Enjoying Textiles

Over the last couple of weeks I've really gotten into working with textiles again. That is my current passion. I'm exploring things to do with embroidery, on the sewing machine, and by hand. I really do love working with pretty feminine things. I get slightly ridiculously excited when I look at my collection of ribbons, beads, buttons and vintage fabrics. The combination of beautiful colours, patterns and textures inspires me to want to create something beautiful, fun, cute, feminine, delightful etc etc.
So I made these little badges/brooches by doing some small freehand sewing on felt, I then added a backing of wadding and another layer of felt and then added details so you got a slightly quilted effect. I always back my fabrics with interfacing so that it's a bit thicker for the embroidery, especially machine embroidery which can really pucker the fabric without it:

I made this quick fun card for my brothers birthday. I did the same thing, I used felt with interfacing underneath. I don't always bother to iron the interfacing on, I just pin it in place, it just saves a bit of time and still does the job of making the fabric more stable to work on:

This is a little purse I made, which isn't brilliantly finished and needs a good iron, is a mixture of freehand machine embroidery and hand embellishing. I used pieces of several different vintage fabrics and layered them on the base fabric, machine embroidering them on and then hand stitching details and adding items such as beads and bows etc to create a rich feminine surface of colour and pattern and texture:

Rainbow Cake

It's my sons birthday party tomorrow and I just haven't had time to make a large fancy cake but my sister did point out a link a few months ago to a tutorial on how to make a rainbow cake! That is, a cake that is multi coloured on the inside when you cut it open. So I've decide to give it a go, since I figure if I was a kid and I had a slice of rainbow cake I'd be pretty happy, even if the outside wasn't something big and fancy!

This is a basic sponge cake mix divided up into six bowls and coloured with paste food colouring.

This is the cake tin with all the different cake mixes poured in, one on top of the other. Sorry for the poor photo, it wasn't done in very good light.

This is the finished result, although as you can see it's been half eaten. I think the kids were pretty happy with it, they were certainly surprised when I cut it open and they saw all that glorious technicolor inside.

Handmade

Freehand Machine Embroidery 

I'm currently going through a textile, crafty phase. I want to try my hand at some more freehand machine embroidery and actually finish some pieces. I've been searching for more artists who use this technique of drawing with the sewing machine, and seeing what they do with it for inspiration. I think I enjoy it so much because it combines line drawing, which I love, and textiles, which I also love. I've done a post before on Claire Coles, whose work I particularly admire, but I've also found some more artists whose work I find inspiring:

Gillian Bates

Find a link to her work here: Gillian Bates

Tugba Kop


Find link here: Tugba Kop

Etsy Seller: Three Red Apples
link here: Three Red Apples

 

Stuff I Love

I'm Obsessed!

I think it's fairly obvious that I'm a fan of colour, rich, vibrant, bright colours, delicate beautiful colours, feminine colours, neon colours, colour palettes of all kinds of descriptions. It seems to be the thing that catches my attention first, especially when used in beautiful patterns. Colours seem to bring out a spontaneous emotional reaction in me in a way that many other things don't, it's so immediate and pleasurable.  So I think I'm going to post some pictures of things with colours that I love, simply because I can, and because I think beautiful colours make the world a better place.

Here are some photos of products by a company called Wood & Wool started by a lady called Ingrid Jansen. She makes stools from recycled bits of wood sourced from various places and covers them them with very gorgeous crocheted seat covers. I'm a bit obsessed with the colours she chooses. Here's a link: Wood Wool Stool

Lucky Finds

 Vintage Fabrics from Charity Shops

Just thought I'd do a little post showing off some of the vintage fabrics I've been lucky enough to find in my local charity shops. There's something about fabrics that have passed through a bit of time that gives them a certain charm and character that can't be duplicated. I love to have them so I can use little pieces and scraps for small projects like appliques or for scanning into the computer for use in illustrations, something else I've been playing around with. Anyway, here are a few close ups:

Crafty Christmas

Small Treasures

Once I'd seen this book my sister received as a gift I knew I had to try my hand at one of those little house ornaments, what a perfect way to use some of my fabric scraps! I drew out my own pattern for it as the original wasn't available, so the shape is a little different. It was a pleasure to make, and so easy, I feel a whole housing estate worth of these little objects might be on it's way! Here's a link to the Amazon page for the book, which has some good shots of the inside pages inside: Scandinavian Stitches

A bit rough around the edges but I don't mind that!

 Crochet crazy, crazy crochet!

