High productivity day

...which makes a nice change. Got lots done today - some of what I have to show today was done before, and just finished off today, but that's ok, there's some very old stuff there and many of you may not have seen it before anyway. But new things first. The first thing I did was to make a little mini quiltlet for the 6-12" Flickr Group, where the October theme is to make a non rectangular quilt. While thinking about this theme, I also ran across mention on Crazy Mom Quilts of a Candy Corn Challenge. (To make an object related to Candy Corn, in any media) - and zing! there was the idea - a candy corn shaped quilt - in appropriate colours, of course. So this morning, I raided my scrap strip stash (say that quickly!) and did some quick stitch and flip onto some scrap batting. Then I used the pillowcase method and turned it and quilted it. The whole piece is less than 12" high and maybe 8" across at the bottom. I think it came out well - and it's definitely not a traditional shape!


I also prepped the base of my block for October's birthday block - this is now going to be heavily embellished - not a lot of embroidery as I'm not great at that, but it will have some, as well as ribbon, buttons, charms, beads and so forth. All that will be done by hand, though, so it's just in a little basket waiting to be done in front of the telly.





I then did a set of postcards for the theme "V is for..." - I have chosen "vase" (of flowers, of course) - the flowers look a little odd, but I am reasonably happy with the cards, and I think they will do.

Finally, I worked on a present for a friend's 40th - which is Monday (she lives in the US - guess it's not going to get there on time!). These book pages have been mostly done for I don't know how long - well over a year - and only needed assembling into a book. I didn't start out to make them for Kristen for her 40th, they were from an online class with Lenna Andrews, but somewhere along the line, they made me think of her and I thought they'd make a fun present. Then I kind of forgot about them. So today, I took the last few out of the box and finished them off (they needed to be attached to a stabiliser) and then put holes and grommets in all of them, and bound them with gold cord. Photos of the page spreads below - I think it will be a really fun present (she already has a quilt from another occasion). The pages are approximately 7 inches square.

Stamping away

Today was a day for catching up with fabric book pages - the lesson this week focused on stamping, both with rubber stamps and from nature. I had to laugh when the lesson was posted - it was the only time so far this winter (and likely to be the only time) when we had snow covering everything - just when I needed leaves!

Anyway, I finally got around to really playing with stamps - though I have added a few things to previous pages, it's true. It's very hard to see in these photos, but I have done lots of background stamping, in addition to the more obvious ones on the second set of pages. In the red/purple pages, both backgrounds are heavily stamped, the left one with a rubber stamp of a feathery leaf and the right one with actual leaves - three sizes of ivy and a small fern frond. Because the fabrics are quite dark the stamping adds texture rather than dominating, which is what I was after.

In the left hand page, the image of an Indian woman was printed directly onto fabric - because I have no intention of washing these pages, I didn't use specially treated fabric, I just used the same method we used in an earlier lesson to print onto twill tape - I printed the image out on thin card, then attached a piece of fabric with double sided tape and printed it again. It was a fairly pale image to start with, and of course putting it on coloured fabric makes it recede into the background even more. This was intentional, and I'm pleased with how it came out - I was worried it might be too faint, but it works, I think. After attaching that image, I stamped in various colours with a feathery leaf stamp, then added skeleton leaves, a bit of ribbon cut out, some elephant sequins and a design I printed onto a transparency. I attached the transparency with some beads. Olivia helped me with these two pages, including letting me use some of her beads (I actually had some the right colour myself, but she really wanted to be able to lend me something I didn't have, so I was duly grateful - she's 7...)

With the right hand page, I decided to stamp all over it before adding anything else. Olivia and I inked some leaves - ivy and a fern frond in various colours and applied them to the fabric. The fabric was quite mottled to start with, so the stamping is subtle (though not quite as subtle in reality as in the photo, I admit). I then added some bits of paper, postage stamps, two transparencies (one just with glue, one attached with a brad at the top) and some German paper (the bees). It was hard for me to stop adding at this point, but I didn't want it to get too busy - I will add some decorative stitches later, though.

I forgot to say that the first thing I did today was to put together some of the other pages I have waiting - so now, I have all of them completed except for what I did today (and the one green page which is the flip side to one of these pages). Not sure how many more pages we are supposed to create, but I'm beginning to feel this book is nearing completion. It will need at least one more side in order to finish it, but it might not want a lot more than that...

