many years now I've seen her work,
but never was able to do a workshop with her
(until now !)

The lino printing was fun !
I had all the materials at hand so that was no problem, just finding a design
A book I was reading solved that.

Finished, but not yet mounted on a canvas (30 x 30 cm)

I did a try out of my first prints on tea bags
and that gave me the fun opportunity to flip them over
because the print was on both sides nearly as good.
The piece of fabric I choose was too white so I painted it
with the textile paint I bought last year in Rijswijk.

Hmmmm a bit simple those four separate prints

Then  solution was cutting more prints to make a kind of border,
some of the lino and some of the thicker soft blocks.
The good part of using the blocks is that you can cut out
the shape on the outside as well !
That's handy if you have to make a weak print twice :
because you can place it at exact the same spot.

There was only one rather big problem :
I did the stitching with perlé thread (8) as Dijanne had suggested,
but my hands didn't like the difficult process of pulling
the needle through the fabric . . .

That's why I changed to the thinner perlé 12,
less impact of colour but much easier to work with !

Well, I still had my doubts about the polka dots fabric
until some sweet Stitch Club member told that they reminded her
just of pomegranate seeds !!!!!
Ohhhh . . . YES, why hadn't I thought of that myself !
And the pink colour ? Also pomegranates !

a bird and planets

It took quite some time,
but finally my bird is finished.

a kingfisher :
once seen as a blue blur sweeping over the nearby water
but now in all is beauty on the wall.
(20 x 20 cm)

What a lovely STITCH  CLUB workshop it was by
Yvette Phillips.

Not only a great textile artist but also a good teacher !

 For the first time I followed her lead
and put the fabric on stretcher bars in stead of in a hoop, before stitching.
At first I wanted to work on plain coloured linen
but in the end I found a suitable fabric in my stash
(though I used the backside !)

step by step
with my loyal phone always near !

(this photo came from the "Forth Rivers Trust" in Scotland)

Sad to say that this Alcedo atthis is, like so many other creatures
on the RED list !

*

Today, or rather tonight,
there was a special occasion in the night sky !

In the east, a beautiful bright full MOON
"at seven a clock" a bit down was MARS

between "one and two" much further away was JUPITER

and then in the south west was the lovely evening star VENUS
with, just to the left of it SATURN !

(haha, I tried to take some pictures
but judging by the lack of them here, you know I failed)

a start

Ohhh yes, a LATE start, but a start it is !

Is it still okay ?
(hmmm . . . but I do it anyway)

I wish all of my friends out there
A  JOYFUL,  HEALTHY  AND  CREATIVE
2025

We had a wonderful end of December :
a lovely dinner party
(with me wearing my necklace and earrings)
lots of presents, some homemade
(and I forgot to make photos before wrapping and now they're gone)
some stitching started
for Yvette Phillips' wonderful Stitch Club workshop.

The not so fun part of that stitching is,
that my arthritic hands aren't getting any better,
so it takes quite a long time before I'm finished
though now I'm nearly there !

(but now have to wait for some new floss first)

Today was another stitching day
but : in the waiting room of the hospital
(Man had to have another small surgery in Rotterdam,
and yes, all is well)

A few stitches on my Kingfisher
(till thread ran out)
But I had also two more birds to sew together
out of white cotton (old bed sheet !)
They are finished now, but my hands protested in the end.

Tomorrow I will be filling them and then I'll paint them
just like the little Xmas presents !
(will take photo's this time !)

The idea for this came from
Judy Coates Perez
and I'm deeply grateful for that !