First ever ATC

I know I am somewhat behind the 8 ball on these delightful pieces of art work but Doreen of Creative Meanderings Granddaughter Ebony is exchanging cards and I really want to play. I have received one from her and several from Doreen, I will post pictures later of them. Doreen gave me a tutorial and sent me samples, and voila here it numbero uno.
It is made from a piece of felt fused with little bits of glitzy fabric and angelina, then painted fusable web was ironed on to that, finally a piece of organza was fused to that. Cut to shape and a little hand stitching added.

Little finishes

I decided to get these little embroideries finished and framed up. I learnt an other valuable lesson, well two really and they are both lessons that I know already.
1) Don't use little scraps of fabric when doing embroideries, because you can't frame them properly.
I know this but persist in trying to save fabric. Then you are stilted in what you can do with them.
2) Take your embroideries out of the frame when you put it away for the night. Yet again, I know this, but did I do it, No!!!

A few years back I purchased Richard Box's book "Flowers for embroidery" He had a little lesson in it which is the poppies sample that I have posted here. I had forgotten all about it and found it stuck away in a folder, so I decided to get it out and frame it so that I could use it. It is something that I always liked but as it was a sample I never thought to finish it up, now I am pleased that I did. It was my first foray into machine embroidery. Not that I have done much more since then. It is done on painted hessian with tiny cut up pieces of fabric to make up a collage. I don' think it is something that I would do again, at least not on a large scale like Richard Box does. His work if fabulous as is the book.


and a close up

6 INCH BLOCKS

As mentioned in the last post, I have been so inspired and have totally fallen in love with Pamela Kellogg' s 6 inch button blocks. So I just had to make some up. Acting on Pam's advise they are actually 8 inch blocks to allow for stitch shrinking and trimming up etc. Such a good idea and I am so pleased to get her advise.
Not sure at this stage how many I will make but this is a good start. Now I have to mark out my 6 inch square.I always find it better to mark them as I have a tendency to stitch too close to the edge thus having an awful time trying to stitch them together.
My DH has just slipped "Pride and Prejudice" in the DVD player, I have my needle and thread and a 6 inch square template and I am off to do the boring part.

Camera has died and sources of inspiration

I have really been inspired by Pam of
http://kittyandmedesigns.blogspot.com/
She is making 6inch button blocks, she was in turn inspired by Sharon's of http://sharonb.wordpress.com/
Sharon made a huge or what looks like a huge 6inch button block, she has photoes on her website.
I have been asking Pamela questions, she makes the blocks 8 inches giving her lots of room for trimming etc. If your stop by her blog you can see why I am so inspired. Of course her stitching is to die for.
So I have decided to make up some and spent a couple of hours last night making up 8 inch blocks. Have about 10 so far and would love to show a photo but as the camera is not working, so I can't. I have a drawer full of small pieces of fabric, it was once in colourways but alas is just a mess at the moment. So, I am grabbing bits of similar colours and making the blocks that way. Then, once I have a pile I want to mark them up with the six inch size to keep me on track. Once we get an other camera I will post photoes but I am not too sure when that is going to be.

Our weekend.

This is what we did this weekend, had a flying visit to Wellington to watch our son in the Barista competitions.
He manages one of the 10 or so Mojo's cafes. All the competitors had to make 12 coffees, 4 short blacks, 4 cappuchino's and 4 of their own signature coffees. Cameron presented his in old fashioned cocktails glasses, infact his whole theme was the 1920's. He had vanilla infused cream a chocolate tea and a marmalade syrup that he made himself. It was delicious. He came in the top 10, while the other three Mojo's staff took out the 1st, 3rd and4th places.Way to go Cameron and Mojo's

Last one.

With this one, decided that I didn't want to sew on the overlay. As I was gluing the leaves for a little added security, I thought I would glue the black stuff on as well. (can't for the life of me find the word that it is called, sometimes menopause is a nuisance, I know what it is called, just cannot access my brain or my my brain won't let the word come forth, keep thinking nylon scarf but that is not right)
Anyway, back to glue, it was a fabric glue and it SAID dries clear. Not true as you can clearly see two white splodges of glue, duh!!!!! Oh well, will have to cover them with something.
These little quilts all had leaves that were collected three autumns ago. Time to collect some more. I pressed all but the ginkgo leaves and of course that is the one that is brittle.The pressed ones also retained some of their autumnal colours. Can you tell I like the word "autumnal" It always reminds me of Mr Tumnus of the Lion the witch and the wardrobe, of the Narnia series. Bit of a stretch of the imagination, just a similiar pronunciation I guess.