A mixed bag

I do try to blog most days, but this week has been a turbulent one in our household and the internet has been a bit iffy, so sorry for that.
Today's post is just a bit of miscellany from my studio.
Firstly, remember that felt I was embroidering all over with the embroidery machine?

Well, I finished it.  And then.....

I cut it all up!  If you remember, I said I was going to make a bag.  Well, it is all cut into the pattern pieces for the bag, and I will show it to you when it's done, since it is not my design.

And here is a collage page I did in one of my journals.  The butterfly is 3D.  It contains painted papers, some of the stickers I made the other day, gelli prints and bits and pieces from my collage box.  I was very pleased with how it came out, since I just started sticking whatever was to hand.
On another note, recently, I watched a Mary Beth Shaw webinar and she mentioned that she often uses water based matte house paint as a bottom layer in her journals, so I thought I would try it out as we have a ton of it.

Even though this says white, it was actually egg shell blue

This was my first sample page, where I tried out different media on it.  Clockwise, from top left, watercolour from my palette, inktense blocks, watercolour pencils, a black paint marker, A yellow waterbased marker, a red faber castell marker, a gel pen, pink acrylic in a dabber bottle, acrylic with a make up sponge, and lastly acrylic with a brush.
They all did rather well on it I must say, and it dries very fast, leaving a great matte surface.  So, another thing to recycle that would otherwise have to be disposed of.  It covers better than gesso and is more matte!
So, i now have a lot of pages already painted and dried, going through the final test, which is whether the pages will stick together.  However, if they do, I will just give them a light sand, which is what I do with painted pages when they stick.

So that is my mixed bag for today!

Happy Creating!

A noisy day.

I have had he embroidery machine stitching away beside me most of the day as I am embroidering quite a large piece of felt for a special bag I want to make.

Here is the machine sewing away.  This was earlier today and this was only the second section.

Here we are after about six sections.  As you can see I still have a long way to go to fill the fabric - Perhaps another day's worth?
Whilst the machine Has been going, I have been getting in a little quilting practice.

This is one of my practice quilts, of which I have several.  This one is an old cheater fabric piece I was given.  Waste not want not.  This fabric is absolutely revolting, however it is great for practicing on as it has lots of different block patterns.  I also don't waste batting on these.  For this one, I am using a recycled mattress protector, which is basically poly batting.
I have also been doing a little painting in between the beeps from the machine, but haven't taken any photos, perhaps tomorrow.

Happy Creating!

Teapots again

I have been in town most of the day with the other half, getting his stitches out, but had some time to get some interfacings for my new embroidery machine and have only just sat down to contemplate what to show you for T for Tuesday.
I did have a lovely cup of tea and muffin at the shopping centre, but alas, I forgot my camera!  So here is a machine embroidered teapot for you.

It is not my design.  I am certainly not that quick!  I downloaded it from here.
Hope everyone is having a lovely T for Tuesday and Happy Birthday Halle!

Happy creating!

Using my new toy

I have been playing and learning and making samples with my new embroidery machine, but I thought it was time to make something!
Last night I put together the first steps of a bag for the workshop I am teaching in a few weeks.

I have quite a number of satin samples that are 4.5 x 12 inches.  You can see them in the layout above.
I embroidered a celtic knot on one of them and  basically used the size of the pieces as the bag pattern.  The picture above is before I sewed them on to a piece of interfacing cut to the size above.

This picture is bit closer to the real colours.  I have sewed the strips onto the stabiliser and peeping out from the bottom, you can see the lining cut to the same size.
This is as far as I got, since I was thinking about the handles.
This morning, I embroidered another and made a quick little ipod or phone case.

My favourite colours again!  I did not line this one with interfacing, so it is very soft.

This photo shows the construction (including a little boo boo!)  All i did was to sew the lining and cover right sides together, leaving a few inches unsewed, then turned it inside out.  I folded it to fit my ipod and hand sewed the sides up, and added press studs and a little embellishment to cover the press stud.
Voila!

I am thinking of lots of new ideas to use this new tool, but my fingers are itching to do some free motion, so hopefully I will get some done in the next few days.

Happy Creating!

Still digitizing

I have been absent for a few days,  but as well as having a bit of a cold,  the hubby had surgery on his wrist on Tuesday and is totally helpless (aren't they all?), so all i really have had time to do was play with my new embroidery machine in my free time.
I enrolled in a craftsy class on digitising and have been going through the lessons bit by bit.  I found it a really useful class and it made me much more confident and less frustrated.
Here are some of my samples from the course.

This is one of the early samples and even though it is a simple design, I learnt a lot, which will come in handy with quilting designs.

This butterfly applique lesson gave me tons of ideas for applique!

And this final sample was really interesting.  All of the lessons taught you how to do the design from scratch and I feel now that I could do just about anything!

