I’m always curious about the naturally dyed fabrics I see online, but I’m not really interested in becoming a dyer. I am up for a little experimenting, though. One day last week I was picking up two fallen, spent gloxinia blossoms and thought wouldn’t these make a pretty fabric color? Why not see? So I boiled some water and put the blooms in and mashed them around and poured it into a jar with a bit of muslin. The color…
After reading Dee’s blog (Pattern and Outrage) I followed her link to The Paris Collage Collective. One picture caught my eye. It wasn’t for this week, but I’m not sure what week it was. I had planned to stitch, but I ended up digitally collaging instead. Apparently my dislike of freeways isn’t only about not liking to drive. The first image is just variations of the original, I ran the original through several G’MIC filters, picked five, and put one,…
Monday Although, according to my sister, it should be mostly raining through June here in Western Oregon, today is a wonderfully, beautifully hot, summery day. I have discovered in the past few days that my energy levels for outside work have dwindled a lot more than I realized. Yesterday I was watering the garden pots and nearly passed out before I was finished. I came in before I passed out, but, even though I wasn’t overheated, I was totally exhausted…
I’m all caught up on blogs, except Jude’s. There, I’ve only reached mid-April. Her posts are taking more time because I try to think about all she presents in her class posts. I go back to old blog posts, listen to audios, watch videos and sometimes go to related classes she mentions. And being the ADD person that I am, one thought leads to another tangentially related thought and then I don’t have any more time for blogs that day…
Because it was definitely inspired by it, I call this one Jude’s Hole in the Wall. (The thing I like most about this name is that it sounds like the name of a cozy pub.) All it is is French knots in a cotton knitting yarn and some perle 8 with some beads and shells. A narrow strip of the muslin it’s sewn on was stitched around a circle, first. After this was almost done, I thought I should have…
We’ve had a lot of rain, but no ice. However, my webhost is in Montreal and they were clobbered by a massive ice storm last week. Apparently everything at Crosswinds was in working order, but about 75% of the city was without power for a couple of days, including all the Crosswinds servers. As a result, I had no website for a couple of days and no e-mail. I discovered this when I wanted to post here. Not to be…
I started with these: Proceeded to this: And ended up with this: Somehow the very first purple piece did not stay in place as I stitched it, and, of course, I didn’t notice it for a bit–until I cut away the extra muslin, actually. I think it turned slightly with each strip, too. Maybe, if I do more of these, I’ll draw a grid on the muslin to help keep it straight. Or maybe not. I kind of like the…
I was sort of watching a soccer game. I drew the outer circle around a large spool of thread. After having so much trouble keeping the size even (I redid it twice), I found my circle stencil and drew two more for the orange and the inner yellow. The green, gold, and orange are week 8-buttonhole stitch. The center yellow is week 9-buttonhole wheel cup, although, I liked the look of the cup sides flattened in, so it ended up…
This is also TAST week 9–buttonhole wheel. It’s about the size of a quarter, done in perle 5. I don’t think this would be good on a functional quilt. The spokes (even the rim, actually) are too easily caught and pulled. Perhaps smaller circles and/or finer/heavier thread would work. I suppose I could also further embellish it or simply tack it down with a fine thread. I probably will use it on something “arty,” so it matters not.
I’ve been thinking the past few weeks about doodling. People show their doodles and they’re cute animals, girls, mini scenes–basically quick drawings, not totally mindless. Ninety percent of my doodles are not drawing. They’re just pen or pencil strokes on paper, usually connected. Last week I decided to do some with each stroke as a separate layer in GIMP. (I ended up dividing some (most) strokes for a smoother flow.) (These both are actually black lines, but I discovered WP’s…