Working in miniature

I know that seems to apply to most of what I stitch but this weekend I’ve been finishing up a couple of particularly small projects that have been hanging around for a while.

I spent the last two days at my first Christmas market this year, back at The Collection in Lincoln. It was a little slower than the previous times I’ve had a stall, but I wasn’t surprised, given the current economic situation. However, it did give me the opportunity to continue this ribbon embroidery I started back at the last market I did in June which is destined to fit in an unusual wreath-shaped brooch setting.

I added some daisies…

…and then finished it off with a mixture of silk thread and silk ribbon leaves. Now all I have to do is carefully cut it out and set it into the brooch setting.

Next job was to stitch some lavender onto a tiny oval of pelmet vilene to go in the centre of a vintage locket. I was properly away with the fairies when I started it and instead of drawing the shape onto the vilene so I had something to hold onto, I cut it out straight away. Hence why it’s being stitched onto a random piece of shirt fabric so I can at least handle it! The lavender is lazy daisy stitch in one strand of silk thread.

Then I added stem stitch stems and straight stitch leaves in a grey-green silk. In real life it’s about the size of my thumbnail.

Lastly, an update on October’s Move It On Project and news of November’s. Not that there’s much. Covid well and truly laid me low for a while and I’ve literally only just been able to keep up to date with the really time sensitive stuff. The cover of the collaborative book has progressed to a firmer design idea in my head, thanks to everyone who offered help and suggestions. There may be nothing to show, but trust me, I am a lot further on with it than I was at the beginning of the month. Therefore I plan to continue it into November and hopefully at least get a design down on paper, if not (yet) on fabric.

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Artisan Market at The Collection, Lincoln

This week has been a mad rush after our holiday, getting ready for a two day Artisan Market at The Collection in Lincoln this weekend, so there has been very little stitching and no movement on any of my projects.

Instead, I spent the week making earrings, brooches, Magpie Packs and necklaces, which are the only things in that list I managed to remember to photograph!

All the rushing to get everything together was well and truly worth it though. I was very happy with how the stall looked (I’m getting a bit of a standard set up now!).

In terms of sales I had a very successful weekend and generally it was a lovely market with a (mostly) fantastic atmosphere among the stallholders and the staff of the Collection, who were always available, cheerful, helpful and nothing was too much trouble. Although due to the sun pouring through the glass roof above me it was extremely warm, that was a small price to pay for such a good, brightly lit spot – so important when selling small stuff like jewellery.

I also managed some stitching in between the selling . I’ve been planning to stitch some tiny ribbon roses on dark blue silk carrier rod to set into these vintage marcasite clip on earrings.

Choosing the right colour ribbon took nearly as long as the stitching but now I can move onto doing the setting.

I also finished the stems…

…and started the ribbon embroidery flowers for a wreath brooch I’m upcycling.

I was lucky enough to have Lisa Tank, a talented abstract artist, as my neighbour for the weekend. I was very taken with some of her cards which had been made with sections from larger works and on the Sunday I bought some and promptly deconstructed one to add some abstract doodle stitching in stem stitch.

It’s textured watercolour on lovely thick paper and was a dream to stitch into.

A lovely artists’ collaboration to round off a lovely weekend.

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Ribbon Rose Brooch Kits

Back in May 2019 I ran my Ribbon Roses workshop (details in the Workshops tab at the top of the header) for what was then the Selby Embroiderers’ Guild. In the afternoon those who had moved on through the morning’s activities stitched a Ribbon Rose Brooch from some little kits I’d made up.

I came across the remaining kits last year when I was creating my Upcycled Kilt Pin Brooch kits but as they were designed to be a follow on activity for someone who had already stitched the closed fly stitch leaves and the woven spiders’ web roses, the instructions were quite sparse and not suitable for a similar makeover.

However, I felt that they would still make a good subject for a kit when I got round to being able to sit down and create suitable photographs and instructions. And that was this week! I chose the kit in the above picture to photograph while I made it up and enjoyed an easy morning’s stitching to get to this:

It was a lot of fun to stitch and although having to continually stop and take photographs of every stage kept breaking my flow, it’s an easy project which stitches up quickly and can be completed in an hour or two, depending on your level of confidence and familiarity with the various stitches used. It was also useful to confirm that there was enough of everything in the kit, apart from the ribbon as I had to find another piece to work the French knot buds.

Unfortunately the process of writing up the instructions, creating the designs and images is taking an awful lot longer than the brooch did to stitch in the first place!

The Harvest Wreath is finished and I’m really happy with the balance of the leaves.

And last but not least, this week’s update on January’s Move It On Project. Thanks to a committee meeting and an actual face to face social read of our next pantomime script this week, I’ve now completed the kantha spirals on five out of the six tiles. I’m happy that I continued with the spiral backgrounds as I really like the way the pattern of the stitches works at the point four tiles meet and I couldn’t see that when I’d only stitched three.

It’s not the most exciting of things to stitch at this stage but being well over half way is a big boost. I’m unlikely to get it finished in the 36 hours left of this month, but that’s not a problem and not the aim of the Project. I’ve moved it on, solved the thread issue, decided on the pattern for the background and will definitely finish it at some point, probably turning it into a book cover. So all in all, month one of my 2022 Move It On Project has been a great success!

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Pumpkins and roses

Several years ago my middle one decided she wanted to do some needle felting. Her craze lasted an intense few weeks and then vanished as quickly as it had arrived. I was happy to use the fleece I’d bought for her but I was also left with a large lump of orange felt she had partly formed into the shape of a sitting animal. I couldn’t bear to throw it away but also couldn’t think of what to do with it – until this week when I realised it was the perfect colour for pumpkins. Lots of rolling and wet felting later, I was left with five potential pumpkins.

