I Made Something!

You were right.
To the people that commented that the fabulous new craft room would be hard to be creative in because of its pristinity (do you like that word, I just made it up) - you were right.
I spent all of last week just wandering through the room, sighing with pleasure, stroking surfaces, delighting in the clean tidiness and fabulous organisation of our stuff. Which was very enjoyable I might add, but have we heard the chugging of a sewing machine or the clicking of knitting needles - alas no.

So anyway, I had this lovely pine frame that originally housed a very nice dried flower arrangement that eventually disintegrated, so my plan was to devise some natty new thingy to decorate the frame. And yesterday I made myself sit in that lovely room, make mess and create something. And I did! :-)

"Come On Baby Light My Fire"

One of the things that annoyed me about myself last year when I was heavily into embroidery, was that I couldn't figure out how to use the finished pieces. They are all sitting redundant in my sewing basket. So that was my challenge, to use an embroidered piece, along with some of the polymer clay faces to pretty up the pine frame.

I frayed the edge of a piece of dark brown hand dyed fabric and glued that on to the frame, and I also rolled up the top and bottom ends to give it a scroll type appearance. Then I sewed the faces onto the embroidered dragon hand-made felt piece I had squirreled away, then needle felted some strands of yarn around the faces to soften the edges a bit. They look kind of 'witchy' to me now, slightly sinister and taunting that dragon just a wee bit.

It's on the wall, I think it looks ok, AND I cleaned up the mess and put everything back in its place. Hallelujah! :-)

Spanky Craft Room

We have a big room at the back of our house that has always been called the Games Room. The plan was to have a pool table and a bar and other such stuff. We've had the pool table in it for years, but gradually everyone lost interest, and due to lack of space it tended to become the room to store junk in. I also set up my sewing machine in there. And so the transformation into a Craft Room slowly began. For years I only occupied a wee corner of that room, then Meshell caught the craft bug too and between us and our stashes, we took the room over completely.

But what a disgusting mess it became, not enough storage space and grotty old wooden boards sitting atop the redundant pool table for work space just hasn't cut it. It got to the point that I hated being in there. And I don't even have a photo for you - it was too obscene - mess like you wouldn't believe!

Thus began the makeover. As usual with my procrastinating nature it has taken a lot longer than it should. Firstly I designed a work station to sit in the middle of the room, with stacks of storage underneath and an overhang at one end to sit at. While that was being made we sold the pool table - and to appease my slightly miffed husband who lost not only his pool table but also the room it was in, I gave him the $300 we sold it for - smart huh :-)

And then, the clean up - oh my lord what a clean up it was! Meshell cleared out her tons of stuff she accumulated during 4 years of textile arts study and we both went through every single box and cupboard, culling our stuff. You would have been amazed at the amount of stuff that was tossed! The end result of it all was that when everything was put away again it was all in logical piles of related things, not just stuffed into random cupboards. It's amazing what you can find that has been tucked away for 20 years - what do you reckon about THIS pattern for a natty little knitted item - eek!


This is my corner of the room, a couple of the walls have feature brick which I'm rather fond of, so that's my area. The Indian Orange Peel Quilt and the smaller picture quilt of the ocean are my 'works in progress', and they have had that title for quite some time now! Note that the ironing board is in my territory - and it has a snazzy new cover. It had to have a nice new cover to go with the nice clean and tidy room.


And, ta-da! Here is the new work station, all white and shiny clean and lovely. I'm really happy with how it turned out and it has so much storage! It's 1.8 metres long and 1.2 metres wide and stands about 90 centimetres high, nice and tall so as not to break our backs when leaning over pinning quilts and the like. It sits in the middle of the room and we have assorted benches and cupboards around the walls, gathered over the years. The easel is Meshells, as is the giant knitting sitting on top of the tall cupboard! It was one of her university pieces. On the right of the photo is an old dining table that Meshell and I share to use our sewing machines on - we have one side each.


At the far end is an overhang area for us to sit at, and down the centre is a void, which I planned as a great place to store cumbersome things like cushion inserts and quilt wadding. It has worked out really really well, and we've also added a rubbish bin there too, to avoid the temptation to just sling threads and offcuts of fabric on the floor. :-)


Our final mission was to find two stools to sit on, preferably with adjustable height. Are these not the bestest most fabulous stools in all the world? We were so excited when we found them - they are just perfect and really comfortable.


