Amaranthine

I started of with another embellisher-felted piece worked onto cotton fleece. I used wool roving, silk throwster waste and wool nepps.

Next I did a wee patch of beading with Toho beads, and then started to couch some threads around the contours.

After a bit more couching, I added loads of french knot embroidery stitches in various threads. I like the way they look like tiny buds.











To make the piece into a brooch, I hemmed it all the way round, and then sewed black felt onto the back.

Last of all I added a silver metal brooch finding.

I've been trying to think of a good way to show scale that doesn't involve a ruler (boring!) or a coin (I have no idea how big, say, a dime is, and I guess lots of people don't know how big a 5p piece is). The best universal idea I have come up with so far is a pencil (regular pencils are pretty much the same size everywhere.... aren't they?!). Any better ideas gratefully received!

A closeup of the finished front:

Kokoro...

I started off by felting lovely wool roving in shades of rosy pinks and rich reds onto a white felt backing piece.

I added some silk throwster waste for sheen, and some wooly nepps for pebbly texture.

Then I beaded with Toho 'kokoro' beads along contours, and added some couched hand-dyed threads.















Then I hemmed around the edges...

...and sewed black felt and a brooch finding onto the back.

It's quite a wee piece!

'Kokoro' ( 心 ) is Japanese for 'mind', 'heart' and 'spirit', all at once.

Bronze...

'Bronze' is a piece of fibre art I just finished. This time I was focussing more on trying out embroidery stitches for surface embellishment, as well as beading. I found some beautiful bronze-gold silk tops in my local embroidery shop, which inspired me to go for an Autumnal colour feel.

First I made the base layer with my embellisher. I used scrim, vintage Japanese fabric, cotton fabric, paper and silk in shades of yellow, orange and gold. On top of the base layer I added a sprinkling of chocolatey wool nepps, and some lovely wavy smoky brown cotswold fleece.

Next I added beads - some of my tiny glass seed beads, and a sprinkling of toho beads and a moukaite sphere.

Finally, I tried out some hand embroidery stitches of various sorts (I recently bought a book so that I could teach myself more than the basic ones I knew, so this was my opportunity to try them out!). Using hand-dyed thread and copper metallic thread, I tried out: satin, half-portuguese, fly, seed, running, wave, feather, and Cretan stitches, as well as French knots. In the picture to the left you can see the wave, seed and running stitches, as well as some French knots.

I hadn't thought much (again!) about how to frame/finish the piece... so there was very little unused border around the edges. This kind of limited me to hemming and framing like I did with 'Atlantis'.

I really liked the way the colours turned out, and I really enjoyed trying out the embroidery, using all the new stitches I learned. I think for my next project though, one goal will be to try something different from the hemmed, squarish-shaped idea of the finished piece. My Dad suggested trying for a more organic, circular shape (maybe using an embroidery hoop as a guide?) and using a bigger backing piece. Looking forward to giving it a go!