Wedding Garter

Did you guess what I was making?

It's been a long time since I made my first. I had to have a bit of practice with my bullion roses.

Now for the difficult bit...

 Embroidering bullions through gathered and elasticated silk...

 A little on the tricksy side...

 But I think it worked out....

 Beautifully!

 Let's hope the bride thinks so!
Fingers crossed!

Till next time
love Fi x

Embroidered Needle Case.

The last week of April was my Mums birthday. That was April the fourth month of the year.

Way back in January I remember sitting with my friends at our weekly sewing group, watching two very talented ladies working hard on some traditional hand embroidery. Both create exquisite, precise neat and sometimes quite complicated embroidery stitches. Absolutely beautiful work.

It was while I was watching their nimble fingers I remembered something my Mum had said about one day she must get around to making herself a needle case, one with labelled pages for different types of needles.  

So way back in January a little idea pinged into my teeny tiny brain! I'd make my Mum a needle case for her birthday. Yes! I had lots of time, four whole months, no rush then.

Fast forward to April, a very busy month for me stitching like mad in preparation for two craft fairs. Suddenly I only had two days left before Mum's special day! Aaaargh! Where had all that time gone, who had stolen almost 4 months away from me!

Well much frenzied stitching ensued. Even on the day of my arrival at Mum and Dads house I was very relieved to find that my parents had a hospital appointment and would have to leave me home alone for a couple hours before lunch. Perfect! That just gave me time to finish stitching the last two labels onto the pages inside and add the date to the back, phew! You can still see a slight purple fuzz around the date where the air erasable pen hasn't had time to vanish. 

I just had time to take a few quick photos before carefully wrapping it in tissue paper and hiding it away.

And yes, she loved it. All the rush and frenzy was well worth it in the end.

Till next time

love Fi x 

 Hello my lovelies, just bringing you up to date with some of my recent makes. 

This is a miniature piece of embroidered wet felt for your delectation.

Only 2 inches tall! Now what can you do with a mini piece of art like that?

 Well you can wear it! 

 These are delicate little brooches. Carefully machine and hand embroidered.

These little gems and my circular felt brooches are for sale in Chapel Gallery and shortly they will be available in my Etsy shop too.

I've also been spending time repackaging my little Fat Owl Kits.

 This has taken waaaay more time than I ever thought. Finding just the right box to create the look I wanted has been so difficult but I think I've got it right now. Fingers crossed, I'm hoping to create some more kits along the same lines. Watch this space.

Next Sunday you can find me at The Station in Richmond, North Yorkshire taking part in the 

Designer Makers Market. Please pop along if you are in the area and say hello.

Till next time

love Fi x

Miniature floral art.

 I think it's about time I apologised for the hit-and-miss blogging around here over the last 3 or 4 months. I've been...hmmm...not under the weather exactly but not really myself since the beginning of the year.

  I've been to the doctors more times in the last few weeks than I have in the last 6 years and after some tests and scans hopefully things will get better over the next few months, don't worry it's nothing serious but I just feel my 'sparkle' has been 'dulled' and you've not been getting the best of me of late and I hate not giving my best!

Anyway chin up Fi!  

What do you think to these little embroideries then?

They're little embellished felt brooches.

They're about 2 inches across, 

made from my wet felt and then hand embroidered with threads and ribbons.

pretty?

Maybe I should try a different shape...

Staying on the subject of brooches, I've also made a few larger ones.

These are quite delicate,

and have lovely buttons, some vintage, stitched in the centre. 

The fabric has a lovely iridescent quality and catches the light beautifully.

And just because I thought this was amazing,(yes I've lead a very sheltered life).

Here are two of my aprons that I brought in from the washing line. Just look what the wind has done to the ties! You've got to agree, that's some spectacular knotting and braiding! I wonder what the wind would make if I hung out an unravelled ball of yarn....

Maybe not.

Till next time

love from a very droopy Fi x

Wet felted, wool painting.

Debbie:: Don't read this until after the 25th if you want your wall hanging to be a surprise!

:::

Hello my lovelies. How are you doing? All ready for Christmas? Is the house decorated, the pantry full and the gifts wrapped?

Well I think I could say yes to most of those questions, still a couple of things left to wrap but the job I'm most pleased about finishing is my felt wall hanging, for the very, lovely Debbie.

A rather long one this one. Well longer than I've ever contemplated before. In fact Wonderful Man  had to help me dismantle my work table in the attic and bring it down to the kitchen where we reassembled it end to end with our dining table to give me a work space long enough.

And this is how it ended. Work table dismantled once more and reassembled back in the attic so that I could embroider and embellish in my usual surroundings. Wet felting is an untidy business, well it is the way I do it. I think the whole family is happier when I'm back in the attic, lol.



One of the most difficult parts of this commission was to try and work out how much the felt would shrink. Not enough and I would have to trim it to size, which in turn would mean losing the lovely natural wiggly edges.

Too much and the piece would be too small and I'd have to start over again! God forbid! It took me about seven hours to lay out the Merino wool for this one and then I wasn't sure about it so left it overnight and came back to it the next morning with fresh eyes.



Next what seems like an afternoon of soapy water and much vigorous rolling and roughing up.

Then I have a day or two's break while the felt is left to dry naturally.

Out comes the sewing machine next and my box or should I say boxes of threads. Tricky is a nice word to describe how difficult it was at times to manoeuvre this around under my domestic sewing machine. There are other words but tricky is the one we'll use today.

Hand embroidery and scrummy sparkly bits are next. You can't beat a little bit of twinkle here and there.

One of the good parts follows. Slip stitching the backing fabric and casing onto the reverse. I luuuuurve slip stitching.

Finally, balancing on a chair to fit all of its 62 inches into the viewfinder.

Gloriously happy!

That's how it makes me feel to look at it finished and ready to be carefully wrapped. It's at this point that I remember how much I enjoyed every single moment of making it.

Merry Christmas to you all

and

I hope you'll join me in 2013 to share in each others creativity.

Love Fi x 







Felt Flower Brooches and a Secret Felt Wall Hanging.

 Hi, are you ready for a bit of wet felt overload today, lol. I can finally show you this felt wall hanging I made for my friends 40th birthday. 

 And some felted brooches that I've been selling in my local art gallery. OO! nearly forgot to mention some very exciting news, do you remember my 'Meadow' felt wall hanging that I posted about recently? Well a couple of weeks ago a lovely lady bought it to hang in her lounge. Oh the delicious warm feeling that a total (but lovely) stranger has fallen in love with something that I've made and likes it enough to want to gaze upon it every day! Priceless!

 Anyway back to wispy felt flower brooches.

 These peacocky coloured ones are something new for me, I hardly ever work in blues, I'm very much a pink girl.

 They take an absolute age to make (well it feels that way) each individual petal has to worked between my fingers until it's felted.

 But it's worth it in the end.

 They seem very popular at the gallery.

 Now to the 'secret' felt wall hanging.

 I made this for my lovely friends 40th birthday. 

 Lots of curly wurly wool tops on this one, and some sparkly sequins to make it shimmer as the light catches it.

 It's not too large... after all, she may not actually like it. She may decide to hanging it in the loo. You've got to think of these things, lol.

 Well it's time to go now so I shall leave you with a sneaky peek of my current felty offering. Here's a pic of me grappling with it on the kitchen table. It's waaay bigger than my bamboo blind can cope with, I'm on the look out for a 3 or 4 foot wide one. 

Right, back to the sewing machine. 

Thanks for dropping by. 

love Fi x