LANT / Embroidery Journal / Craft Book Challenge

There's nothing like killing three birds with one stone, is there?  Actually, I'd hate to kill any birds with a stone or any other implement, even the damn pigeons that poo in my gutters.  However, this is a different kind of bird and a different kind of stone. 

This is my March entry for The Embroidery Journal Project which now has its own blog here.  I completely failed with January's entry, but pressed on and did my teeny tiny flowers for February and this for March. 

This is also a LANT as it's my first attempt at Blackwork and it's a Craft Book Challenge as the pattern and the instructions on technique came from The New Anchor Book of Blackwork Embroidery Stitches. 

These first two pictures show the piece when I'd completed all the outlines and the cross stitch.  It only took me a few hours to create this piece and I loved every stitch.

Below you can see the final piece.  It's stitched on 14 count Aida using purely black thread.  The leaves show a variety of filling stitches.  This is a really relaxing technique and if you like cross stitch, I recommend giving this a go.  I'll certainly be doing it again.

I don't have a picture to show you yet of the final piece hooped up as I decided to paint the hoop white.  I'm not sure that was a good idea, but I'm going to have another look at it today and see if I can rescue it from my appalling painting!  It'll be joining my tiny embroidery on the wall of what will soon be my "gallery"!

I don't have much to say today as I'm still reeling from the whacking great £1,600 gas bill that hit the mat yesterday.  No, it's not down to our overconsumption of gas, it's down to a series of billing mistakes from one of the hated gas companies in this country (I think it's fair to say they're all hated).  But, on the plus side, the migraine is well and truly over!
  

Wednesday work in progress

Morning everyone.  I'm at home today.  I think I mentioned on Monday I'd had a migraine, well it never really went away.  It'd lapse, and I went to work, but then it came back so I went home.  Same again yesterday except it struck after lunch and I was in a real mess.  There was no way I could drive so my boss got someone to drive me home, but I couldn't travel by that point as I felt so sick so I ended up lying down in the medical room at work for 2 hours before going home.  I've never slept at work before (apart from a few minutes in a meeting or two!) so it was strange.  I got home and another migraine hit.  I've never had such a long-term migraine and this morning, although I don't have a migraine, I still have a headache and feel sick, dizzy and woozy. 

I thought it would be a good opportunity to show you what I'm working on.  Remember the cross stitch I started last week?  It looked like this:

I've been working on it a lot, it's so relaxing and a great thing to do when you're tired, it now looks like this:

It may not look like much, but there are a LOT of stitches there!  A while ago I bought some Hoopla Yarn and a giant crochet hook, intending to make a rug.  I thought it would take forever so I've been putting off starting it.  I finally got started the other night and it's going so quickly! 

I probably should have put my foot in the photo for scale, it's quite large!  I'm using this excellent doily tutorial and it's working very well.  I'm on round 6 and there are only 9 rounds to the doily, but I think I can keep the pattern going for a few more rounds.  I might run out of yarn though!

Finally in my WIP roundup (though these aren't my only WIPs!) are these babies.

I showed you these a few weeks ago but no-one guesed what they are. They're going to be another set of counting bean bags for my friend's little boy who turned 1 a few weeks ago.  It's his birthday present and it's late!  As he has no idea what a birthday is, I don't think it matters too much!  I just need to put the beans in and sew them up and they'll be done.

Right, I think I'd better go and have another lie down as I'm having a bit of a dizzy spell.  I hope you are all enjoying the sunshine.

{insert clever title}... erm, "hoop"?

Apologies for the lack of a clever title, and perhaps a bit of a strange post.  I had a migraine last night after I'd gone to bed so I haven't had much sleep and the tablets make me a bit "odd" the next day.  Add to that an hour in a traffic jam this morning and it leads to one discombobulated Wendy.  I'm not entirely sure what discombobulated means, but I like it as a word.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the last of the presents for Jacob... so far.  Of course, he will get many, many more but this is what I've made for him for his birth.  The cotton reel on the photo above is not a part of the design, but more a way of keeping his identity secret!  This is a whacking great 10" hoop and the owl design is taken from Mary Englebright's Stitched so Cute (Yay, another one off the craft book challenge).

The background is a simple white cotton, the applique is from my scrap bag and I added some stitching on his belly.  I wrote the wording freehand using my fading fabric pen.  It usually fades after about 10 minutes, meaning I have to keep drawing over it again and again.  This time, I wrote it in the fading pen to get it right, then went over it lightly with my new Frixon pen so that I could still see the writing when the pen faded.  It didn't.  It hadn't faded when I presented it to my brother!  Talk about sod's law.  I stitched the letters with all 6 strands of a variegated thread in a simple back stitch.