After lunch, I moved onto the blue pages, which Sarah helped me with. This time I decided to make at least one page where the stamping was the focus. I have a large compound stamp which I like but had never used, so I decided to give that a go for one page. On the second one, I once again stamped the background, but also brought a few stamps to the foreground on paper for emphasis.

This is the one with the featured stamp - it doesn't look bad here, but it's clearer in reality - especially the central bit, which is a patterned hand and the word "LOVE" below. I decided adding any other stamps to this one would detract from the main stamp so just added some funky paper, some stickers, star sequins and some letters from an old game. Love that ephemera... We tested the stamp several times before deciding how to use it, and came to the conclusion that due to the nature and shape of the stamp, it was possible to easily put two colours of ink on it, which is not something I usually try - too fiddly. My stamping is getting much better than it used to be - we'll see if that's true with dyes & paints, too next time I try that!

Finally, this page was done by covering the entire background with stamps in various colour inks, then building on top. Quite early on, Sarah and I decided to cover the whole page with a thin layer of Angelina, as we liked the hazy effect that gave. The girl is printed on matte photo paper, with two pieces of lace running behind her. The star and flower shapes are paper; I have stenciled the star pattern onto the flower shape and stamped one of the shapes I used on the background onto the star, but this time in neon pink, just for a spot of brightness. Then the Angelina was added and sewn down with a few lines of decorative stitching. And finally, I put a strip of embossed felt (a new craft shop find - very cool) down the side. This is the only item that is on top of the Angelina.

In all, a very useful day - not just because I got several sets of pages made, but because working with each girl in turn worked very well. They don't argue that way, for one thing, and for another, they have a slightly different way of looking at things than I do. I don't always agree with them, but it's interesting to have some other input. DH, while admiring of the finished product, would not be helpful in the creation process - not his sort of thing at all...

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Monday 29/1: Anna's comment reminded me I haven't said anything about which class this is since some early posts about these pages - the class I am taking is a private online class with my surface design group (which is a closed group), but it's given by Lenna Andews, who offers similar classes through joggles.com and elsewhere - check out her website if you are interested in this sort of thing. I think she's a very good online teacher (and no doubt in person too!).

Two posts in a day

Not trying to be an overacheiver or anything, posting twice in one day, but I thought I'd keep all the Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge posts separate, regardless of other work I might do that day. Mostly, at least! And many of the TAST things will be done late in the evening anyway, so they are really the previous day's work, etc. etc.

Anyway. Here are two pages for the third week of my fabric book class - the main lessons this week were using transparencies, using metal objects on your pages and interesting ways of attaching things. Also beading, but I've done some of that before - and will do more, but not on these pages. Oh and also, some edge treatments, which I am filing away for later, as I want quite plain simple edges on these pages. An interesting note here - our teacher Lenna commented before that my pages have a lot of lines on them (this is true - I like lines) and while it's mainly been unintentional - that is, it's my natural tendency to add lines, rather than think "oh, I will put a line here", it just happens. However, on this right hand page, it's very intentional - I really wanted to use this colour fabric and didn't have a big enough piece to cut a 7" square, so the gold ribbon covers the seam line. I just noticed it doesn't look very straight - don't know if that's the photo or the piece - guess I will have to check it out :)



This page uses a transfer done by using iron-on transfer paper (the picture was from this vintage image site - which reminds me, I must scan and send them an image as a thank you), and a transparency, which is attached to the fabric using the four metal brads down the right side. The transparency is from a sheet from Artchix Studio. The left hand side isn't yet attached, but I have nebulous plans to use some stitches to attach it - either machine or hand, I haven't yet decided. There are also two small pieces of fabric from a Laurel Burch print and a sun charm, which used to be part of a necklace I was once very fond of, and which broke, ages ago. I attached it with very strong glue, and so far, it seems to be sticking, but I must say, it's a VERY heavy page!

The second page uses the ribbon I mentioned above, with four small pictures printed on fabric (also from artchix). It also uses more of the Laurel Burch fabric (which in this instance, reminded me of flags), some small watch gears, some lion-shaped sequins and the metal charm is part of an old mobile which has been in my family at least since I was a small child - if my mother is reading this, she can probably tell us where it came from, but I can't remember. It fell apart from it's mobile state a long time ago, and I have at least three of the danglies from it - possibly more, though I'm not sure. I remember one of a cruise liner which I don't seem to have - I have this one, another building and a person carrying two water buckets, that I can find, at least. Again, the page isn't completely finished, as I'm sure it wants some stitching or beads.

