Fused fabric cushion

Back in March I finished this embroidery on a piece of blue and gold fused fabric I’d started several years ago as I intended to use it for a cushion to sell at our local Embroiderers’ Guild exhibition in the summer.

Then it went on hold for adventures in jewellery making and also the fact that I didn’t have a cushion pad – until last weekend.

It was a very straightforward finish. I cut out the circle using the hoop as a guide line and machined it onto a piece of gold/blue shot dupion silk. Then I made some shell edging from toning blue organza ribbon and hand stitched it around the outside of the embroidered piece to hide the edge.

The stitches, both gathering and the ones holding it down, look horribly huge in close up. But actually the effect is less obvious, as in this shot.

After that it was easy to machine stitch the front and back pieces of silk dupion together, pop the cushion pad in and ladder stitch the opening closed.

I know it doesn’t exactly go with the silvery cabbage green of the garden bench but I am inordinately pleased with it! I think the pleasure is as much about how well the finished item works as well as the fact that this has been hanging  around for sooo long and now it can see the light of day and give someone else some pleasure – I hope.

‘Perfect’ earrings

Several weeks ago I was trying to get a piece of reticulated brass with a nice melted hole in it and instead, managed to produce the best bit of reticulation I’ve created to date.

Apart from two tiny holes it was text book stuff…except that I wanted a hole to embroider!

It’s too lovely to do anything fussy with so I decided to make it into a very simple pair of drop earrings. First the piece was cut in half…

…trimmed to take off sharp edges and a hole drilled centrally at the top of each drop. Both drops were then put in the barreller for a couple of hours to polish them.

Meanwhile, I sawed through a spiral of brass wire to make two jump rings. When the drops were polished I slipped the jump rings through the drops and then very carefully soldered the rings closed.

The drops with their jump rings now needed another session in the barreller to polish the rings, so it wasn’t until last week that I had the chance to finish the earrings off.

After looking through a lot of beads, I chose two vintage faux pearls from a broken necklace to give a bit of space and lightness between the earhooks and the reticulated drops. They have a lovely creamy golden colour which goes so well with the brass.

They’re threaded onto goldtone headpins which have been bent into a loop at each end to connect to the jump rings and the earhooks.

No textile work in these but I’m very pleased with them – great deep reticulated texture and the pearls work surprisingly well against the rich gold of the brass.

Volcano? Fireworks?

Another finished piece, this time a pendant. I started with an early attempt at reticulation, which worked beautifully in one part of the brass but didn’t spread to the rest of the piece.

I then cut it out with a hacksaw, tidied up the central hole and polished it.

Initially I wanted to stitch it onto black silk, until I found a piece of black cotton velvet. The edges of the brass and the pearl purl sink so nicely into the pile of the velvet and it gives another wonderful textural contrast.

I took Rachel’s advice after I’d blogged about the blue spirals brooch and stretched the purls slightly before I stitched them down. Much neater.

Some of the longest bullions I’ve ever stitched, and with a slightly slubby thread too. The bullions and the purl are actually holding the metal to the fabric.

I finished off the french knots inside the hole and added some trios in a dark red silk thread to the ends of the purls.

The pendant is two almond shapes cut from pelmet vilene which are laminated together and the velvet laced over them.

The back is another slightly smaller single piece of vilene which has been covered with black kimono silk with a slightly crepey texture.

This was invisibly ladder stitched onto the black velvet and the bale stitched on with red thread.

And boxed.

I really feel I want to do something more with these pieces of jewellery than just accumulate them like I do with my purely textile work. I was wondering if they might be the sort of thing that would sell on etsy… Any thoughts from the wise?

Finishes

I’ve been soldering, polishing and finally getting some of my pieces close to being finished as well as starting some new pieces which I’m really excited about.

First the green encrusted pendant.

I just needed to trim the bale rod, as I’d soldered the bale slightly off centre, and polish it before slipping it over the fabric and crimping the partial tube closed.

The two bales I cut and shaped from sheet brass were soldered, finished and polished as well.

Then one was stitched onto the first pendant. I used orange stranded cotton and ran it through the bale and the fabric several times before buttonhole stitching the section on the right where the asymmetric nature of the piece means that it doesn’t sit flush to the fabric.

Organza ribbon and rattail in warm gold and beige in place of a chain.

And here is the start of my new piece – in fact, new pieces, as at least two different ideas have come out of this one piece of reticulated brass.

It’s interesting cutting through reticulated brass with a piercing saw as the surfaces are so heavily textured and also the thickness of the brass varies widely. It’s actually harder to saw through the very thin layers as they just twist and break, often taking the slender saw blade with them.

And I’ve still got another circle to cut from the large waste piece.

So, the very start of one new project…

… and another.

And hopefully I should soon be able to show you what I’ve done with this:

So exciting!

Giveaway Winner!

Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to leave such lovely comments for my Second Anniversary Giveaway.

I’m delighted to announce that the winner is… Jody, from Beach Treasures and Treasure Beaches.

Jody, if you contact me via email (bottom bar of the blog on the right hand side) with your snail mail address I’ll send Sea Glass: Lilac Swirl on its way to you!

Silk and gilding metal book locket

Right back at the beginning of my jewellery making course we impressed some gilding metal with various textured items. I had some success using a heavily stitched commercial fabric, ending up with these three pieces.

I decided to try and make the two smaller pieces into covers for some sort of book locket or charm and started drilling holes (not very evenly!) in one edge of each for the stitching.

Having enjoyed using fabric for the pages of the books I made at the start of the year, I opted for three fragments of pure silk; two in coppery tones and one bright turquoise blue, with the stitching thread to tone.

Once the holes were drilled, including one for a bead closure, I filed the corners round and put the boards in the barreller to polish them up.

Knowing how quickly any copper based alloy dulls, I gave them both a coat of clear nail varnish – not very orthodox, but it works! Then I could start constructing the book. Not easy when you compare the size of the finished item to a penny.

I used a coptic stitch for the binding and really enjoyed the way it worked up, with little chains of hand dyed waxed silk thread across the spine…

…and neat rows of back stitch in the centre of the pages.

The closure is a natural turquoise bead held with a gold seed bead and a tail of the same thread as I used to stitch the binding…

…which simply wraps around the book and winds around the turquoise nugget to hold it closed.

It really is a dear little thing and the coptic stitch works perfectly. I just need to drill a hole in the top back corner and add a jump ring so it can be added to a chain or bracelet.

And don’t forget, there is still time to enter my blog anniversary giveaway

                                          to win my lilac sea glass piece here

Fire pendant and spirals brooch

The fabric part of the fire pendant is complete.

I made a couple of brass bales from scratch which will be stitched to the fabric. The one I want to use is on the right and as you can see, I didn’t quite get the bottom folded over properly before I soldered it, so that will need to be rectified next week.

But this should give some idea of how the finished piece will look – it’ll be so nice to get some of these pieces actually finished!

The blue spirals piece was too big for a pendant so I finished it as a brooch. The top is gathered up with running stitch and laced over two thicknesses of pelmet vilene and then I cut, gathered and laced some more blue silk over a smaller single circle and stitched a long brooch pin to it for the back.

Then I used ladder stitch to more or less invisibly attach the back to the front.

A whole piece completely finished!!

And if you’d like the chance to win this sea glass and embroidery canvas in  my second Blog anniversary giveaway, you still can by leaving a comment here.