Nine Patch for Fab Cycling

Working on more stamped and free motion embroidered pieces for the course Fab Cycling at The Hub, Chelmsford in September.

Showing you don't have to embroider everything. Sometimes less is more.

 

Mixing in machine embroidery with vintage hand pulled thread embroidery.

Free motion embroidery around white on white vintage hand embroidery.

The finished cushion. Inspired by the wonderful woven silk from Stephen Wallters . My friend Julia kindly gave me a bag of offcuts. How lovely a friend is that!

The secret to making a multi-facted design like this work is to tie the design together. Here it is the use of threads to do the "New Embroidery". The colour choice for these threads blends in very well.

I hope this inspires YOU!

Prayer Flag Course Update & More Cushions

The Prayer Flag course last night went very well. We had 26 say they were coming on Facebook, but only 5 turned up. That was just as well as we only had 3 machines to use and we would not have coped with 26 people - simply not enough room.

Fiona using my New Home My Style - 20 years old -the machine. Never give a girls age away!

Paula hand sewing ( Queen Bee of Colchester Slack Space)

Crystal -  who says she hates sewing on the machine ( she always makes something good)

This is an old Necchi Lydia machine probably 40+ years old

Retro Divas on a visit.

Dawn on the Singer Featherweight. She was making a flag for her Reiki treatment room.

The Singer and Necchi were donated by a friend of mine. They work fine and were quite easy to use. No instructions so a lot of head scratching on the threading up. We were so busy I forgot to take pictures of the finished flags!

I've made 3 more cushions, all on a lemon, lace and daisies theme. Oh and 2 cat ones.

I used one tablecloth, which was a rayon fabric, not very stable, so I could only use small pieces of it and patch them onto curtain lining. The fabric seemed to have a mind of its own and would not stay with the warp and weft straight. Had some lovely polycotton and laces that went really well. All glammed up with some machine embroidery. 18 x 18 with button fastening.

My friend Val2 - I have 3 Vals :-)) came round with  two black bin bags full of fabric and these two fronts were in one of the bags. They were under the needle quick and I did a lot of machine embroidery on them. 16 x 16 with a fruity curtain backing and button fastening. 

Apologies if the pictures are not big enough my Microsoft Picture gallery has crashed. I've uninstalled as they recommended and now it will not reinstall. Grrrrrrrrrrr more computer problems.

It was Church Home group at mine today and they caught me hoovering. There were gasps of horror and offers of support. They were so shocked I was cleaning not crafting. Oh and I had forgotten they were coming too. I'd run out of milk and only had digestives to offer them. Been a good day for me then. Try again tomorrow.

Made this week - Retro Divas and Cushions

Well no posts all week and then you get three from me in one day. Reason its Handmade Monday so I just had to do a post for that. why not pop along and get your makes on there?

This week I have finished two Retro Divas,  Twins I think, one with white detail and the other with black. The black lace is just to die for. Its a fragment of a Victorian veil from a hat. Very delicate and I had to stitch up a hole.

Looking a bit fed up of being poked and posed!!! Oh these two have lace, modern as the Victorian was just too fragile for this, or voile sleeves.

Little ballet slippers with lace edging.

Crochet butterfly in her hair, 1/2 a lace collar as a shawl, with a vintage button broach.

A lovely tatted collar and huge vintage button broach.

We do rear views too.

Made four of these cushions, embroidery from one tablecloth. Surround by blue check another table cloth.

Backs of the cushions, random patch work of the blue check tablecloth and a 1/2 pair of Scandinavian pattern curtains. Lovely blue vintage buttons.

I have really been struggling with making a decent shaped heart. They are made of really small scraps, random patched together. Had a really bad tempered day getting these wrong! First I did not overlap patches enough. Then I did not sew right up to the edge of the patches so they split when I stuffed them. Then I could not sew around the top of the heart and get a neat round shape. I unpicked so many times. Then the hand sewn bit on the side was also a disaster. These look OK in the picture but not up to my standard for sale.

Just so you know I am not perfect and really bad blooper wrong items happen. This is the worst heart ever! Sewed too far down in the dip between the rounded tops. But I have an idea to use this as something else. So next week we will see if I have a new thingy to show you all.

Remember to pop over to Handmade Harbour

Sales at the Pop-Up Shop!!!!

These cushions are selling well these have sold.

Cherry Ann Art's daughter bought the one on the seat.

Two more have also sold but not sure which ones. Will have to do a stock check next time.

Sold two of this style to one lady - gave her a small discount.

These are multi-aperture mounts, each picture is playing card size. I took 10 of these over to the Pop-up shop, I think 8 have sold. 

Lots of other artists have sold their items too. So a great start to this session of the Pop-up shop.

Hope you are all well, been very busy sewing more cushions and working on stuff for an exhibition.

Indie & Aurelia More Happy Scrappy Dolls

Phew just finished number 5&6 in time for a visit to The Chelmsford Community Pop-up Shop Tomorrow. I hope they are going to have room for me to squeeze these in on my cushions stand. At least the dollies will be nice and comfy there.

Number 5 is Indie as she has lovely blue hair and Indigo is a blue dye.

Here she is sitting on some of my vintage cushions, with Pompii my Teddy bear. I've had him since I was 6 months old. He came to visit the  Ideas Hub last week.

A close up of Indie's face, she has little hearts for her cheeks and cotton bullion fringe for her hair. I think this fringing makes super doll hair.

This is number 6 Aurelia, she has yellow highlights and aurelion is a yellow colour. I have it in my watercolour paints. She's sitting with Blue Ted, I've had him since I was about 2. They are also on some of my handmade cushions.

Aurelia has little bunches - really tassels on furniture fringing. I'm having lots of fun with the fringing you can make loads of different styles with it.

So it's off to be sold for these two and number 3&4. Hope they make someone happy this Christmas.

Cushions and more cushions

Up to my ears in making cushions. Recently bought some tin trunks at auction, to my surprise when we opened the one at the bottom of the stack it had some old curtain in it. These got washed and had to air outside for several days, in the sun, as they stunk of moth balls. They were made up into cushions which have sold well at the Chelmsford Community Pop-up Shop and also to my friends.

Above is a fabulous Zoffany Chintz Cotton from 1984, my friend Val found this in the Pop-up Shop. There was a very large amount of fabric for just £7.00 - a real steal. So far I have got 3 cushions in the above style and 9 of the patchwork ones below. Zoffany's 1st year of designing fabric and wallpaper was 1984. They are still in production today and make for Sandersons and other top companies.

They are not finished yet as I am waiting on braid and zips from eBay. Then I have to buy cushion inners so they are nice and plump.

Today I went to Braintree, met up with Val and we did a tour of the charity shops. I bought this wonderful Apple Green and Pale Blue 1950's set of curtains in the RSPCA shop.

Then into the Helen Rollason shop where they had a large trunk of fabrics. I bought a selection, tartan, white poly cotton, white shimmer fine fabric, floral Sanderson and a 3 metre piece of 1960's crimplene  complete with Paisley pattern. That was so popular in the late 1960's early 1970's as I remember making a blue dress trimmed with Paisley!!!

Best thing was I bumped into Julie Howe and her friend Stephanie Moss so we just had to stop for a coffee and chat.

Welcome to the new faces on the followers gallery. I'm popping over to see what you are up to on your blogs.

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