Take It Further October

I'm a bit late but I've finally finished my piece for the October TIF challenge. The original challenge was discussed here and I said at the time that I had an idea for something connected with the chaos.

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Instead of starting with new fabric I went through all my bit bags and used my embellisher to make this new piece of fabric out of all the scraps of cloth and fibres. The base was odd pieces of a thin wadding type of cloth which I needlefelted together and then embellished felts, sheers, organzas, cottons, wool fibres, threads and prefelted offcuts onto. To bring the piece together I covered the whole fabric with a brown coloured chiffon scarf and embellished all over from the front and back until I felt that the surface was balanced.

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I decided to make a bookwrap with the finished fabric and decorated it with beads, finishing off with blanket stitch.

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The lining is a type of plastic stiffener material which I have painted with Lumiere paints. Fortunately I was able to stitch through this lining. You may have spotted the deliberate mistake! I thought I would use velcro to close the wrap but unfortunately I stitched it on before I put the lining in so there had to be a little judicious snipping to reveal the velcro pad! Ooops! Well, I am a beginner! (I have since blanket stitched round the hole you can see so it's a bit tidier). This is now going to be a Christmas gift for one of my friends.

Beautiful Bookmark

I have just completed a swap with Robin from the Yahoo group UK Embellisher Swap and today Robin's very pretty and unusual bookmark arrived together with a friend!
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As you can see the bookmark is a plaited cord with 2 needle felted flowers with bells at one end and a needle felted plaque edged with dyed muslin and another felted flower at the other. You may be wondering why there is a pig and what looks like a straw with the bookmark?

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Don't let your imagination run too wild! lol

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Ta Dah!

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The straw was needed to inflate the piggy who looks much happier now! The bookmark looks lovely in my current bedtime reading. I have bought the series of books by Alexander McCall Smith which were serialised on telly as the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency. I didn't see the series but I am thoroughly enjoying the books which are written in a wonderful lyrical style.

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Thank you Robin for your very lovely bookmark. I will enjoy using it and I love the colours. Your parcel cheered me up today when I came home to it after a visit to the doctor's. I have been in pain all week and he thinks it may be my gall bladder! Wonderful! I have to go to the hospital for a scan. Grrrrrr!

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Oops! nearly forgot to show you the bookmark I made for Robin.

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It looks very plain next to Robin's!

Of presents and dwagons

I had to nip on here quickly (I'm supposed to be practising FME today) to show you what the postman brought me this afternoon.

My friend Dilly St George sent me a parcel and as she is a princessy croco-dwagon she decorated it with princessy stickers! I knew Dilly was sending me a present because she blogged about it here but I didn't go and look because I wanted a surprise.

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When I opened the envelope this is what I found,

A lovely sparkly box and a very pretty, sparkly pink card - well it has to be pink from a princess, doesn't it? The box is decorated with skeleton leaves and glitter but it was hard to get a good picture in the bright sunshine today.

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Inside the box, wrapped in a tissue which I think maybe Bob T Bear had isshooed was this lovely soft, pink, pwincessy brooch,

It is absolutely lovely, Dilly, thank you very much and thank you too to Mummy for helping you make it. If you'd like to see how Dilly made the brooch please do have a look here. Dilly's mummy had a great idea to get the shape!

Inside the card Dilly had written me a special note. I'm glad to be your friend, Dilly, you are a very special 'wagon :o). Oh, and, I love your self portrait Dilly, it's great!!

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On the subject of dwagons, we did see one or two on our travels thro Austria.

These chaps were waiting to be adopted and taken to their new homes (some of them were only babies and were having a little nap!).

If you look very carefully at this photo of a beautiful Austrian house you can see one of Dilly's friends peeking in at the bottom.

I think this beautiful rusty sculpture is just pretending to be a dwagon. (Oh, It's got a bit stretched, oops!)

And, unfortunately, these dwagons are being a bit rude as they are spitting water everywhere in a fountain in Innsbruck!

Oops! This is a better pic, the previous one was blurred. Well I was in a moving carriage at the time!

Well, I had better get back to my sewing. See you all later and thank you again, Dilly for my lovely present. I am going to wear it when I go to the Festival of Quilts next month.

Cobwebs again

Yesterday I set up another experiment with the cobweb fibre this time with lutradur. I taped down samples of 4 different weights of lutradur (as I couldn't get drawing pins into my board - wimp!) and then stretched a small amount of cobweb across the board and pulled it underneath so that it was held taut.

Once the cobweb was spread out I sprayed it all with water and allowed that to soak in for a few minutes. I then dripped silk paints over the surface and tilted the board to allow the colour to blend all over. I did give one or two areas a spray of water where the colour was lying too dense.

You may be able to see that I laid one or two other fibres on the surface to soak up some of the colour and to see if this had any effect on the underlying surface - on this occasion it didn't. I resolutely left the board alone until today when I pulled the cobweb away to see what had happened both to the lutradur and the paper underneath.

There are some interesting effects on the paper which I will use in a future project. The colours have dried light and delicate.

As you can see, the light weight lutradur took up less of the colour. The cobweb has had a mild effect on the lutradur, probably as it is already a fibrous material. I will have to try this with other materials like tissue and calico.

My fabric paper is coming along. I have applied two coats of watered down pva glue to protect the surface and have also rubbed in some copper Treasure Gold.

The blue material is the lining for the book cover I am hoping to make this into. Unfortunately, I don't think I am going to be able to hand sew through all the layers so I am going to see if I can get any iron on binding or ribbon to finish the edge. If not I may have to re-think the tabs that will hold the book in place. All this sewing and making things is new to me.....I haven't a clue what I'm doing half the time but that's half the fun!

You may remember I mentioned a natural materials swap I am doing. I couldn't decide which of the cards I had made to put into the swap so I made another card yesterday from needle felted wool. I didn't use any backing material to support it so it's a little bit loose but I quite like it. I shall have to learn some more stitches for finishing edges, the blanket stitch looks a bit ragged, again.

These are the cards that my DH said he preferred so they are going in the post tomorrow.