Purses finished

Today I finished off these two purses in time to give them as birthday gifts for a couple of my friends. I made them using my own "Artists Canvas" purse pattern that is available on my website www.lizardofoz.com.au

Crochet embellishment 3

I crocheted a few pink flowers last night so that I could see the effect of them grouped together on the t-shirt. I've made all different ones - just making them up as I went along. I like the look of these against the uniform and regular half treble crochet I used to make the basic t-shirt. I much prefer this self-coloured textural look to the embroidery experiments I did previously. So, lots more crochet flowers coming up.

Most of today has been spent making up orders and replenishing stock. I'm off to a retreat this weekend and taking my goodies to sell there. I'm taking my Seven Sisters quilt so that I can continue quilting it, Karen's Konstellation in case I finish the Seven Sisters as I don't think I 've got that much more of the centre panel to go, and the pink thread so I can crochet some more flowers. These make a nice break from hand quilting so I don't get too achy from doing one thing all the time. Knowing me I'll probably pack quite a few other things to do too even though I should have learned by now that I always take too much.

I took on newsletter duties for the WA Fibre & Textiles Association recently so I am currently compiling my first issue. As is usually the case with these things this first issue seems to be taking me forever. I looked at my schedule yesterday and frightened myself with all that I have to do over the next month. I am determined to keep blogging - although I will miss a few days while on retreat.

crochet embellishment 2

These are the two yarns I had in mind for embellishing the pink t-shirt. The multicoloured one is very slubby and proved too difficult to weave through the crochet. Weaving also damaged the yarn. I didn't like the effect of the purple and pink variegated yarn once woven although it was easy to weave as it is smooth. In the photos you can see the bright yellow tacking too. This is for placement purposes and will be removed after embellishing the top. So, back to square one as far as embellishing is concerned.

I have now decided to try adding texture rather than colour, and to create a more informal panel as I didn't like the regularity of the weaving either. I like the idea of lots of flowers using the same thread that I used to make the top stitched randomly over the panel and extending over the shouler area. The beige flowers are experiments - I like the size of them so will now go ahead and make lots from the pink thread.

Whirl Shape Drawn and Tested

I have just finished drawing and testing the Whirl shape you can see here. A customer requested this shape which is formed by 4 intersecting circles that then tesselate as a one-patch. I have also drawn the shapes to go around the edges to make the quilt top rectangular. These straight edges make it easy to attach borders and/or binding to the finished quilt top. You can see from the photo of the back of the block that I found it easier to tack the seam allowance of inward-facing curves onto the papers if I clipped them. The seam allowance along the straight sides is left "flapping" so that it doesn't get caught when piecing - which again makes it easier for attaching borders.