There's always a point, about 6 weeks before Christmas that I start to get the craft bug. It seems to happen every year without fail, the sudden urge to make lovely, homey crafty things for pressies for my nearest and dearest. In fact, I would say it becomes a full on festive compulsion! There's something about the combination of necessity and pleasure that sends me into overdrive. I seem to need deadlines and purpose to make me get my backside into gear, and that coupled with having specific people to produce things for works wonders for my creative production line. It's like I don't need an excuse to be burying myself in piles of brightly coloured wool or wonderfully coloured fabrics, I can abandon myself to it, no guilt necessary!

So this year, I did struggle for time in the end, and there are always more things I wish I'd done, but I did also manage to get the essentials and some extra projects completed. Mostly crochet again this year, thanks to my large pile of oddments. I've accumulated a collection of different coloured balls of wool, thanks to charity shop buys and feeling the need to buy balls of different colours as I see them in the shops but never wanting to commit to any large amount of one colour. I have found more and more over time that for me the pleasure lies in working with colour, in unexpected and new ways, and exploring it. Crochet seems to be a very effective if not obvious way of doing this. There is such a large choice of coloured wool available in the shops, and I always feel inspired when I see all the contrasting colours and textures, they're like wonderful abstract paintings in the making. I feel working this way has actually really helped me to grow in my ability to design in other creative areas, I have a much better sense of my own style of colour as time goes on and I explore my creativity through this fun medium.

Scarves, of course!

A stripey scarf for hubby

I have to admit I was particularly pleased with the design of this scarf. I've been drawn to colour palettes lately that consist of bright colours mixed with neutrals. I used the wool I already had and went for a mix of primaries mixed with a dark grey, which I think sets off the other colours of nicely. The stitch was half double crochet, or in English patterns, a half treble crochet.

I also made a scarf for my mums main Christmas pressie, in what seems to be becoming a bit of a tradition, since I made her one last year, although that was a very different style. I did the same thing with the colour palette in her scarf as I did with my husbands, using brights with a neutral grey, only with a slightly more feminine feel. I made it using a chevron stitch, ie a zig zag stitch, which is surprisingly easy to achieve. There are lots of variations, this is a good link for experimenting with them: chevron stitch tutorials at CrochetCabana.

Something Small and Pretty

Sometimes I do love things that venture in to real twee territory, like these really delightful little flower brooches.  I got the pattern for them from the Attic24 blog,  a visually delicious crochet site I visit when in need of the fresh and uplifting. Here's a link:  Attic24 blog, crochet flower brooch

A hat made with cluster stitch, on to which I pinned the little flower brooch I made.

Fingerless Mitts and Accessories

These next items were for my younger sister who really enjoys bright, japanese pop inspired clothing. I got the basic fingerless glove pattern from Redheart, and then embellished them with brightly coloured flowers. I would highly recommend trying this pattern, I learnt a couple of new crochet techniques I'd never come across before, including how to do the ribbing along the bottom which looks knitted. They are really quick to do as well, I made several pairs, each one in an evening.

A pair of fingerless mittens for my younger sister.

Fun kitsch headbands also for little sis!

I have to admit I became a little addicted to making these fingerless mittens, they were so easy to make, and very pleasing little objects in there own right. I made these ones below for my sister-in-law, although   I have a pair exactly the same in progress for myself!

Vibrant experimental shopper bag!

Last but by no means least if the amount of time I spent on it is anything to go by! I started an adventure with this bag alright! It began life as a round flat base and an opportunity to go wild with my colour oddments. I also wanted to try out popcorn stitch which I'd never used before and wanted to give a go. I also wanted to use a stitch variation I'd come across called a long single crochet, where you crochet down into the row below, which creates a lovely almost fair isle pattern and added texture. It turned out to be the longest project I have yet worked on, a labour of love for my mother-in-law, who despite the stereo-type is actually a very nice lady. She has always been particularly generous towards us so I felt I should endeavour to create a present reflecting my appreciation for her.

This is a shot of the underneath where you can see it started life as a round, increasing as I went

It nearly all went very wrong when I realised that I'd been accidentally increasing on the rows with the bobble stitch. It was getting bigger and bigger and I couldn't understand it! When I did realise my error I slowly decreased on the rows, making a judgement as I went about how much I should decrease by. I really didn't know how it was going to turn out but had an image in my head of what kind of shape I could maybe work it into. I was pleasantly surprised when it seemed to come together in a proper 'bag' shape, once I'd finished it off with the handles. It was supposed to be a kind of grocery shopper, a handy bag for taking to the shops for bags of apples, baguettes and other such delectable items!