A busy few weeks

Papers completed

The past few weeks since I last posted here have been extremely busy. The "Doghouse" is now ready for the next stage - the roof is complete and it now just needs the benching and flooring inside. This will have to wait for another spell of really good weather.

Last time you may have seen the photos of preparations for making papers for a book. I have completed a number of these pages now and just need to cut them to a suitable size. I'm looking forward to using them. Each of the dyed papers are backed onto brown paper using bondaweb. This workshop will not take place until November so I am rather ahead of myself with this. Yes, it does make a change......

Prefelts

I've been to a couple of workshops. The first of these was with Lesley King and we made prefelts. I have since spent the best part of a further couple of days making prefelts. I still have such a lot to learn about feltmaking.

Alice Fox workshop samples

The second workshop was with Alice Fox and here we made a variety of samples using stitch in an experimental way with found objects. I took along a range of slivers of wood recovered form the making of the Doghouse as well as nails which hadn't formed properly and other bits and pieces. This was a really interesting workshop and I bought Alice's book which she very kindly signed for me.

printing in progress

I also spent a couple of days printing - using my thermofaxes, gelliplate and also my wooden and lino print blocks. A lot of fun was had doing this and I have quite a few newly printed pieces ready to use.

Freshly printed fabrics drying

UFOs and stitching fun.

This is one of my many UFOs. A rather floppy cotton shopping bag. The shape is a useful one, but I hate the way this one falls down. Hence the need for a lining.

This is the lining that I put together for the shopping bag. It in turn has been lined with some heavy duty interfacing.



This is a photo of some of the pockets I have added to the inside of the lining. The flower tag was a lucky find in Hobbycraft some months back. It is designed to replace the tag on a zip. I have merely added it to the end of the tag rather than removing it. This makes it a little longer and more useful to me.

There are two pockets here. The larger one is the same width as the bag itself. There is a small pocket which can just be seen to the left of the large pocket.

The two flaps will soon have poppers to fasten them against the pocket edge to keep this large pocket into the side of the bag. The two buttons are to decorate the flaps.

The last photo shows the lining pinned into the bag.

Some time ago I prepared some new lino blocks for fabric printing. I posted about that here:

http://thestoryofthetravelingpages.blogspot.com/2010/01/flowers.html

The resulting prints are below:

The top one is my favourite. The print was made by doing it all wrong, pressing the fabric into the block inside on pressing the block down on the fabric. I rather like the resulting haziness of the printing.

The next UFO is a small box. All hand-stitched, it is made using Japanese folded patchwork squares. I shall be finishing off the lid with a beaded tag. The hinge has been made using bugle beads.

And last of all, the needle case. It is now full of needles and that tin has been emptied of all except my longest upholstery needles. These are threaded through a scrap piece of aida, so they cannot fall far when the tin drops on the floor once more. Knowing my own clumsiness this will happen again.



The first page of my own set, "The Sea" has been completed by Trillion. You can see a teaser here:

http://thestoryofthetravelingpages.blogspot.com/2010/01/sea.html

I shall post the page here on my Blog once it arrives. I am really looking forward to seeing what it looks like.

Felting, finishing off and fun!

The past few days have been really busy. One highlight of this week was a long walk I had with my husband. It had been really wet earlier in the day, but we set out fully equipped in our waterproofs and walking boots.

It was such a lovely walk though. Everything smelt so damp and fresh.

Clearly this snail decided it was better off above the ground.

I've been busily completing projects this week. This skirt was finished a couple of weeks ago, but needed the waistband tightening up a little since I had made it rather too loose.The pattern is one I have used a few times, but never in crepe de chine. It is Simplicity 5459 and long out of print. I added pockets at the hip line.

The next project was a little experiment. My first use of jersey fabric.
The pattern comes from "Sew" magazine and came free with their second issue.

Now I just have to complete another skirt - this one is waiting for me to do the waistband and add buttonholes, then I can get the hemming done. It is all pinned and ready to go. However, I really must get my white cardigan finished first. This is nearly all sewn, the buttons are in place, the sleeves sewn in, just the side seams to finish.

Just completed this morning is my green cardigan. Now sewn up after a marathon session last night listening to podcasts, it waits for buttons and a ribbon for the waist.

Last Friday I had a glorious afternoon making felt with my friend Hilary. We took ourselves out into my garden so we could get really messy without any worries at all.

This piece of felt now hangs on my wall waiting for inspiration to strike. The colours are brighter than they appear here.

Then earlier this week I finally got some fabric printing done. I used the lino prints I cut several months ago. Instead of using fabric paint (it dries too quickly to use) I mixed some acrylic paint with some block printing medium and printed with that. It took a couple of days, leaving the prints to dry overnight in between sessions. (Sorry, but Blogger will not let me include this photo the right way up!)

To cap it all, I was really naughty the day before yesterday. I couldn't resist these wonderful fabrics in the sale at Cheshire Needlecraft.

They have been washed, ironed and stroked and are sitting on my windowsill. I shall put these away when they have been admired long enough.

The last piece is one for a challenge. Its the August callenge of the Fibre Arts Mixed Media group (see the link to the right hand side of my Blog). I call it "3s and more". It has been made from all sorts of metallic shiny things. The base is a lovely cream cardigan which I managed to felt by accident.



The orange is a piece of very lightly felted wool. On top of this I have added Angelina fibres, some metallic fabric, metal braiding, wire things I found in a shop in the section where the wrapping paper is usually found. The strange hand like shape is a piece of machine embroidery I did some years ago. The number three used to be partof one of those tubes that hold tomato paste. The small leaves used to belong to a pair of ear-rings I found in a lucky bag the last time I went into one of the local charity shops. (That bag cost only £1 and was full of wonderful oddments which I shall be using in future projects.)

The next photo gives a close-up of those odd wire things. I pulled the gold ones out since they were tightly curled. The silver metal balls came like that.

Last weekend, I went to the Festival of Quilts. What a wonderful show that was. I bought a screen and some screenprinting materials. Guess what I shall be trying next............?