Right, now that's all done, and we have a clean, tidy and very spanky craft room, there is no excuse for lack of creative output eh!

Orange, Stitches and Rocks

Today was varied
A play with my new camera, which I'm only just beginning to scour the surface of - it does lots of cool stuff. For anyone interested, it's a Panasonic FZ50 digital, and I've just ordered an extra macro lens for it. For today - "Orange, In Still Life" :-)


Next it was off to Spotlight with Meshell to relieve ourselves of our Christmas money. I love skipping round craft/habbi stores with my basket buying a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Best buy was three big rolls of Xmas ribbon for next to nothing, and a piece of linen that was being discontinued and was going at about 1/4 the normal price.


In the afternoon the cross stitch girls came over, and I continued on with my Kandinsky cross stitch, which hasn't been touched for a few months whilst Christmas craft took over. This is one of Kandinsky's paintings that I converted into a cross stitch pattern using some natty software.


Then finally I popped into the Radiology clinic to collect the X-rays on my big toe, which has been giving me grief on and off for a couple of years, but the last few months it's got to be a right pain in the...well... toe!
I suspected osteoarthritis as I have that in my knee, and the report certainly agreed to that and talked about degenerative and lipping and spurs, but I can't stop staring at these bloody huge rock looking things on the bone - what the freaking hell are they!!
I have no idea if they are even the problem - I'll find that out when I head back to the doctor to learn my fate. I keep staring at my foot trying to visualise big lumpy marbles that I'm seeing on the x-ray. Creepy

Christmas Craft

Every year I make one or two of these Christmas Balls, but I went all out this year and put together four of them. It involves a little bit of cross stitch, a polystyrene ball, little squares of fabric that you fold, assorted trim, and fifty million little pins.... I reckon an X-ray of each ball would be quite interesting! They make nice gifts, and Meshell was supposed to get hers tomorrow, but she managed to wheedle it out of me today

Holiday Softie Awards

Dear readers of this blog may or may not have heard of the Softie Awards - it's an Internet competition for soft toys and other such things made of fabric, wool, felt....well, soft stuff basically :-)

Currently the Holiday Softie Awards are running, and the reason I am writing about this is that I'm doing one of those proud Mama moments...... Meshell (who is in the final few frantic weeks of her uni degree and should be back blogging soon) has had her gorgeous Elf Xmas Stocking selected in the final five of the "Deck The Halls" category!


I've just been to the website and cast my vote - the winners of the eight categories are decided by public vote which ends on Tuesday 13th November. If you're interesting in voting then go HERE and click on the Vote Here link in the first paragraph - it takes you to each category in turn and you simply view the five finalists, then click on the name of your favourite in each.

And if you're interested, the Flickr group that shows every entry that was submitted is HERE. There is some real cute stuff there, and it must have been really hard for the organisers to choose only 5 final entries in each category, which is why I'm real proud of my girl. :-)

Fabric Postcard Virgin

Artist trading cards, fabric postcards, they're very cool don't you think. As I have had a year of indulging in fifty trillion new craft ventures, I've studiously avoided joining any trading card swaps so as not to explode my brain. But I love looking at other peoples efforts - just have a google, there's scads of them around (isn't it interesting how 'google' has become a verb), and I've remained interested and intrigued and put the idea aside for later.

Anyway, a few weeks back I embroidered a bicycle for Take A Stitch Tuesday and the lovely FaeryDi asked if I'd like to do a swap. The bicycle was a bit big to turn into an artist trading card (which are the size of a playing card), so we decided to do a fabric postcard (6 inches by 4 inches).


Here it is. Dianne said she loves bike riding so I took the opportunity of turning the bicycle embroidery into a scenic thingy, and there's Dianne, up in the corner, enjoying riding her bike through the countryside. :-)


Here's Dianne, beads and hair flying in the breeze. Her face is polymer clay, with a light rub of Treasure Gold to give it a nice glow. Lovely complexion you've got there Dianne!