And this last one is one I did on my own., Of course the lesson designs all  belong to the tutor, but since I am not teaching you and am basically advertising her class, I don't think she should mind ;-o!

Happy Creating!

Being very productive

I have been tackling my steep learning curve with my new embroidery machine and am finding that it is quite easy to do two things at once!
This morning I spent a long time playing with drawing my own designs from scratch and after much hair pulling I have produced a very simple quilting outline (which is so simple, I am not going to show you), but I think I am now much more confident to go on producing my own, more complex ones.
This afternoon, whilst increasing the number of leaf blocks in my growing collection,  I have been doing a little hand applique.  At the quilt convention, a few weeks ago, I bought some 'Applique paper' (here,  scroll down to see the product below). Basically, it is a semi soluble, fusible interfacing which you can leave in, but allows you to turn the edges of your fabric with a gluestick.  Using it has speeded up my applique no end as I can put together the pieces whilst the embroidery machine is working away.

This is one of my completed blocks.  It is a Quilt Show block of the month from a few years ago and is something I pull out in winter to do on cold nights.

This is my current block, number seven (so you can see I have actually done a fair bit).  Whilst I embroidered one leaf, I finished turning lots of leaves.

All of these paler ones!  OOps, when I laid them out, I realised I had one missing.  I spent an hour looking for some of the same fabric unsuccessfully, then had to look through the rubbish and actually found the missing one.  Lucky the rubbish had not gone out!
You can see one unturned leaf at the top, so you can see I have ironed the applique paper on to a piece of fabric, then it is easy to turn the edges to the back with a glue stick.
Whilst I was embroidering another leaf this evening, I got all twelve darker leaves sewn down.
So my new toy is actually helping me to get more done - and I get to play with lots of glorious colours of thread!

Happy Creating!

Digital Drawing day and Ooops. I forgot!

I have been so busy the last few posts, that I forgot a major milestone!  I have passed 500 posts!  wow.  I never thought I'd get this far, especially with all the stops and starts last year, but I have finally got here.
Wonder where I'll be when I hit 1000?  Mind you, I do have a friend who has been blogging for over ten years, so she beats me there!
If you saw my post yesterday, you know I have been playing with a new toy.  I have a brand spanking new embroidery machine and have been playing with the commercial designs that come with it.  But since today is Digital Drawing Day, hosted by Terry.  (She and Joan will post Sunday U.S. time), I thought it was the perfect opportunity to do two things at once.
Terry's prompt for this week is 'put a bird on it', so I drew a blue wren with my digital tablet.

I didn't put a background, or anything for the poor bird to stand on because I had something special in mind for my image.  And I didn't use the pastel tool for this, I used the watercolour brush because I wanted clear solid colours.
I took my image and digitised it into an embroidery design on my computer.  I thought it would be difficult, but it wasn't.  What will be difficult will be all the tweaking I need to do now that I have stitched it out, because there were problems with the stitching,  but here it is!

As you can see it is far from perfect, but I think that this will be a great tool to use in my work.  Imagine being able to stitch out my own designs into my pieces!  Any way I think it will be - when I have tweaked it a bit.

Happy Creating!

A new addition to the studio

When I was away at the quilt convention, I made a rather large purchase, which my hubby and I finally picked up yesterday.  It has necessitated quite a few changes to the arrangement of my room and also a few frustrating hair pulls as I put it to use.

OMG!  It's an embroidery machine!  I have wanted one of these for many years and this year, I decided that it was time, now, because the prices were getting ridiculous!  I managed to get a great price on this one at the show.
As I said, I have wanted one for ages, but not to make lots of stuff with commercial designs.  I wanted to be able to digitize my own work and sew it out and to make lace-of course.
The last day and a half, after getting it home, I have been on a steep learning curve and have finally got it doing commercial designs correctly.  I have made just about every mistake I could make and finally feel comfortable with it.

This was the first design I did, which was a tutorial that took me through all the steps, but it was just one colour and very simple, so although it was a useful exercise, I wanted something more complicated!

So, of course, I chose a leaf.  This was my first attempt.  I can't remember what the problem was, but the computer told me to stop and then I couldn't get it started at the same place!

This was my next attempt, getting a little further along, but after it threw up another error, I got it started, but at the wrong place!

Aha!  third time lucky! I finally worked out all the little problems!  This one still had a little tension problem at the start, but it was passable.
I now have three of these worked on different fabrics with different colours.  I have had these blocks lying around for a while and I thought this would be a great way to practice, and end up with a quilt as well!

So my new toy is up and running.  Now I have to tackle an even steeper learning curve of digitzing my own drawings and getting them to stitch out the way I want.  The great thing about this is that I can be doing two things at once.  As I am right now - blogging whilst the machine sews away next to me!

Happy Creating!