Finishing things

Tonight I am very tempted to start a new project that I'm really looking forward to, but I must resist. The two things I'm working on at the moment are a bit slow in coming together. I did go out after work yesterday, but when I got home I was on the couch with my embroidery for long enough to listen to Beethoven's Ninth. I worked on my abstract piece with simple running stitches and French knots.


I had a few spare minutes at lunchtime so I continued customising my evil corporate empire bag. I don't think I can work on this for more than a few minutes at a stretch: it's flipping awkward sewing the fabric to the bag!

Monday off

We had a public holiday (Silly Old Bag's Birthday) in Perth today so I took full advantage by staying inside sewing in my PJs all day. Bliss.

I started yet another little project and worked on a few others, but the only thing I finished was another little house. Ho-hum. I get a bit bored making the same things over again so I wanted something a little different to work on. So I got out the fabric paints and slapped them onto some calico, let it dry while I was eating dinner and have started doing some simple embroidery onto it.


























The pic is scanned so the colours are a bit out, so I'll take a proper photo when it's finished.

My little container of thread ends was starting to overflow, so I decided to get the embellisher out and needle-felt the thread ends to a piece of black felt. The result was a very interesting textured fabric which I will cut up and use later in something else, but it looks quite good as a piece on its own. A bit like a cross-section of Jackson Pollock's vacuum cleaner bag.



Sometimes I think keeping a container of thread ends that are too small to stitch with is doing nothing to discourage my habit of hoarding. But I just can't bear to throw these things away.

Here's a funny photo from last night. The boys wanted me to come to bed, but I was on the computer, so they both tried their usual trick of jumping up and sitting between me and the monitor. I took a photo and even when I was downloading it they refused to move, so I took another one of them with the first photo showing on the screen in the background.

Garden wildlife

Such a lovely day today. I decided to get a bit of weeding done, and I also planted my kaffir lime tree into the front garden and threw down a few rocket seeds. A few creatures of the garden wanted to have their pictures taken. This lazy bee was just wandering around, and I felt brave enough to take a close up.


I must have disturbed this wolf spider's burrow - at least I think it is a wolf spider. Wikipedia tells me they go around carrying their egg sacs. She looked about as comfortable with her egg sac as a heavily pregnant woman and was no doubt a bit cheesed off that I had made her homeless.


Of course there were the inevitable ants' nests everywhere in the garden and I did my best to avoid them. After I'd finished in the garden and was sitting back in front of the computer, I felt a little tickle in my shirt. After several half hearted attempts to brush it out, I finally took off my shirt and shook it: out fell a large bull ant. I was pretty lucky to get away from that one without a great deal of pain!

Little house

Last night I decided to sew the little house ornament, but I made the door a bit too small. It's still quite sweet though. I'll make another one for the swap, maybe tomorrow. It only took about an hour to make and was pretty simple. Thanks to orange flower for providing the lovely tutorial.

Tonight's project is to customise this very plain hessian bag with the "C" word on it!

Mushroom or chicken?

I spent all of last evening stitching my doodle. The red mushroom looks more like some sort of polka dotted chicken pecking for worms in the ground. But never mind. The apron is ready to send off. And I had a lovely restful evening.



I'm not sure what tonight's project will be. I've started playing around with some beautiful rayon thread that caught my eye in the embroidery shop the other day. But it's a real pain in the bum: won't lie flat, and the thread ends fray quickly and get tangled up during stitching. But it looks gorgeous so I will persevere. I really do need to work on my satin stitch. But I also have a swap coming up that involves sewing a little house, and I might start that instead.

A long time between posts......

...but I'm back to blog about *embroidery* - my latest passion.

The pic above is of a little project I completed the other day and submitted to the Sublime Stitching flickr pool. I was googling today for "free hand-embroidery patterns" (I am such a cheapskate) and was thrilled to see a link to the Sublime Stitching blog where Jenny Hart had added my picture with a nice comment. Really made my day!

Right now I've got a couple of small projects on the go. I'm participating in a round robin with four other women in which we are to send an embroidery item around the world. Each person will embroider something on their item, then send it on to the next person until it completes its journey and we all end up with a nice keepsake. I have chosen to do an apron, because I found a couple in Coles for $3 (cheapskate again) and I'd rather have an apron than a tea towel. I'm starting tonight so that it will be ready to send on the 1st October.

I doodled a little picture and transferred it via the laser printer method onto my apron, and have picked out a few bits of floss with which to whip it up. I'll keep you posted on my progress - perhaps I'll even have a pic of it finished tomorrow.....