Applique, little motifs which remind me of lollipops. I made quite good progress with this last night, the lace is now edged with buttonhole, there are lollipops, wrapped threads, a few more web stitches and a little more chain stitch. The next step will be hexagons I think...... later this week. I may need to rein myself in a little soon. I am getting carried away with playing for the new class and if I get too far ahead I will run out of steam before we even start.
The current class finishes very soon. This week we are on fastenings so I'm going to immerse myself in those. It takes me back to these....and that's a lovely place to be.
Weather wise it's been a gloomy week...enough rain to require three Arks never mind one and I'm sure that's obvious from one or two of these images. Gloom however doesn't get in the way of cloth, embroidery, doodling, pin tucking etc etc. I even managed to ''accidentally'' buy a lot of fabric from the shop shown here. It's a good thing that place isn't local to me. It's a good thing it's an hour and a half drive away in the place my mum lives.
Later today I'm going to work more on this from yesterday (the doodled piece).....a little applique perhaps....hopefully I can show you that tomorrow. I'm thinking of using the colours I usedhere...what do you think?
Three pieces, one created some weeks ago, one created in the past two days and one created yesterday. A theme is emerging, a repetition of process and placement. I can probably run with this for quite some time...a growing collection of samples, of pockets inspired by lace cloth, silk, embroidery and layering.
Can you imagine pockets patched with lace? Hankies combined with scraps of silk and overlaid with lace? Embellishing silk with snippets of hankies? Overlaying those embroidered cloths with lace and transforming those embellished pieces into pockets?
I think I have just nailed down the theme for mynew class.
Last night, the embroidery, I doodled, can you tell? That piece is more colourful. It works. At least I think so.
More about this..... this has turned out to be such an inspirational piece to embroider. It has given me new ideas, new directions, so much information and a lot of ideas all stored up. It's amazing where working with a small piece of lace and the edge of a hankie will take you.................you should try it.
The video allows you to see clearly the embroidery which has been added since you last saw it....
Samples, class work, gingham, lace, pink, lace cloth....it's s proper hive of activity here. I now have so many of these sheets. When class finishes in a couple of weeks I will endeavour to photograph them all for you. Aside from the finished sheets I have stacks of samples which still need to be mounted, I could soon be swamped, buried under a pile of pink. That wouldn't be a bad thing I'm sure.
Meanwhile, along with pink and lace I'm playing with hankies in the background, seeing hankies as patches and patches as pockets ready for the new class.Maybe even pockets made from patches..... a little like these....
Happy thanksgiving to all of you who are celebrating today!!!
This piece, this work, this labour of love. It's ongoing, it gets attention every week as part of class, there is still some way to go but I don't mind. I'm guessing I might just feel a slight sense of loss when it's finished but that's some way in the future. The video? It speaks of this piece, a progress report or new information for those of you who haven't seen it before.
For an indefinite period of time I am going to start posting both here and at my old blog on blogger. Why? Because I don't have enough to do...lol...that's a joke by the way. No, the reason is that Typepad keeps letting me down, my feeds aren't working either, my e mail subscriptions are inconsistently updated, my followers appear and disappear in very large numbers for no reason, (a feedburner issue most likely), it's a constant headache here. Who is seeing what? A sketchy picture of my reach, a feeling that some days I am talking to myself although I know that's not the case. For example.....according to my analytics widget MORE people visited my blogger site yesterday, which hasn't been updated in weeks than came here. Go figure. So posts will appear in both places for a while, (exactly the same post) that way I'm hoping to get a clearer picture of my reach.
For those people who wonder why reach is important...to any blogger who earns their living this way......that's your answer.......this is how I earn my living. I need to have a sense of who can see new classes being listed for example. Important. Also, this is a very isolating occupation. No real time contact with anyone, nobody to bounce ideas off, nobody to brain storm with. That's where you come in.....I bounce ideas around with you, I brain storm with you, I get feedback from you, from my ''reach''......Important.
Finally, there really isn't any need to go dashing over to blogger every day, apart from today it will be exactly the same as here....
Another recipe for you just like I gave you on Monday.....take a little bit of lace cloth and sprinkle it with snippets from a precious vintage hankie...preferably the edge because then you still have the central cloth to use for other things. Like when you squeeze a lemon to get the juice out, don't throw the peel away. Not that I squeeze many lemons, I avoid the kitchen unless a kettle is involved but I remember the lemon advice from school. ( I knew school would be useful one day)
I'm playing with hankies at the moment, in this form in order to test things out for my new class, Patched Pockets. This may well feature somewhere in there. Hankies will definitely feature...it's the other titivations I'm playing with....
I started this piece the other day when I said I would be in the corner covered in thread and scraps of cloth....the reason? I made this, the foundation, the base, the lace cloth, the special cloth that you can't buy....
I enjoy looking back over the past week. It confirms I haven't been idle. I haven't necessarily been working as hard as a lot of people but none the less...I haven't been sat on my behind doing nothing at all. I must have been good anyway, I got pencils and things as a gift, an early Christmas gift. Thank you Santa for stopping here early. (it wasn't wrapped so what's a girl to do? close her eyes?) The Maltesers? (top image, hiding behind my water spray) not mine, Christmas gifts for small relatives unfortunately. Don't think I haven't been tempted....boy have I been tempted.
Gingham and Broderie Anglaise criss crossed on a bed of lace......sounds like a recipe. You have seen this before, a couple of times I think but today it's different. There are little gingham ''nuggets'' appliqued on one strip now and there are three bumpy bits as opposed to just one. The little flowers, far left, top picture were the first embellishments to be embroidered onto this some weeks ago. I'm now extending the surface embroidery without a firm plan on where to go next. That doesn't worry me, I'll just keep stitching until that blinding flash strikes me. I also don't know what this will be yet.....don't hold your breath for that decision as I'm in no hurry.
Earlier today I was making lace cloth for class. This afternoon I need to make more but I also have a hankering to make some in pure white, to play with. If you need me I'll be sat just over there covered in little snippets of lace and white and thread....
Finished...wow. It came together yesterday afternoon and evening and I was so surprised at how it turned out. I don't know why that would be, I always planned to finish it like this but there's something about this that I can't quite put my finger on.......something gentle, soft, vulnerable even. It's precious, perhaps that's it. It seems more fragile than this one or this one, maybe that's due to it's dimensions...who knows.It's now listed in the shop....
If you have bought a ''button cloth'', thank you. I won't be able to get to the post office until Wednesday. I promise I will take very good care of them until then.
I'm making good progress with this work, with these 7 inch embroidered squares for a new cloth book of embroidery. The paper piece featured in my last post and I...
