Anna's latest rabbit

Anna knitted a lovely rabbit as a gift, including a beautiful cable knit sweater.

My blue bunny met him briefly before he got wrapped up.

a Thanksgiving banner for River Park Church this past fall

This is our "Thanksgiving Cross" banner, made by a team of  five or six ladies, and hung in church , for the first time this October. It's six feet wide, nine feet tall, and took about six months. We enlarged a black and white pattern from a book, so didn't come up with this design ourselves. We each chose a section and had fun choosing fabrics from our stash. It's fused on -- not too many stitches on this one. Worked on top of the black background, leaving an outline around each shape, then attached the finished cross onto the white background. It's attached along the top, and across the top of the cross bar only, so gives a slight 3-D effect when up on the wall.

Travelling Mice

These are the mice that Anna knitted for Lesley's charity sale at the end of November. I did this portrait just before I packed them up and sent them off to Bourne. Apparently they have arrived safely.

Visitors

The other evening I caught sight of movement just outside the kitchen window in our carport.  I looked up to see a big mama gazing at me through the window.  There was a bit of movement behind her and I saw two youngsters.  They all started to move toward the steps down to the street.  I ran for my camera and snapped their picture as they crossed Juniper Drive.

Bears on the prowl.

You can see that it is still daylight, although the streetlights have just come on.  We often get bears at this time of year, but they aren't usually so brazen about walking through the neighbourhood!

This picture is for Lesley -- when she visited Canada many years ago she mentioned that there were two things on her "want-to-see" list -- a bear and a mountie in a red coat.  If I remember correctly we didn't manage to find either of them!

Polly gets wheels

I bought a table for Anna's newly organized bedroom (which will soon double as guest room/studio space). While I was picking up the table I asked the proprietor of the second-hand shop if he ever gets in broken office chairs because I wanted the wheels for a project. He led me into a back room and gave me a choice of a couple of different chairs for £2 each. At home I dismantled the chair and sawed off the seat support. Then with the help of a neighbour who hoards scraps and has good ideas for diy projects, I found a way to extend the upright rod and attach Polly, my home-made dressmaker's dummy (named Polly because she is held together almost entirely with white glue, POLY vinyl acetate). Here she is. She swivels and rolls beautifully! 

Leaves from Louisa

Here are the four leaves I made for this stage of our challenge:

Lesley's one is first in line, then mine, then one for Ruth, and one for Kathy.  As you can see I didn't pay a lot of attention to the theme words!  Mine are all the same shape and style, but I had fun making them.

It's nearly time to decide what to do the collection.  I have a few ideas....

All four leaves from step two

As soon as I assembled all four of our leaves, I went to photograph them in the usual spot on the floor by the glass dining room doors. The fabric leaves had to jostle for position with all the real leaves that are claiming the light in that spot right now. 

I'm having fun dreaming up the leaves for the next phase!

Ruth's collage inspiration for the L swap

The image that helped me 
decide what to do 
around the middle of the bag

All the colours of the swap.

Here are the collages I made for the L swap. I cut up all the quarter pages of the magazine and rammed them all onto some pages..

All the lines I could find in images 
in the magazine pages

.

Louisa’s Layers and Lines

I’m afraid my project Languished for a Long time, and I am the Last to be done. But I’ve been playing with the components of the challenge and finally have something to show!

While we were still in Portinscale I pulled all the pictures out of my section of Ruth’s magazine and collaged them into my sketchbook – looking at them now I see lots of houses, brick walls, rock walls.  Two other images that I kept going back to were these from our trip.

The bricks are near Ruth’s place in Carlisle, and the vines on the wall are “somewhere in Cumbria” (according to my careful notes!)

With these in mind I took the piece of red fabric and started to add to it.  I fused on some bits of batik fabrics, stitched on some gold mesh (was it a piece of gift wrap, perhaps?) and added some brown netting.  Then I couched various yarns in place on top of that. I don’t usually like “embellishing” – it can be very tedious – but this was all done with fusing and machine stitching and was quite a lot of fun. Some of the yarns are from our last challenge – Ruth and Kathy may recognize them.

I cut this piece of fabric up into squares and rectangles to make the bricks in my wall.  I was delighted to see that each piece was its own little composition.  I stitched them together with “grout” and added more bricks in the “grout” fabric.  Then I quilted it.  I tried to pack down the plain bricks to put them into the background as the collaged bits are the main part of the design.