I stitched through each one with coton a broder to pull it flatter and give it pumpkin-style ridges.

Then I turned them into earrings. First a pair of charm earrings. The dark coloured chain and leaf sections with the bead caps at the top were deconstructed from an over the top charm necklace. It had about six strands of chain and featured so many random pendants and dangles that I’m amazed anyone could have worn it and been able to lift their head. Possibly that was why it came to me in an unloved job lot of jewellery!

The snake chain sections looked unfinished, like they had originally had something on the ends, so I added two hand made polymer clay beads to match the orange of the pumpkins.

After using plastic leaves from a damaged bracelet to finish off the pumpkins I threaded each one onto a headpin and added them to the bottom of the longest chain where they finish the whole thing off very nicely.

The second pair of pumpkins were slightly larger, so I decided to make them into a simpler, shorter pair with a couple of metallic leaves.

Finally, with the addition of some vintage glass leaves, I turned the last and largest pumpkin into not a coach, but a bag charm/key chain.

Continuing with the Autumn/Hallowe’en theme, I’ve made a darker, more Gothic version of my ribbon roses. This was once a vintage brooch. I love the dark silver colour and High Victorian style of the setting and once I had cleaned it and removed the remains of the clasp, it was ready for a suitably dark upcycle.

I used dyed black pelmet vilene for the base and gave my stems thorns before I added the tiny roses.

The ribbon leaves are in ribbon stitch which is useful as you can control the size and shape of the leaf depending on how tightly you work the stitch.

Cut carefully to size and glued into the mount.

The pumpkin pieces are destined for Arttopia in Cleethorpes this month – that is if I can stop my little one from claiming the earrings for herself. Might be time to see if I have any of that pumpkin orange fleece left over…!

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Snowflakes Take Two

Well, almost two, as I’ve only just restarted it. I also decided to stitch onto silk and found a scrap of this lovely midnight blue silk dupion to use for the second take. The snowflakes are also neater this time round, so perhaps it was all for the best anyway.

Part of the reason that the snowflakes brooch is only partly completed is that I’ve finally managed to get all the padded applique reeds done for the Kew Memory Journal.

Next I need to stitch a sample one and see if I can carefully colour the metallic fabric with alcohol inks without it running into the background fabric to get the red/orange flame colours of the Chihuly glass.

I was looking for fob watch cases a few weeks ago and after having been distracted by finding the box of clock hands that was with them, I finally started sorting the fob cases out this week. In with them was a lovely mid-century silver tone ladies watch case which sparked off an idea to upcycle it into a pendant.

First I stitched a silk ribbon rose and rosebuds onto a scrap of pink silk dupion and added foliage in fine green silk thread.

Then I gathered it round a couple of circles of buckram the same size as the watch case….

…before inserting it into the case. Luckily the front section comes off easily.

Then to finish it off I added a sterling silver chain and found a little silver and marcasite swallow to hang from the bottom loop.

This isn’t available in my Etsy shop at the moment because I’m hoping that some of my upcycled jewellery will be stocked by a shop in Horncastle which champions in upcycled items and if I’m successful, this will be one of the pieces that will go there. Fingers crossed!

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A Jewellery Hat Trick

I seem to have had a spell where I keep finding the right pieces of jewellery to successfully upcycle and last week I managed a hat trick of embroidered pieces.

First of this batch to be upcycled was a vintage pendant mount I bought a while ago from the sales table at Guild and which has just turned up in the bottom of my sewing bag. I have a small bag of patchwork quilt trimmings which I bought a while ago from eBay and they are a great starting point for embroidered pendants like this one. I used the mount as a viewfinder to pick what I thought was the best area to embroider.

And a few hours and a fair bit of unpicking later, I had an embroidered oval to go into the mount – with a thumb for scale!

The kantha on the middle strip was an easy stitch, as was the lazy daisy floral section on the left, where I just followed the fabric pattern, but I had more of a problem with finding the right weight of both thread and stitch on the heavier fabric to the right. The Palestrina stitch in a teal perle was fine, but I tried various stitches in pink perle and pink stranded cotton which were just too heavy before I settled on more lazy daisy stitches in the same fine variegated silk as on the left. As the pendant had never been used it was easy to mount it into the frame using the folding metal tabs and very effective I think it looks too.

Taking the embroidered section away from the rest of the patchwork enables you to really focus on the stitches and somehow the three completely different pieces of fabric become a harmonious whole. It’s currently available in my Etsy Shop here with free UK postage and packing.

Next to be upcycled was a lovely brass filigree brooch which seemed to be missing something in the middle. I had the very thing – a gold tone rope edged odd earring, also missing its middle. Despite probably a good forty plus year age gap, I think they go together perfectly.

I embroidered some silk ribbon rosebuds onto a piece of silk carrier rod and gave them split stitch stems and lazy daisy leaves in fine silk thread…

…before setting the tiny piece into the earring centre of the brooch.

It was nice to do a variation on the blowsy ribbon roses I usually stitch and it’s now available here in the Upcycled Brooches section of my Etsy shop with free UK postage and packing.

The last of the week’s hat trick was an upcycled locket and this turned out so well I’m almost tempted to keep it. I’ve done a few lockets with rose bushes and trellises and I was keen to try some lavender. I chose a piece of my hand painted pelmet vilene which looked like a summer sky for a background…

…and then chose some hand dyed stranded silk with a wonderful sheen for the flowers and a bluey green cotton thread which was a good match for the foliage. I’ve no idea where the green came from – I found literally one needle full in a tangle of oddments and was sweating the whole time I was stitching that I would have enough!

The silver tone locket was a perfect setting.

And it too, is available here in my Etsy shop with free UK postage and packing.

And a quick update – the Singer 28 is now with its new owner and she loves it. I think the lady from Number 12 would have been pleased…

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