Leaves...

It definitely feels like winter is well on her way here - so I've been trying to eke out the last drop of autumn inspiration before all the leaves are gone... .

An autumnal gust of wind must have swept through my flat to leave these on my desk!

New brooches - Ginkgo, Maple and Holly:

New prototype earrings...

Well, I've been out of commission for a while being a bit under the weather, but I'm on the mend now :).  One good thing about my crafting is that it can be done with minimal expenditure of physical energy (...not including eyesight!).  


I've been working on some earring prototypes after being given a new idea (thanks Mum!).  I found some lovely vintaj patina metal blanks and earwires on Etsy, here, and have been seeing what I can turn them into.  Here are the results so far!

Clementine

Nous sommes du soleil

Nutmeg

Atoll

Orchid

Gamboge

I've been playing around with the idea of adding beads, as you can see with the 'Gamboge' pair.  I have some lovely findings from PatinaQueen and some fabulous beads from CaladoniaMarch  on the way - so once they arrive I will be able to try out a few more ideas.  I've been thinking about possibly adding a very few beads to my necklaces also - we'll see!

Fibre art cards

My series of fibre art cards is one of my favourite ideas I have come up with this year.  Each one is like a mini-fibre art piece, but small enough for some relatively fast project-completion satisfaction!  They've happily been pretty popular on my Etsy shop, so I've recently made another set of cards, which I'll start listing later today.


Here's how I make them:

First of all, I make small pieces of felted fibre using my embellisher.  I use all sorts of fibres - silk, wool, bamboo, soy, flax - as well as scrim, scraps of velvet or cotton fabric, ribbon, nepps and threads.  Here's the latest batch hot off the embellisher:

I use plain square white cards, to set off the colours - but I mount each fibre piece on a small background square of paper or fabric.  I choose each one according to each fibre piece:

I've used hand-dyed cotton fabric, mulberry paper, mulberry tissue paper, abaca tissue and scrim.

I mount the paper or fabric backing onto the card first, and whilst that is drying I embellish the fibre piece.  I used hand embroidery, beading and couching working with the individual characteristics and contours of each piece.

Here's a couple of pieces before:

and after:

Glass bugle and seed beads, with seed, colonial knot, detached fly and buttonhole bar stitches:

again glass bugle and seed beads, this time with drizzle, seed and colonial knot stitches and some couched thread:

13 in total in this lot - phew!

A crafty Saturday afternoon...

Had a fun afternoon experimenting with solvy, machine embroidery and my embellisher, in between catching up with slightly more hi-tech craftiness happening on Space Shuttle Endeavour/the ISS via Nasa TV (totally obsessed by mission STS-127 right now - can't get enough of astronauts carrying out such complex, hi-tech tasks in their socks!).

So, in my socks too, but with gravity, although without any robotic arms, here's what I came up with! Haven't dissolved the Solvy yet, so I'm looking forward to seeing how that turns out.

Following a suggestion a while back from Lin Moon, (thank you!), I'm going to make a couple of the pieces into paisley-shaped brooch prototypes. Also below are the 'new' necklace prototypes (*ahem* got a bit distracted by other crafty things and still haven't finished these yet) - so these 4 are what I'll work on over the rest of the weekend.

Current works in progress...

Some sneak peeks at some of the projects I'm working on at the moment...

Using beautiful handdyed threads from Sassalynne

A linocut print onto cotton made with help from my friend Thomas

Wee pieces of embellished felt for more of my fibre art cards

I'm also going to have my first shot at some free machine embroidery today, having equipped my old sewing machine for the task... I'm quite excited but totally clueless, so we'll see what happens!!

Waves and coral...

I'm just back from a week on the beautiful Scottish Hebridean island of Tiree, so appropriately this entry is about 2 pieces I have recently finished which were inspired by the beautiful shorelines and seascapes of the island.

For both of them I wanted to explore combining fabric and fibres with my embellisher, and adding beading and embroidery as I do for my jewellery pieces, but on a larger scale. I decided to use embroidery hoops as frames, and I used unbleached cotton batting as the backing/surface.

The first piece is called 'Coral', and was made as a 30th birthday present for my dear friend Eli.

Here's the process of adding fabric and fibres. I sewed on pieces of cotton fabric, scrim and muslin, and then added silk throwsters waste, silk noil and mixed threads with my embellisher.

Next I added many glass beads in different shapes and sizes, and some hand embroidery stitches to finish the piece off:

Here are some details:

The next piece I have been working on is called 'Waves'. A while ago I had bought some (more!) wonderful handdyed threads, fibres and fabric from thredfairy, and had been itching to use them in a larger piece. I love the muted grey-silver-turquoise palette - reminds me of stormy seascapes and louring clouds above.

Here's the process - again I sewed on some fabric and paper pieces before adding fibres with my embellisher, and then adding glass beads and freshwater pearls. Hand embroidery stitches finished off the piece.

Here are some details:

And the finished piece:

It's going on the wall in my hall!

I'm quite pleased with the way these two turned out - kind of variations on a theme. Next time I'm going to experiment with different backing fabrics/surfaces, and will continue with the never-ending search for a good framing solution... .

The trip to Tiree gave me so much crafty inspiration, I'm looking forward to trying out all my ideas!