The piece is about 14” by 27”.

Just a minute! – what happened to the scarf and the tie??

Please look carefully at this picture.

Part two of the project is the bowl made using Kathy’s technique from our fibre arts retreat. 

Here is the interior.  Bits of the tie show through the scarf fabric (that polyester was a bear to work with!!)  

All done!  What will our next project be?

 

Technorati Tags: Challenge

Kathy's 'L' swop -- finally!

My inspiration: a small zippered pencil case of grey felt, from the Dollar store, made out of a simple rectangle. Plus my favourite pages from my fat quarter of Ruth's magazine -- Lovely Ladies in hats, Landscapes, etc. I had a lot of fun, many times over, sorting through those pages and getting ideas. I think this is a good way to jump-start ideas again, whenever I am stuck! For the longest while, I planned to make a hat picture for my swop, like the lovely red one in the photo. But the sewing case won the day in the end.

Decided to use the same design to make a multi-purpose sewing kit, but slightly bigger. Big enough to hold a small knitting or sewing project, but small enough to be very portable, sit on my lap in the car, etc. Made the lining and exterior as separate elements, then stitched them together here and there. Didn't "quilt" it, since there were lots of interior add-ons: a needle-holder, leather loops for scissors, etc.

The bag is a bit of a funny shape when seen from the side!

The original pencil case is 3 1/2 " X 9". The new case is 6 1/2 " by 12". It's fun to use, as it sort of sits on it's flat bottom and displays the contents very handily. I could have designed it much more efficiently on the inside. this was a fun proto-type. perhaps i will design others for more specific uses. Maybe a "man bag" for specific tools...? Have already made Jerry some wrench-storage cases, etc., but they're not quite as interesting as this one!

Used Louisa's pink tie for the binding (perfect, as it was already cut on the bias), and Lesley's Lovely fringe for decorating on the front. The "L-ements" – a Long pouch using Leftover Leather, Loud colours, a Little Leaf from the Lake District in gold embroidery on the front bottom-right corner (should have added it to the Lower Left!), Lines (an idea borrowed from Ruth's project), and a Lop-sided zipper!

Ruth's L-swop project: finished and in use

For ages I've been meaning to make a travel vanity case that meets all my requirements. It's fun to apply an assigned colour scheme and theme to a project that I really need. Another benefit of working with assigned materials is being provided with a lovely colour set that I never would have picked for myself.

The L for my project came from "lines". I made a collage of all the images in the magazine pages that featured lines. (Sorry I forgot to photograph this collage before we left, so I'll add it to the blog when we get back to England in a couple of months). One of the images was of fat parallel lines: stems of reeds or flowers, I think. This is what inspired the long band around the body of my bag. I used the scarf and tie fabrics and some machine and hand sewing lines. It was fun to add the beaded fringe here. There was just enough of the red to make the outer shell of the bag. 

Another "L" came from the "leftover" fabric that went into the interior and base of the bag, and the leftover zip from a suitcase I dismantled. The fabric strip around the top and bottom of the bag was what I cut off the bottom of a friend's dress when I shortened it for her. It had just the right mix of colours.

Hi Everyone and Happy New Year! The 'L' themed swop project.


I have just had a heavenly day spent sewing and not a lot else, Dan and his girlfriend did all the cooking and I have been able to do as I pleased all day. So low and behold I have got my project done.

I started with the magazine and picked a picture of a beautiful sculpture(sorry pic is so blurry) made of volcanic 'Lava'  this word and the fact that it is in the Lake District are my rather tentative links to the L theme. I decided to make a circular cushion, for one of my very hard wooden barstools.
I made a VERY simplified template of a section of the design.

And then decided that I preferred the shape of the central section instead of the outline section, it had a sort of African flavour to it and Dan thought it looked like fish bones!!







When playing with the fabrics I liked the way that the fineness of the  scarf let other colours show thru, so I layed the scarf fabric on top of the pink and red fabric. I stitched it into place and edged it with running stitch to anchor the layers together and to emphasise the outline of the pink shape. I then cut the bead edging into 3's and arranged at intervals around the edge.

The next bit was tricky because I wanted to put a black edge around the circle but there was too little fabric to cut it on the bias, but I managed to kind of stretch it and ease it around the edge.

I then sewed on some elastic ties and a back  and added stuffing and I am proud to say I now have a very useful and comfy finished project!