The branch was done is stem stitch as were most of the outlines, and the leaves are done in fly stitch.

I finished it off by wrapping the hoop in strips of this lovely Amy Butler print which I think goes well with the colours I used.  I added felt to the back using this tutorial from The Trouble With Crafting.

So that's it.  No tales of crashing my car this weekend.  Just a stinky blocked drain and a microwave that's packed up.  Oh the excitement of my life.

  

Craft Fair Haul (and a little rant, just a little one)

Yesterday was the Stitching for Pleasure / Hobbycrafts / Something something Embroidery exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham (UK, not Alabama).  I completely forgot to tell you I was going.  I managed to bring home a fair old loot, and have a go at a new craft. 

A wooden letter rack and a tray.  I'm going to paint/decopatch/mod podge these (or something).  The letter rack is to contain the many piles of paperwork Mr CA leaves lying around and the little tray is to go next to me on the sofa to stop my needles, pincushion, scissors, threads and / or crochet hooks from falling down between the sofa cushions.

A few necessities and some tiny embroidery hoops. I stopped at a stall to buy the 5" and 2 4" ones where I was told that 4" is the smallest they do.  A few stalls later I picked up a couple of 3" hoops... seems someone was lying!

A little iron-on bunny for no reason other than she reminds me of my bunny Ellis, and my first ever attempt at pyrography!  The image was pre-stamped so I only had to go over it with the tool.  It's quite tricky to get right and I burnt it in a few places, but it was really good fun.  I added the titles to the books.  Luckily my mum had invested in one of these tools a few weeks ago (she's a compulsive craft-horder like me), so I can go over and have a go on some more items.

A lucet with a spindle/bobbin type thing, and a gizmo.  Yep, that's its name.  It's for making coils from wire which you can then make into jewellery.

A needle-punch kit.  Yes, that's right, another new craft for me to try.  There was a lady demonstrating this and it looked so easy... bet it isn't!

Beads, beads, beads and more beads, a necklace kit, findings, spacers, connecters etc.

A little gift from my mum - a seam iron.  It can be plugged in and left turned on for hours without the handle getting hot, so it's got to be easier than plugging in and unplugging my big iron every five minutes.

Hand-dyed merino tops and a variety of hand died threads, heart trims, button-type things, cutters that I'm hoping I can use to needle-felt and some hand-dyed crewel thread that matches the threads in the DMC kit I bought that hasn't got enough thread in it...  DMC rudely ignored my constant emails asking for help in identifying the pre-sorted threads so I had to buy them elsewhere.  Unfortunately, there are still 3 threads I've run out of that I couldn't match.  There was only one stall selling crewel wool in the whole exhibition.

Even-weave, I think that's pretty self-explanatory.

Fabric!  2 metres of Kate Spain Fandango and a few unidentified pieces.

I don't think I did too badly.  I love the exhibitions at the NEC, they're a great way to find new suppliers as well as stock up and see things demonstrated.  The one thing that really gets my goat is how rude some people are.  The vast majority of crafters that I've met on the internet are kind, generous, giving folk.  The vast majority of people visiting the craft exhibitions are rude, self-centred and agressive.  Loads of them have trolleys on wheels which they'll park in your way and whack you on the legs with. Other people will push and shove you.  I was told to "move, I need to look at this stall" by a horrible woman whilst I was actually waiting for the stall-holder to bag up my purchase and another lady had a go at me as I accidentally caught her little boy with my bag - not my fault that she'd let him run free and he was crawling around by one of the stalls!

Works in progress ... i.e. I'm stuck!

Good afternoon ladies!  Well, I've just had an afternoon's crash course in Screen Printing!  No, I haven't had a day off, no I won't be writing a blog post about it... it was work! I do love my job sometimes.  We do screen printing at work and I needed to know the technique (because it's a craft of course, but also for work) so I went down there for the afternoon.  I'm rubbish at it.  I blame being left handed (again).  Anyway, that's not what I was going to write about, nor was I going to write about the fact I got lost on the way to work this morning...  No, I haven't changed my job, no my work place hasn't moved, no I haven't moved house either...

