Embroidery fun and dyeing day

I have been having fun with lots of different embroidery lately, made lots of little sample brooches, each with a bit of stitching, either mini hardanger, bullion knot roses and flowers, gathered ric-rac flowers etc. to work up ideas for mini workshops. Also did a lily type flower on a 5 inch hoop and several pieces for Embroiderers Guild travelling books. My most difficult item in the last month was just a little sampler from the book Crewel Intentions, the patterned needle weaving was very taxing!!!!

Currently have several things on the go, still doing a needle painted hedgehog, a stumpwork mushroom and oak leaf picture.

I did a load of natural dyeing with friends at the beginning of the week, lots of lovely coloured fabric and space dyed threads to use over the next few years!!!!

More recent work

I have been fiddling with a few other bits for travelling books and gifts.

I had fun working out how to securely mount hoops for exhibition. Found malleable mirror plates that could bend in the hoop, then screwed to a board, fixed to the wall with normal mirror plates - a bit messy but as I normally display these embroideries in the hoops I could not think of any other way.

July and have been busy

Not put anything on here for a while, been busy with Embroiderers Guild Capability Brown - Stately Gardens Exhibition at a local National Trust House. I have been trying to organise the steward rota - my laptop has never seen so many emails!!!

The 4 embroideries I'm sending were all done fairly recently but needed mounting. Otherwise I have been working on a few small bits plus tons of work on a soft Stitch Book as an aid to help show stitches to EG members.

Already May

Just seen photo on Facebook, taken at the Crafting Live show in Belfast. It is nice to see that Tattered Lace are still using the quilts I did really quickly, for them when they launched the Crossover die cutting machine and the deep dish dies, on Create and Craft TV show!!!

Stumpwork

I have been having fun with a bit of blossom, not from a photo, but I think I got some of the colours right. I remember the streets where I grew up, were planted with Almond Trees and as the blossom fell we walked ankle deep in flowers.

I spent ages thinking about how to do the stamens and ended, up making them by dipping perle cotton, no 8, in dilute fabric glue several times, then when dry, mixing orange fabric dye to glue and again dipping to get pollen.

I have also started a new quilt for across the end of our super king size bed, it is an oatmeal colour with a linen weave look base I got in the USA (although it is from Japan!) I've bondawebbed hand cut leaves, now half way through blanket stitching them, then I will back and bind it with the lighter blue/grey batik, the colours perfectly match our bedroom curtains, hopefully it will take away the stark white of so much white duvet cover!

Lots of embroidery

I've been enjoying doing a bit more embroidery lately, finished the needle painted Squirrel, which I am pleased with.

The project before that was a pattern taken from an Inspirations Magazine, but using stranded cotton instead of the recommended threads and doing my own thing with some stitches and colours.

Today I finished a stumpwork Blossom, had fun making the stamens using watered down fabric glue to stiffen white threads and added orange dye to the glue to dip the ends to create pollen. I will ung it in a box frame soon.

Recently finished another 4 triangles, smaller this time for our embroiders guild joint project which will go first to Melton Mowbray Carnegie Hall Exhibition, I also entered an individual piece, that I have on my Home page.

Quilts

I have nearly finished another small quilt for the Linus Project, I had tried a bit of Bargello a while ago with the "jelly roll sewn into a long tube, then cut into different width strips, unpicked a block up at a time and sewn back together" method - I  hope that made sense? So, I wanted to do something with the sample, found some fabric for sashing and binding and knocked it up yesterday.

Something to take to stitch Group and hand sew the binding tomorrow. I finished the latest flower embroidery and need to find something else - I am months ahead with the pieces for the travelling books, so I am itching to do something for myself........ a little photo of a red squirrel is calling me, maybe I should give in and have a go!!!!

I titled this quilts as I also had 4 blocks put together in "Floating Stars" using an EZ template, in some awfully bright Kaffe Fasset fabric my daughter gave me, and some bright orange sheeting, so yesterday I also made up another 8 blocks, and put it together with sashing round, the binding is going to be all the bits left over joined in random lengths. Really not my kind of thing, but it is bright and breezy, so hopefully suitable for Linus! And a good bit of stash busting!!!

Well off to find something to embroider a squirrel on - maybe a nice bit of linen and dyed with walnut or onion, courtesy of Jackie and last summers natural dyeing session!