Autumn felted and embroidered journal cover...

So as promised, here are some photos of the 'Autumn' themed journal cover.

Here is all the fibre laid out, pre-felting.  You can't see how deep it is from this angle - it's about 4cm!

There's a whole mixture of fibres, including many from a wonderful mixed pack from a recent discovery: Stone Creek Silk. All in all there's merino roving, silk throwsters waste, silk tops, silk noil, flax fibre, bamboo fibre, soy silk, angelina and wool locks.

After the felting I added some couched threads on the front cover side, and some embroidery on the back cover side.

On the back cover I used cast-on stitch to represent falling leaves (in lovely space-dyed threads from Stef Francis)

And on the front cover I couched on silk boucle thread in a classic Japanese 'gust of wind' design.  I also added a wonderful handmade burr wood button (courtesy of  Julie and her husband of Roseland Bags), and again I made two different kumihimo braids as pagemarker and for closure.

I lined the very inside with plain green cotton, and for the cover holders I used another piece of antique kimono fabric from Kyoto.

Here's the front laid out:

...and a detail of the button closure:

All in all I was pleased with how these two journal covers turned out - although they're quite substantial, and not really delicate, I love the colours, and they feel wonderful to hold.

Felted and embroidered journal covers...

Two big projects I was working on in the run up to Christmas were a couple of felted and embroidered journal covers, made to cover Moleskine large note/sketchbooks.  The colour themes were 'Sea' and 'Autumn'.  These were by far the biggest felting projects I have undertaken using my embellisher machine, and it certainly felt the strain of felting mixed fibres over about a 30cm x 20cm area - lots of broken needles!

For 'Sea', I used organza ribbon and fabric, wool locks, merino roving, silk fibre, silk noil, silk throwsters waste, angelina fibre, silk/metal organza fabric, net fabric, silk fabric and bamboo fibre.  I felted this onto cotton batting, and then masked off the journal cover area and added lots of hand embroidery stitches: feather, colonial knot, bullion, seed, whipped spider, cast-on, double cast-on and fly stitches.

I also added a beautiful big carved mother-of-pearl button (it had been lying in wait in my stash for years, waiting for the perfect project!).

To make the lining of the cover, I used pieces of antique Japanese kimono fabric samples - I bought many of these at the most amazing temple book market in Kyoto on our last trip in 2007:

I also made two different kumihimo braids, one for a page-marker and one for closure.  Here's what the inside looks like, with the cover on the journal:

And here's the final journal cover, inside and outside:

...and a closeup of the button, and a texture closeup:

Phew!  That's a lot of photos... !  I think I'll show 'Autumn' in a separate post :D

Works in progress...

So various presents have all been finished (more details to follow once they have been unwrapped!), which gives me time to get back to my old favourite - more felted, beaded and embroidered jewellery.


Here are the three pieces I'm working on at the moment - at this point I have made the felt, and added the beads and embroidery, and have just added backing felt to the pieces using Vilene with an additional piece of Tyvek for the brooch:

One of my favourite parts is choosing names for my pieces.  Sometimes they are obvious and I know what they are called straight away, and other times it takes longer to learn their names.  For these three, 'Droplet' (top right) was chosen almost before I had decided on the shape, whereas 'Prairie' (top left) and 'Ember' (bottom) were slightly more elusive.


The next stage is choosing what shade of embroidery floss to use to whip-stitch around the edges of the piece - I find this decision one of the hardest parts, as the colour choice can make all the difference.  I often narrow it down to 2 or 3 colours and then sleep on it, and the choice is easier the next day.

'Prairie' and 'Droplet' will become brooches, and 'Ember' will be a necklace - I add the findings last of all, and then comes the Flickr/Etsy photo session (still so hard!).

My favourite shots are always the texture closeups:

100!

Tastykaeru has passed the 100 sales mark... very exciting!!