I actually asked my friend this morning if I'm a real person, or am I just a character in a TV comedy that hasn't noticed it yet... she seems to think I'm real.  The photo above is the cross stitch design I showed you a glimpse of ages ago.  As you can see, I finished the cross stitch and cut it out.  It's an ice cream - did you get that?  It's from the book Sweet Treats in Cross Stitch meaning it's another step towards my Craft Book Challenge.  I want to make it into a brooch and have cut out another piece the same shape and attached the brooch back, now I don't know how to attach the two pieces together.  I could use glue, but will it be boring?  I'm not excited about the idea of a running stitch or blanket stitch... any ideas ladies?

I started the ice-cream brooch... hang on.  It's not a bloody ice-cream!  It's a cupcake... where is my brain today?  So, I started the cupcake brooch back at the beginning of March.  I have a coat with large collars, one of which likes to jump up and slap me in the face.  I used to wear a gorgeous felt corsage which I won from someone's facebook page (can't remember who, sorry!) but it disappeared in Tunisia, so I was desperate for a replacement.  That lead me to making the little brooch above.  Alas, whilst I like it, it's too small for my coat lapel.  I did wear it on my jumper the other day and got some strange looks!  I can take strange looks, I'll wear it again.  This is from 100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet.

That lead me to crochet some more flowers for another brooch.  I'm thinking of a round felt brooch topped with different crochet flowers, and maybe some beads.  I got this far and then didn't like the two colours together, nor any of the patterns in the book.  It is a great book, but I want small flowers that go together.  I've got loads pinned so I need to have a look through them.

Having abandonned two brooches within the space of two evenings, I decided one more WIP wouldn't hurt.   I started this cross stitch.  Can you tell what it is yet?  Nope, not a cupcake, nor an ice cream!  It's a BIG cross stitch and is part of the same series as this one I finished a long time ago.  It's going to take a long time but I'm enjoying it already.

I didn't make this gorgeous star and tag.  This was made for me by the lovely, generous and very talented Jillayne.  If you don't know her blog A Fine Seam, go and visit her, she makes the most beautiful things.  A while ago she offered to send anyone a handmade star with their choice of word.  This was during a bit of a depressed period for me and I took her up on her lovely offer, asking for the word happy.  Well it certainly made me happy when it arrived.  Thanks Jillayne, your generosity and beautiful workmanship made my day!

A story with a sad ending

Morning ladies.  I think I mentioned before that last Saturday I went to a stained glass making workshop at Artworks in Beeston, Nottingham. It was amazing!  If you have a class like this nearby, I'd really advise going.  And if the equipment wasn't so expensive, I'd be doing this at home.  I took a few pictures (of the piece I made, not the other people) along the way to show you what I did.

It all starts with some lovely stained glass and one of these:

 Source: Tempsford Stained Glass

This is a glass cutter.  It has oil in it to help it move and it scores the glass, you then gently tap the glass and it breaks along your line.  The weird thing is, it can't hurt you as it's got a ball type thing rather than a blade.  Magic!

We were given a template to make a sunburst, I selected glass in shades of purple, blue and aqua and got cutting.

Once the pieces are cut, you make the edges safe with a sandpaper block-type thing, then move on to the grinder.  This is the first expensive part about this hobby.

 Source: Tempsford Stained Glass

The grinder smooths down your edges and can be used for shaping glass, though that would be an expensive way to do it as the head wears down with use, the head contains diamonds so isn't cheap to replace.  Once all your pieces are nice and smooth, you wrap the copper tape round the edges. 

I really enjoyed that part and was quite quick at it so ended up wrapping pieces for some of the other ladies too.  Here's my sunburst all wrapped up and ready to solder.

Expensive piece of equipment number 2 is the soldering iron.  It's a special high-temperature / temperature regulated piece of kit.

 Source: Tempsford Stained Glass

Using the soldering iron was great fun, I loved the little shapes made when the solder fell from the stick (accidentally!).  There are a few stages to this process.  First you "tin" the front of the copper foil.  This means you add a layer of solder. Once this is done the joins are soldered.  Then the edges are tinned and rounded, I can't remember the technical term for this!  It took ages to get that process right, but once it's mastered, you're away.

So here's my sunburst in all its glory.

I love the way it looks with the sun shining through.  I was SO proud.

My soldering isn't fantastic, it is a bit messy, but hey, I MADE this!

Stained glass work is fab and I do intend to go to a few more classes to make some other objects.  If I enjoy it as much as I enjoyed this, I think I might just splash out (and by splash out I mean save up for months, then find a bargain) on the grinder and soldering iron to do some of this hobby at home.  I also have an urge to try glass fusing, glass slumping and lampwork, but can't find any classes nearby.  The tutor from this class is doing a glass applique course at some point which I will go on.

