Karen Ruane

a few pages.....

Five little books, five pages. It's a start. My aim is to cram these little books with samples....like this.....in readiness for France. There will be doodles, scraps of cloth, snippets of stitched samples, printed images, torn paper, lined paper, graph paper, all kinds of things to hopefully feed creative thought and process.

These little books will be completed in a relaxed manner, an hour here and there. I'm not going to set off on a marathon of page filling all at once. If I take a more relaxed approach I hope they will evolve more naturally, unexpectedly.

I didn't make the little books. I bought them from my friend Kaija. I have her permission to use them in this manner, to alter them, to create tiny sample books and  hopefully sell them. You can find these little books and other wonderful things here.... Her shop is so beautiful it's worth drooling over for five minutes even if you don't buy anything.

 

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graph paper and a label

adding French knots to a page

New Class. Sampling for stitch.

lace cloth and happy mail

I grow to love my postman more and more......... he does make me happy. Two wonderful and unexpected parcels this week. One a box crammed with beautiful hankies and fabric, the other a lovely scissor case and Liberty fabric. That was more than enough to temp me from my sewing machine where I have been every day for at least an hour making lace cloth. I'm working on white lace cloth along with subtly coloured lace cloth (top image) and metallic tissue lace cloth. There are a a lot of sewing machine hours being put in here but I don't mind.

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Lemon and lace

pieces of a pocket

An embroidered silk pocket front, an embroidered silk lining and a hand full of patterned puffs...pieces of a pocket. I now need to put all this together starting with stitching the seams of the lining then stitching the lining into the pocket before I add the puffs as final titivations.

This one has been ''in progress'' for quite a while.....for ''in progress'' read lying in a cupboard waiting for attention. It hasn't been deliberately neglected honestly, I just get easily distracted. If this is finished by Monday I will be happy that I have had a productive weekend.

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an embroidered lining and a button

the first pocket from class

a surface, embellished....

rolls of cloth

Repeated images, folded one way then the other...please indulge me. I am completely in love with this cloth. (I know...I say it all the time....again, indulge me) The top piece in the first, third and fourth imags was created yesterday afternoon. It measures approximately 10 x 8 inches and took around an hour to make.....can someone who is good at Mathematics please tell me how long it would take to make a yard of this? I want a yard of this, just to have, for no reason. I also want a yard of hand crossed stitched fabric but that's another story.

My husband walked in on me drooling over this and asked me if I bought it from the place I get my other silk.....yay!! I told you you couldn't buy it...I made it myself I said to him....such a good feeling. (in case you are wondering, he was underwhelmed and merely asked what there was to eat for lunch....)

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snippet cloth

doodled cloth with added stitch

Embroidered pockets, human cloth. (doodle, embellish, wrap)

bullion knots....

This is the lower edge of this piece. Many more bullion knots have been added around the little circular cut away areas. Those spaces were edged with buttonhole lace first, to define. I will add more blue to this at some point, most likely in the form of buttons or puffs when the surface embroidery is complete. Those additions won't be ''blue'', they will be white with a tiny amount of blue, a fine line here and there perhaps.

 An old video...bullion knots....

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an edge of cutwork

silk and tissue

I had a feeling that this cloth was appearing on here every day, that you would think I kept it in a cupboard to pull out and show you when I had been lazy, feet up, watching TV, drinking gin, not sewing. I was mistaken...I looked. It's on here a fair bit but not every day, not even every other day...phew. Thing about this is I am working with it a lot at the moment. If I put it on here you can guarantee there will be another line of stitching that wasn't there before or another squiggle of gimp.

This cloth is featuring so much in my tiny front room these days that it's perhaps because I see it every minute of the day which led me to assume you did too. Tomorrow I will be making more of this. I want at least half a dozen pieces before April, just cloth, this cloth, for display, to hang, ''plain''.....just cloth.  The key? When you have made it Karen stop stitching on it!!

 

OOps...it would appear that in my churned stomach induced haze I didn't take my shop off maintenance mode. I thought I had...that is now rectified. I do apologise.

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creating, doodling, stitching....

moving sampling forward

three hexagons and three tabs....

pieces of a pocket puzzle

bumps....

more desk pad doodling....

a white fringe and surface texture on paper

composition

I'm feeling a little better today...thanks for the well wishes yesterday. I'm ''fragile'' if that makes sense but much better than yesterday. This morning I took it easy, peppermint tea and a little page play, laying things down, tearing paper, moving stuff around.

lace...options

I have lace on my mind at the moment, plans for working with lace. This morning I was looking through my images again, these inspire. Well, many of my images inspire, these are the ones I will focus on for now. I bought lace in London, I will show you that soon. I also came home from London with a very unwelcome ''bug''...I'm off to bed for an hour as I never slept at all last night.

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gimp and lace

lace, tissue and edges....

lace cloth and buttonhole stitch.

I'm still not here, I am probably here. To keep you entertained in my absence I have edged a tiny section of lace cloth with buttonhole stitch. 

I will be back tomorrow...all going well I won't need to leave the house again for weeks.....

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buttonhole stitch and colouring in

pin pillow

layers of white

Last time you saw this it looked like this....since then more layers have been added, more hankies, more lace. There are now bullion knots and a little running stitch. I'm not sure whether we have seen the last of the gimp yet...I'm thinking. 

When you read this I will be here, being educated and inspired....

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a bullion loop seam and lemon running stitch

mix and match....