Take a stitch Tuesday - er, Sunday

The second stitch in this weekly challenge from Sharon B was the buttonhole (blanket) stitch. I have put these two photos at the top of the blog entry, because they are a lot nicer to look at than my experimental sampler (below), wherein I learned several things: 1)my canvas is too big (i.e. holes too far apart) for very very thin thread and 2) it's virtually impossible to work this stitch in a circle on this size canvas. However, I think it would do a great circle on different fabric, so I will try that at some stage. These two pages from my fabric book show the buttonhole stitch in situ - in the left picture, along the top edge of the top ribbon and the right edge of the sheer fabric; in the right photo, down the right hand side of the orange triangle (not thrilled with that; might remove later). I have also added some freeish form herringbone on the page with the pharoah.



I've been having fun playing with the third stitch, detached chain (lazy daisy) but am not ready to share that one yet - I want to try out something I say on someone else's blog (and I apologise here, but I can't remember whose - if I work it out later, I'll come back and add the link - edited to say, I found it, it was Karin) where they layered tons of these on top of each other and made a gorgeous flower. That's tonight's in-front-of-the-telly project. Results tomorrow, whether or not I like them!

Take a stitch challenge

A number of the blogs I read regularly have been mentioning the Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge on Sharon B's blog In a Minute Ago. The idea is that each Tuesday, Sharon posts a new stitch for you to try out - you can then post the results on your own blog or photosite and she does a weekly update of who has tried out the stitch, with links to their photos. [I know, I have no idea when the woman sleeps, either - there are nearly 200 people doing the challenge, and even if half of them drop out partway through the year, that's still a heck of a lot of work - not to mention the stitch lessons and so on in the first place!]


Anyway. The point here is that my stitching leaves something to be desired - I know basically all I need is practice, but the idea of just "practicing embroidery" is somewhat nebulous and undirected and just isn't going to happen. So I decided to go ahead and sign up for this challenge. It started at the beginning of January, so I am only 2 stitches behind, and should be able to catch up quite quickly. Also, it's something I can do while watching telly, so I can fit it into my schedule fairly well - I never seem to have handwork lying around when I need it, so this would fit into that slot nicely.


The first week's stitch challenge was Herringbone stitch. Above, you can see a rough sampler that I have stitched on waste canvas - not sure of the count off the top of my head, fairly big - 14 maybe? I started with some plain herringbone in various sizes, did some where the colours overlapped (like that effect a lot) some with thin thread, where the stitches weren't tall enough and just looked like "x"s, then tried couching a large thread down, curving it, adding some other kinds of stitches to make a pattern, and doing some sort of random, freeform herringbone stitches. I'm glad she started with an easy one! Then to apply the lessons learnt :) I decided to add some to one of my fabric book pages, which has been waiting for a few decorative stitches - I was going to use the machine of course, being me! Here you can see a little herringbone down the right hand side of the blue snowflake ribbon - and I've added some French knots in there, too. There's some running stitch down the left side of that, just for balance.

I thought that worked well, so I decided to tackle another page - here you can see a little herringbone across the foil on the bottom ribbon. I like this a lot - it tones down the foil a little, which was very shiny. There's a scattering of French knots at the top and I even used a little blanket stitch (buttonhole) on the middle ribbon - buttonhole is the second week's challenge, so you'll be seeing more of that soon.

Hoorah for fabric pages!

Not just because they are fun to make, which they are, but because my machine developed a bad noise (loud hum) and the speed really slowed down so I've had to take it into the shop - luckily, it is still under guarantee, so it should be free to fix it - the engineer says it could be as simple as a thread around something inside, but obviously one has to take the machine apart to figure it out... Or I suppose it could be a problem with the motor, but it's only 6 months old, so you wouldn't think so! The bad part about it being under guarantee is that the shop I bought it from (I bought it at a show) is about 45 minutes away, so Alex and I have had a nice drive this afternoon! There are sewing machine places closer, but not ones that will fix it for free - price of petrol these days, it's a toss up which is better value...