So, you're wondering what's so sad about this?  That I can't afford to take this hobby up right now?  Nope, it's worse than that.  Mr CA decided to hang it in the window and, ignoring my advice about a drawing pin, started to wrap it round the curtain pole.  That's when it fell.  And smashed.  I was gutted, I still am gutted, that's why there's no photo, I still can't bring myself to look at it and it's the reason it took me so long to post about this.

If I had the equipment, I could mend it.  But I don't.  So I can't. 

FSNI March

Morning ladies!  Well, after the events with my car this week, I got home on Friday exhausted and fancied some time in blogland.  It was only whilst talking to Sandra that I realised it was FSNI! 

So, I got off the computer, cooked and ate dinner then went up to my sewing room to sew.  This is what I sewed:

Care to hazard a guess of what it is?  I only sewed them up last night, I didn't do the applique.  I then decided to start choosing fabrics for the bathroom curtain I'm going to make.  I was supposed to be painting the bathroom today, but it's nearly 2pm, I'm still in my jammies and I have mother's day presents to finish so I can't see that happening.  The lovely Katherine asked me if I'd tried a granny block after I commented on hers (go and see them, they're lush!) and something in my brain clicked... yes, my bathroom curtain will be granny blocks.  I had a fabric I wanted to use.

But of course I only had a fat quarter, so that's when the patchwork idea was born.  Now, my suite is a horrible light brown colour and we don't have the funds to change it right now.  The walls are, and will remain after painting, white, so I kind of needed to fit in with that.  Cue me pulling out aqua's and greens.

Hm, that dark one to the side doesn't go, not that I'm sure ANY of them go.  And what about the brown in that AB print at the top?

Cue the pulling out of browns. And some DS for some reason.  But now I've moved away from the aqua.

OK, I'm liking the aqua, but feel I need green to pull it in with the original lot.

But is it now too green?  What about the blue, it's in those prints above.

Why do I have so little blue fabric?  It's my favourite colour.  Oh, I know, I have a couple of fat quarters that are gorgeous.  And blue.

But I'm not sure they go with the original aqua print... so what do I do?  Should I use them ALL, none of them and start again?  I know, I'll leave them in a big mess on my craft room floor and go downstairs and sew.  After all, I'm supposed to be working on the mother's day presents.

And this is all I have to show for an episode of House, one of Supersize V Superskinny (fast forwarding through the adverts of course) and one and a half episodes of Eastenders.  I really am the slowest hand stitcher in the world.

It's quite pretty though!  I've got to get these finished today so I'll show you soon what they become.

naughty giraffe and well-behaved elephant

Good afternoon everyone.  Well, I'm having a week and a half again!  I'm really behind on blog reading and emails so if you feel I've been ignoring you, I haven't!  Remember I told you I'd crashed my car into the gatepost at work?  Well, it started making a horrible rattling, clunking sound.  It gradually got worse, then driving home from work last night it was really loud and the car kept suddenly swerving one way or the other.  I was terrified but carried on home.  I took it to the garage this morning and it turns out I've snapped my wheel bearings (or something like that) and my wheel was falling off!  I can't believe I was driving it around.  So, I came to work on the train and will be going home on the train.  I quite enjoyed it as they served me coffee and I got to read my book!

All this lack of free time (working too hard again), means I've got loads of stuff lined up to show you.  I still haven't finished showing you Jacob's presents, so here's another one.

Actually, that one was destined to be a present but is now in the bin.  It was a pattern in UK magazine Making, but is an extract from a book, I can't remember which one.  The giraffe is as small as he looks and the next thing I had to do was sew two tiny little circles (less thank 2" diameter) to the bottom of each leg.  Hmm.  It didn't happen.  It was never going to happen.  I gave in and scrapped it.  Yes Sandra, I know you're proud!

This little fella was made from a pattern by Retro Mama.  You may remember I used her pattern to make my bunnies?  I was lucky enough to be in a swap of sorts with Retro Mama, I sent her a UK magazine in which she'd featured and she sent me my choice of two of her patterns.  I think I won out in that swap!  Her patterns are fabulous, really worth the money, especially right now when they're discounted for a limited time.

This elephant is called Brian and has joined Gunther and Pedro at Jacob's house.  I used a Tanya Wheelan FQ of the spotty fabric (won in a giveaway from Eternal Maker via The Sewing Directory - how lucky am I??) for his body, and as a contrast fabric I used the same fabric I made his trousers with.  Jacob's trousers, not Brian's.

I see more Brian's in my future.  Let's just hope there are no more gateposts.