More sewing, knitting and planning

Offcuts from the workshop packs

I'm still working on getting as many packs as I can prepared ready for the workshop in November. Yes, I am rather ahead of myself, but it takes rather a time to get all the fabric packs set up. There is a lot of ironing on bondaweb, cutting fabrics and so on. The collection above is my growing pile of scraps. All the bits that are just that little bit too small. All useful since they have been bondawebbed. Hence the growing collection of made fabrics where I am collecting the scraps together to make useable and useful pieces which could make something.

Green-yellow fabrics

Yellow - blue fabrics

The resulting fabrics are a little too stiff to use for much. project bags and bookcovers have been made before. Perhaps some cushion covers.  All of the three made so far need to be stitched to reinforce the surface. I think I will probably add some fusible wadding to add some texture when stitched.

Green - blue fabrics

 I must admit I really enjoy the stitching bit, although it does take rather a time to complete. Speaking of stitching. I finally completed the sketchbook cover which I mentioned last time. I chose a piece of fabric which I had painted, bonded to fusible wadding and then stitched,

Completed sketchbook cover

Almost completed Colibri jumper

 The Colibri jumper is now almost finished. I just have a few ends to sew in. Next, I shall need to find a young friend to wear it. One of the things to be completed after finishing a test knit is to complete a questionnaire to give the designer some feedback about the design and any errors before the design is finally published. It has been a really interesting process.

Almost complete Lanesplitter

 I've also been getting on with this skirt. It has languished in my project bag for a few weeks. I have never made a knitted skirt before, so it has been quite interesting making this one. The design is a free one from Knitty which you can find here.

The fabric pieces below belong to a challenge which I need to get on with. I still haven't decided what to make yet.

Postcards, books and printing on felt

Completed Apache top

It has been an interesting week. For once I have quite a number of completed, or nearly completed items to share. 

Firstly, a photo of the completed knitted top which I talked about last time. As you can see it has a really interesting closure in that there is a knitted tab which is pushed through a buttonhole in the right front of the waistcoat. This should be handed back tomorrow.

Printing on felt

On Friday I went along to a workshop at Friday Felters. This was with Val Hughes, a very talented textile artist. This was a really interesting session, although I must admit to not liking the block printing medium which I used for my sample. The felt is still sticky today. I shall have another go and print using my usual fabric paints. The blocks shown above were made at the workshop using foam board as a backing with thin foam. As you can see, I cut the foam so that I could use a positive and negative of the same design. I haven't used the second block yet, I found the idea of printing on felt had a lot of possibilities and will definitely be doing it again.

Completed book cover

 You may recall this post, where I showed an earlier stage of working to put this book together. Since March, I have been steadily adding bits and pieces to my book, deciding yesterday that it really now needed to have a cover. So, here it is. I still haven't filled all the pages, but will continue to add bits and pieces during the rest of the year. Tomorrow, it will be travelling along with me to the NWCQ meeting where other members will be showing their altered books. I didn't join in with that topic, preferring to make my own book rather than use a printed book. I really don't know what they will make of my version.
The cover is part of the old sheeting on my small printboard which I replaced earlier. Shocking to think it has languished in my fabric stash for so long before being used. However, it was perfect for this book cover. Just the right size too. It won't be too long before I need to replace the current printboard cover on that same small board......
The cover is stretched over a piece of foamboard which was left over from making some exhibition notices last year. Useful stuff. It is quite sturdy and stops the book becoming too heavy.

A few of the pages

 The next two photos show some printed bits and pieces which may well end up inside the book once they are completely dry.

Some material to be added to the book

 The lettering was printed using a set of children's wooden letters which I have had since my teaching days. Rather nice to be able to use them. The block pattern at the top of the above photo is another of my home made blocks made using foam board, double sided tape and thin foam. Like the earlier blocks, this also has a negative block which I haven't yet used for printing.

A sample to try out the lettering

This scrap of fabric is all that remains of the printboard cover which I used for the book cover. So useful to have a piece like this to use to try out different things.

My postcard - "Wish you were here"

Last week, I went along to a Pinfold meeting where the challenge was to complete a fabric postcard on the topic, "Wish you were here." I decided to revisit the design I used for my Horizons quilt, "Caribbean Memories". The original design was 0.5m wide and 1.5m long (19.75" x 39.5"). You can see it here. This piece still needs to be trimmed. It uses scraps of sheer and satin fabrics with some woven silk over a backing of calico. The detail of the leaves has been free machined with a small amount of paint used for the coconuts. The size of this piece will be 87mm x 139mm (3.5" x 5.5"). I will be taking this to the beading group in the morning since they are considering this as a challenge.

Fabric book covers, knitting and finding inspiration.

Well the shawl is nearing completion. I have added a picot bind off to the edge since I didn't fancy either the garter stitch edging or the ruffles of the original pattern. It will be interesting to see this after blocking. Not many more stitches to go.

I've been playing about with making some simple paper notebooks lately. The book cover saying "East of India" was a paper bag I really just couldn't throw away or recycle.

This is the latest fabric book cover. This time I have covered a plastic A4 file. It has been made using African fabrics as befits the title of the file - "Africa". It now houses my small collection of printed African fabric and two pieces which have been languishing deep within my collection of UFOs. I bought the fabric here.

Both are based on this beautiful carved wood head which my daughter brought back from Tanzania. I managed to get a few photos of it before it went home with her. The photo has been altered using Photoshop to minimise the number of colours.

I really should do something with those pieces, but I don't quite know what yet.

I've been searching for inspiration lately for the latest challenge from the "Sky's the Limit" group. The latest challenge is entitled "Inspired by................" So I rooted around the library and found these wonderful books on Architecture. Whether I shall use them for the final piece or not remains to be seen. I am enjoying looking through the pages of these books for now.

I loved the photos of fences and bannisters in this book. Beautiful work and so ornate.

This one contains some wonderful buildings.

Where do you find your own inspiration?