Pink Crochet Top Finished

This is me wearing the pink crochet top. It's beautifully cool to wear as it is very fine cotton. I think I might add a few more flowers - although most of my friends seem to think it is finished as is.

I have 20 rows to go for the sleeve on the Splendid Wren coloured top and then it will be ready to assemble.

This is what happens...

When I can't sleep! My mind goes round and round thinking about HOW to make something. We have a Christmas decoration swap coming up. I'm trying to use these decorations as an opportunity to try techniques I've heard about but never done. I've seen beads made by wrapping fabric/yarn scraps around lengths of drinking straw. I thought they might look good as a 3-D decoration but wanted to be sure I could actually construct it before I made heaps of beads. So at 3am I got out of bed, cut up some drinking straws into 2.5cm and 5cm lengths and created these by threading yarn through. I found I needed a doll needle for the longer straws and that I needed to go through the beads several times in different directions to get a good tension throughout. I think these have definite potential so now I need to make the beads themselves.

Christmas Decorations

One of the groups I attend is having a Christmas Decoration swap at their next meeting so I've been playing with creating some decorations using techniques I've read about but never actually done. This star was created by painting Vliesofix fusible web with gold paint, letting it dry and then ironing the webbing to felt. I stitched a wonky grid with a variegated red rayon thread. I cut out the star shapes and zigzag stitched the edges together. I added the stuffing just before I completed the stitching around the edges while it was still under the presser foot of the machine. I've cut out 2 more and will stitch those by hand so I'll have a total of 3 different decorations from the one piece of embellished felt. I think I put a bit too much paint on the Vliesofix as it didn't adhere very well to the felt and would have looked better with a "worn" look. I am pleased with it overall though and the surface feels very like leather.

Pam Annesley Workshop

Here are my results from the workshop at the weekend with Pam Annesley hosted by the Designing Women group. Pam is a textile and polymer clay artist here in Perth and I've put her website into my links section.
Pam showed us how to layer paper images (pics from mags, wrapping paper, sweet wrappers etc) onto a base fabric with PVA glue and then use tissue paper and paint to fill-in gaps and/or go over the images. I liked the effect of the painting over tissue paper more so I omitted the images bit :-) There are several coats of PVA glue on the top and the resulting fabric/paper is apparently strong enough to make bags and/or boxes. Some ladies went on to stitch their first sheet into one of the designs Pam provided a pattern for. I decided to create a 2nd sheet instead and will do the stitching at home where I have all my threads handy.


I'm thinking I might turn one of them into a wine bottle carrier and depending on the success (or otherwise) of that will decide the fate of the other one.