Anyway, the point here being that I can't sew at the moment (though I will borrow back Lana's old machine later in the week, so I won't be machine-less) - they said 7-10 days until it's ready. But with all the fabric pages to do (and a new lesson on Wednesday - can't wait to see what's next) I still have plenty to occupy me - I do intend to go back and add some decorative stitching to some of the pages, and of course, put more of them together, but that has to wait for a machine. So, the left hand side of this page set features some postage stamps, sheer fabric, skeleton leaves, some metallic fabric, German metallic paper cutout, a button and some stickers - on a background of hand dyed fabric. Both of these pages are on the same background fabric this time - I decided it had so much movement in it, I'd like to use it twice. It does need a little more, I think, but I'll do some stitching, etc on it later.

The right hand page uses one of the image transfers I made on Saturday (the photo of the lady) and a piece of twill tape I printed with some words (If Cathi's reading this, she'll recognise them but for those of you who aren't quite the rabid Dylan fans we are, it's from a Dylan song called Love Minus Zero/No Limit) - I had a hard time deciding what to print on the twill tape (that was part of lesson 2, as well) and in the end, picked a couple of lyrics. They seemed to go with the lady. Anyway, also used some tissue paper, a bit of lace passed to me by my friend Barbara from the stash of a good friend of hers who was an artist who often used mixed media including fabric (unfortunately she recently died after a long illness - but I love having some of her stuff - there's a certain kind of poetry in the continuity there, doncha think? I have lots more bits and pieces from her stash and look forward to using some of them in time in my work.) Also another bit of the metallic fabric on the other page, and some shell beads. Whew!

Fabric book - image transfers

Back to the fabric book pages today - the current lesson being about different ways to do image transfers onto paper and fabric. First I just practiced various image transfer techniques - using gel medium to move images from a printout to fabric and paper (mixed results, some interesting), using iron-on t-shirt transfer paper (really easy - I love it), printing directly to fabric and twill tape and so on. I did not yet try image transfer from transparency to fabric as I ordered the wrong kind of transparencies before and have had to order more - won't have them until Tuesday or so, but will try it then.

Anyway, the two pages I did today used images from the iron-on transfer paper, simply because I thought they went well with the yellow & gold fabrics. Other transferred images will make appearances later - some vintage ladies, for instance, who I think might like a pink background. And so on. I have also used in these pages ribbon, sheer fabric, textured paper, tiny beads, stamps, a charm, regular beads, and an image on a transparency, which is simply sewed to the fabric. Click here for close-ups of the left and right pages.

Sarah and Olivia helped me lay out the pages and choose items to put on them - they did some of this while I finished the blocks for the winter jewel tone swap, which can now go in the post Monday afternoon. Hurrah. Tomorrow I will spend not sewing or making book pages, but buying fabric - big local sale every year in January, and I'm looking forward to spending some money on fabric! Details of purchased will of course be duly shared here :)

Book pages are red...

Today's book page theme was red (you may have guessed) - I found the red and white polka dot paper yesterday and considered that serendipity. This is the last set for a few days - I need to wait to see what the next lesson has us doing before doing any more, and anyway, I have other projects I need to spend some time with. When I started these two, I had them the other way around (left on right, right on left) but by the time I'd finished, they were telling me they want to go this way. Which seems fair enough.


The left hand page uses a number of items and techniques I've used before - sequins, ribbon, a fabric print (the woman), but also this time I have used some foiling and a number of metallic frame stickers I got from the card-making supplies section of a catalogue. I think. Also, I've done some stamping on this one.

The right hand page uses similar things, plus some metallic paper and sequin punch. Also, I couched some yarn down to the page to begin with - I think if I do that again, I might attach it to the interfacing at the same time, as that will help keep the page from pulling in, which this one did a bit. It won't matter, as I am trimming the final pages by half an inch anyway, but it makes it a bit fiddly to work with. When I thought I was finished with it, it told me it wanted beads, so I've used beads on this one, too. Well, it is a surface embellishment group!

Oh, I should also say that for the first time, I've actually used the same piece of fabric for both pages - but as it was a hand-dye, and I picked two very different parts of the fabric, they do look quite different. It works, though, I think.

Keep on booking

Did some more work on the fabric book pages today - my friend Vicky, who is also doing the class had a great idea, which is to make the same colour pages facing pages rather than back and front, so I decided to do a single page (the purple one) to make the first page (presumably we will make a cover at some point during the class) and put the first brown page on the back of that, the have the next page with the other brown on the front, then the first blue on the back of it. That in turn will face the second blue page and so on.