Here's the original bicycle with an added shadow under the front wheel, which is just a sliver of gold fabric fused down and then stitched over.


And here are the fabric trees, fused down and then edged with a few different embroidery stitches. The small ones at the back are simply edged with straight stitch and then splodged with a wee bit of fabric paint.


And a prettied up envelope to post it in (I was inspired by PygletWhispers wonderful artwork). Technically a fabric postcard is actually posted 'as is', as a postcard, by addressing and stamping the back. But I was a bit worried that the clay face might get damaged, so I chickened out and put it in an envelope instead. It arrived safely thank goodness, and I'm glad you like it Dianne!

I've Had Mail!

I've been blessed with some very pretty mail this week. Firstly was this wonderful surprise fabric postcard from Kate of Kate's Quilting (& other fibre arts) Blog. Isn't it cool! I had sent Kate some of the little polymer faces I'd moulded and she send me this as a thank you - well, thank YOU Kate!


And equally as wonderful is this fabulous altered postcard from Dani of Pyglet Whispers. I have long admired Dani's wonderful artwork and I was somewhat gobsmacked to discover a post on her blog where Dani was offering this postcard to someone leaving a comment, and no-one had commented yet! So I was the lucky recipient and I chuckled at the howls of disappointment from the people who commented after me. :-) Thanks Dani, I really love the card.


I've even had a wee go at making my own fabric postcard for the first time, as a personal swap with someone. As she hasn't received it yet I wont post a complete photo, but this is a corner of it. I've been moulding more faces, and experimenting with mixing different polymer clay colours together. I love things that have an ancient "dug up out of the ground" look, so am liking urky mud type colours. This one was moulded from a mixture of green pearl and black clay, then daubed with a little bit of Treasure Gold. What do you think?


And I've done a small TAST sample of Cast On stitch and Crested Chain stitch. I like the crescent shaped Cast On stitch, it has interesting texture. Not so keen on Crested Chain stitch though.


And I've had my nose in a book this week, on recommendation from Meshell who has finished it. "The Golden Compass" was suggested as a book to read if you enjoy reading Harry Potter and other such fantasy books. It's good, I'm enjoying it. Aaand, better still, the movie is in production right now, to be released in December! I saw the preview of the movie a couple of weeks ago when we went to see Harry Potter and it looks great!


I'm finding it difficult to blog regularly of late, and I'm not happy with myself because of it. A few blogs I read are doing an "Encyclopedia of Me" type thing at the moment, every day posting something about their lives in alphabetical order. I'm toying with having a go at this myself, as it might make it easier to smaller posts but more regularly. hmmm....

Little People Everywhere

I admit it, I have a new addiction.
In fact, I've had a lot of new craft addictions this year, it's been lots of fun!
But this week's focus is little people. I love little people - fairies, elves, tree spirits, leprechauns, some of my best childhood memories revolve around stories about small folk. Which is why I'm so taken with the face push moulds and clay I ordered last week. I sucked Meshell into sitting down with me for a few hours this afternoon (didn't take much persuading!) and we had lots of fun mixing clay colours and making moulded faces.


Aren't they just the coolest thing! I bought aqua, gold, copper coloured polymer clay, and Meshell discovered that the gold and aqua together produced the most gorgeous green that has a beautiful lustre. I'm sure she'll do a blog post of her own collection of little faces soon.


I also bought a granite looking clay, but I'm not so happy with that as the flecks in it are actually glitter, and the sparkle doesn't really appeal to me. I ended up rolling a bit of aqua through one and a bit of copper through another which I'm happier with, but in general I like a more subdued colour look. To be honest I'm just busting to run amok and order heaps more clay, and the other two packs of face moulds (this range is by Maureen Carlson) - trying to control myself for a little while at least!


I'm very taken with the idea of moulding just a part of the face, I can picture a textile forest scene with parts of faces peeping through. I've only just noticed that this partial face still has cornflour on it, which I dusted on the mould to stop the clay sticking. Hope it washes off! A couple of the clays are Fimo and a couple are Premo, and the Premo I found sticks to the mould a lot more, being a clay that gets much softer when it warms up. Speaking of faces and trees, have you seen Jo's Tree Spirit Doll - it's wonderful!


