Tail chasing and ribbon roses

Saturday sort of got away from me. I knew I wasn’t going to make the morning session of our Embroiderers’ Guild meeting but I had high hopes of making the afternoon. That was a mistake. I finally walked through the door at about 3pm and by the time I’d caught my breath, looked round at all the various boards, tables and displays and sorted my travelling book there was only enough time for chatting (always good, though) and putting literally a handful of stitches in one of the activities that our new chair, Ruth, had organised for us.

Pauline had finished her bookmark and was happy to let me photograph it.

 

Another group was stitching heart shaped decorations. This one is Julie’s:

Debbie and Janet pulled together their matryoshka with the examples Ruth had already stitched for me to photograph.

There was also another flower shaped decoration or similar but I didn’t manage to find any worked examples of that. It looked like a nice selection of fun things to stitch and even though I only had an hour, it was lovely to relax with some straightforward stitching and good company.

I’ve also been making some more ribbon roses to turn into pendants. This one has fly stitch leaves, stem stitch stems and lazy daisy sepals in variegated coton a broder with a woven spider’s web rose and french knot buds in pale blue silk ribbon.

And this one has fly stitch leaves, split stitch stems and lazy daisy sepals in variegated perle with a woven spider’s web rose and french knot buds in crimson silk ribbon.

A weekend of nice quick little projects.

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Bossa Nova Rose and other stitching

It was a pleasure to finish the little Bossa Nova Rose from our Embroiderers’ Guild Brazilian Dimensional Embroidery workshop last weekend. I didn’t follow the instructions when it came to the leaves, going for fly stitch over blanket stitch and not adding the fine pale green edging it suggested because I felt the sheen of the thread gave enough definition.

And then quickly finished as a card.

My first sea glass and pocket watch case pendant positively flew out of my Etsy shop and I’ve started another one to go with a harlequin case of a gold coloured collar and engine turned back. I’ve got some tiny pieces of very rare yellow sea glass and some ordinary brown to add to this.

I also turned some off cuts of hand dyed fabric, the batik I’m using above and some cotton print in shades of brown into some strip patchwork which I used to cover a grotty looking cabochon pendant…

…turning it into an upcycled patchwork pendant with added vintage lace and flower trim.

Lots going on!

 

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Upcycling

This is my current obsession and if I can do it in a way which combines textiles/embroidery in some way then even better. If you read my last blog hop post then you will have caught sight of one of my latest pendants which began simply as an old brass pendant mount long missing whatever had been set in it.

 

I used a single strand of variegated silk to embroider a bullion knot rose with French knot buds and whipped back stitch stems on some lovely slubby hand dyed cotton.

Then I cut a piece of thick felt the same size as the pendant and drew the fabric up around it before using the lugs on the pendant to fit it snugly in place. In real life it’s less than an 2cm long, so it was all a bit of a challenge.

A matching chain completes the upgrade from rubbish to wearable!

Next for upcycling was a gold tone ‘A’ initial brooch. The gold colour was badly worn in one place, so I started to wonder if I could wrap it in fabric. However, ‘A’ is quite a complex shape, so first I experimented with a simple vintage circular silver coloured pendant and some offcut strips of printed Japanese themed cotton in red, black and gold.

I used Modge Podge thinly spread on the back of each piece and as the strips built up, I became quite excited about the effect.

I neatened off the back with some more of the fabric and used the Modge Podge to seal that layer, which gives it a bit of a shiny look that I didn’t want on the front.

And I’m pleased enough with both of them that they’ve gone into the new Upcycled section of my Etsy shop.

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Playing: roses and rose windows

More of the altered book.

A Latin quote caught my eye…

…and sent me off creating a scrap of rose text with Stewart Gill Byzantium paints on tea stained paper.

Without border:

With border:

I cut all the window spaces out of this image of a York Minster Rose Window and stuck it over a page which I’d collaged with some rainbow coloured scraps of hand made paper and then used water soluble oil pastels to continue the colours over the bits of page left.

In place on the spread:

And joined by a layered transfer of a lamb boss.

I had two images of this boss, one closer than the other. I used the gel transfer medium to transfer them to the page, rotating the second so the ribs of the vaulting (accidentally) almost line up. I like the different layers of translucency.

Another Rose Window to come.

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