So today I made the purple page, did some stitching on most of the pages I've made already (not the second blue one) and put two sets of pages together, complete with interfacing. I decided to use pelmet vilene/stiff interfacing between the pages rather than batting, so that the pages will "turn" better, and anyway, I am not quilting through the pages - it would take too much planning to get quilting that would work on both sides! So I'll add some decorative stitching before I put the interfacing in, and then just sew around the edges (and I've used some glue to keep the interfacing in place - tacky glue is my new best friend!)

I meant to say before that the class is with Lenna Andrews who does classes at joggles.com and other places, and it's very good so far - the first lesson was really long and thorough and nicely assembled with pictures. Lenna has been great about putting up with our particularly talkative group and answering questions (of which we have a lot!). If you like what I've been doing, I'd recommend taking this class - I'm sure it's only going to get better - some of the techniques we will be learning sound great fun (like doing our own image transfers onto fabric and other stuff). And by the way - dormouse, if you are reading this, thanks for your nice comment - I was going to respond personally, your email address doesn't show, so I can't...

Also sewing-wise today, I made some little Angelina sandwiches which I'll be using later this month to make postcards for a "January cheer" swap. Not sure quite what I am doing, but it will involve cutting shapes from the Angelina sandwiches and attaching them to some fabric, then quilting in a funky way. Probably they will be quite abstract, but I have to play around a bit and see what I like. More on that in the days to come.

And finally, the last thing I did was to help Olivia (DD2, age 7) work on her nine-patch quilt. She now has all 12 nine patch blocks sewn together, and we're beginning to think about borders. She's done all the sewing herself, though I did the rotary cutting and most of the ironing - she's beginning to do a little of that herself, though I'm still wary. She also did all the fabric selection herself, but you may have guessed that already!

Fabric book - day two

If I could keep this up-to-date with all my projects I've got going, I would be a happy chick, let me tell you! Unfortunately, the key to my productivity this week is that although the kids are back in school, nothing else is back to normal yet, so things that I would normally have to do, I don't, which means unexpected free time. For instance, normally I help in the nursery on a Thursday morning, but because it was the first day back yesterday, I didn't, which meant that I could go to the grocery store in the morning, which meant I had sewing time in the afternoon... Same with today - a group that normally meets Friday mornings, didn't. Won't be the same next week, though.

Anyway, here's my second set of pages - blue today, with a snowflake kind of theme. The one on the left has wet glue on it still, but you can ignore that, I'm sure! Mostly I've used different kinds of paper and ribbons as background - the circle is made of sizoflor and the square in front of it is from fused angelina folded over on itself several times. The charm is one of a pair of earrings I really liked, but lost one of. Now that I've cannibalised it for this project, I will probably find the other earring (actually, I doubt it, it's been gone for years).

The page on the right, which is the back of this set of pages, uses more ribbon, a piece of batik with snowflakes (which is what started the snowflake theme), some sequin punch, and images from Artchix. So far, there is no stitching on either page, but I'm definitely going to do some to both yesterday's and today's, once they are dry. Not sure what yet, but something. And of course, I am going to put the pages together. I'm hoping to get a little time tomorrow to work, as I rather fancy a purple page. Or maybe yellow!

Fabric book making

So I'm doing this online class with my surface embellishment group (a spin off of my dyeing group) - the class is on making fabric books. Today I had a go at the first page - this is the front (left) and back (right) - I think I am going to put pelmet vilene (a stiff interfacing) between the pages instead of batting. And I'll probably do a little decorative stitching on the pages before I finish, but these photos were taken after glueing - you can see that the glue under the skeleton leaves on the left is not dry yet.

There is almost no stitching on the pages yet, just some yarn couched down on the front page - it was more evident originally, but then I decided to put some gauzey stuff on top of it. The photo is a transfer I bought commercially (from artchix) and the window is a bit of thin metal (from the same source).

On the "back" of the page, I used some metallic paper I've had for awhile, can't remember precisely where I got it - from a quilt show somewhere I'm sure. And some of the same sheer fabric I used on the front, and some of the same yarn (the spiral in the bottom corner). The stars are actually from some Christmas confetti I bought at Ikea a few years ago and the flower is a cut out from the ribbon I used on the front. The building is from a sheet of images I purchased from artchix. There's no stitching at all on the back, so far. This may change.

We are supposed to do two pages (front and back) or more for the first lesson; I think I might do the second set in greens and blues, but we'll see what happens when I actually get to it. Hopefully, I WILL actually get to it!