Using beads for eyes gives a totally different look too, and if you carefully rotate the beads a little then it makes the face look like it's watching something off to the side. Although my main intent is to use these faces with embroidery or wool felt, I have this slightly insane idea to surreptitiously glue one or two of these little darlings around the house, to be found by surprise. We have a lot of dark red face brick in our house, couldn't you just see the face above in repose somewhere, silently watching. :-)

Ripple and Tipple

I'm having trouble settling back into pre-holiday routines, I can't quite settle down to embroidery just yet. Sooooo, what's the solution.... fondle a different textile for a bit! It's all Meshell's fault, she's making a very gorgeous ripple blanket, in keeping with the world explosion of ripple crocheting. Hence my craft interest for the the week, I can't quite cope with the thought of crocheting a whole blanket, so guess what I'm doing...... yep, a CUSHION! I'm so predictable. :-)



And, and this is also Meshell's fault, I've just spent a fortune on yarn at Knit Happens. She just happened to mention that there was an online yarn sale, so, what does one do when the Aussie dollar is measuring up well with the US dollar?..... you send all your Aussie dollars to a US yarn store. :-) I might point out before you go racing over to have a look that there's not much left, I was sad to see that there was no Koigu yarn left - that is something I covet.

I don't do a huge amount of knitting or crochet, but I've been trying to build up a stash of various bits and pieces for a while now. I'm interested in doing some wool felting after seeing some of the fantastic felted backgrounds in the TAST group. So, I'm kinda leaping about from one craft interest to the next at the moment, depending on what mood I'm in. Woolly girl this week and hopefully Embroidery chicky babe next week.

And the tipple in the title, Tamar Ridge Sauvignon Blanc, nothing gets that crochet hook running smoothly like a nice glass of Tasmanian wine :-)

Another Cushion!

I love making cushions. They are a less formidable task than larger objects and I also like the hodge podge of cushion variety on the settee. Now this cushion is a hodge podge in itself, a regular riot of colour. Those of you who read my blog in its early days may well remember my foray into knitting - I started churning out many mitred squares in various colours and sizes. Well, FINALLY I made it up into a cushion yesterday. I backed the knit section with cotton fabric so it wouldn't stretch out of shape, and here it is...


It's bright isn't it!! Lucky for me that I love lairy stuff. Do you know it is the MOST comfortable cushion to lean into - soft and squashy and just right. The reason I had a go at mitred knitting was after Melody Johnson posted this on her blog - her cushions are one of the yummiest things I've ever seen!



And here is a close-up of knitting, for no reason apart from the fact that I like to amuse myself by taking macro photos. :-)

Sewing Stuff

I've decided to sign up for Take A Stitch Tuesday which is being run by Sharon B of In A Minute Ago. It sounds like a good idea and will suit someone like me no end.... I need pushing to get things done. It starts on 3rd January and anyone can join in. To quote Sharon -
Each week I am going to work a stitch and experiment with it, and blog the results. What does it look like worked in different threads? What happens when you change the size? How does it behave on a curve or can it be stacked to create patterns? What happens if you work it in a free form manner? What are the inherent design possibilities of this stitch? Anyone who wants to join in and blog their discoveries is welcome.
Sounds good, yes? I think I'll probably just watch at first, but hopefully I will get braver and experiment a bit, and maybe even blog it!

This is the end result of my mitred knitting experiment. Well, not quite the end result cos I haven't yet got off my backside and made it into a cushion, but at least all the squares are sewn together. It has a interesting look, I THINK I like it.


I must, I must, I must make a new pot holder!! I thought if I posted a photo of its sorry little self then it might spur me on. :-) It has been well loved and is about 9 years old, but I think now that its innards are showing through it's time to update to a new version.

Leaf Whapping

I had a fun day earlier in the week, doing some leaf whapping. What do you think of this fabric? I rather like it, it has a lovely antique look about it. My convoluted logic for doing this is because I've been spending time wandering through the very fabulous embroidery stitch section 100 Details in 100 Days and also the Stitch Dictionary on the Blog "In A Minute Ago". You see, I like to try out embroidery stitches, but I can never think what to try them on. I don't want to do them on scrap fabric cos that just seems a waste, so I was looking for a cushion sized piece of fabric that could just hang around so I could gaily gather it up and doodle on with different embroidery stitches and beading. Does this make sense or am I completely insane? :-)

Anyway, I thought I'd photograph the leaf whapping process and document it. I must say that I'm no expert at natural dyeing so have no idea if what I do ends up being colourfast over the years, but the whapped fabric I did 5 years ago that has had numerous washes is still going strong so I guess it's not a bad method.

Basically, what you do is put leaves between two pieces of prewashed 100% cotton fabric and whack it with a hammer to release the juices onto the fabric. Then you soak the fabric in a mordant to set the print - I use a strong tea solution. I used cream homespun fabric and I've also done this on calico (muslin) in the past. As far as which leaves to use, it's a case of trial and error. Generally, flat, thin leaves work best. This particular plant is called Wormwood (Artemesia) and I've found this the best leaf to print with. It has a lovely feathery shape, isn't too mushy when whapped, and the prints are clear.

Anyway, spread a piece of fabric on a flat surface (I used a big wooden board), then position your leaf right side down, cover with the piece of fabric you are printing and start hammering. You learn as you go along just how hard to hit, I would say it's probably firm tapping for some plants to hard work hammering for others. I find you need to use a metal hammer, a rubber mallet doesn't seem to work very well. You'll start to see the leaf design coming through onto the fabric so continue tapping/whapping until you are satisfied. If you are using a leaf type that is too moist you'll find that the print is just a blobby mess, so have a bit of fun experimenting with different leaves and flowers. Edit: another thought - closer weave fabric works better - if you use a very open weave fabric then the moister prints tend to smudge more.
















This is a close-up shot of a Wormwood whapping. And below shows what happens if you whap a beetroot leaf. This leaf is a bit juicy but if you whap carefully sometimes you can get a print that is not just a blob. Unfortunately that lovely red stem colour doesn't stay that way, it ends up light brown like all the other prints.

Whapper At Work

Here you can see when the top fabric is lifted back. The whapped leaves are still attached to the fabric - just peel them off and discard. See how you get a bonus piece of printed fabric on the bottom? This piece of fabric ends with with random prints all over it as it's just your base piece, but it turns out quite pretty just the same.











Ferns can produce a nice print although I find that the print doesn't set quite as well and fades a lot. Perhaps if I read up on different solutions to soak the fabric in (such as alum and iron sulfate) there may well be a way to fix this. But I wanted to keep it simple today and just use tea as it's sitting in the cupboard and was easy peasy.


Ok, that's the whapping part finished. Now's a good time to wash your hands, to get all the leaf goo off - keep in mind that you may have been handling poisonous leaves so wash well ok.
Phew, I'm pooped, time for a cuppa. "Meshell, would you like one too?" Can you guess which mug is mine? ;-)









While you're making your well earned cuppa, the next step to to prepare your tea solution to soak the fabric. I used about half a cup of tea leaves in 2 litres of boiling water. Brew it up in a bucket for ten minutes, then add the fabric, stirring well. Top up with more water if there isn't enough to keep the fabric constantly wet. Soak in the tea solution for at least 4 hours, stirring periodically. You'll notice the colour of the leaf prints will start to change to a darker green, then to a sort of khaki green.










Next step is the rinse. Pour away the tea solution (pot plants love it) then rinse the fabric in cold water. Then wash the fabric in warm, soapy water. Don't panic at how much brown colour washes out into the water, that's normal. Rinse the fabric again in cold water and repeat until water is clear.

Next, dry the printed fabric. See how the prints have changed colour to a lovely antiquey brown? I think the whole print process has something to do with tannins. When the fabric is dry, give it a good, hot iron. Whether this helps at all with setting the print I don't know, but it sounds good eh. :-)











And this is what you end up with, aged looking leaf print fabric. You can either plan the leaf set up, or just go random. And you get bonus fabric from the under sheets that you were laying the leaves on, handy for applique or whatever. It's interesting to see how different leaves print, the faded fern leaves, the blobby prints of fleshier leaves and the lovely lovely wormwood prints which always work out well. I've heard that hydrangea flowers print well but I haven't tried that yet.