Needle Case from my preserved flower fabric

So here is one of my preserved flower pieces made with wild violets from my lane and I have made it into a needle case:

 Front

Back

Inside ( I'm afraid I took the photo before I tidied up the felt edges!)

Preserved Flowers

My latest thing is preserving flowers between material. it's a technique I got from a project called Precious Petals from Stitch magazine.  I use dry wet wipes coloured with a bit of sponged ink as the base.  I lay a piece of bondaweb over it, then put the flowers on then cover with another piece of bondaweb and finally lay a piece of organza on the top.  You then carefiully iron over parchment pressing and sealing the whole sandwich together.  I've done a lot of experimenting and flat flowers work best.  Anyway after sealing it together you then embroider at will.  Here are a few samples:

 The one above is wild potentilla's growing in the forestry nearby plus ferns and to the left here is bluebells with a couple of dried daisies.  I have actually embroidered this one but haven't photographed it yet.  The one above is before embroidery and  below you can see the effect you get with the embellishments and

next to it you can see the effect you get when made into a card.

These are the four I made at the weekend



I have now made them into cards here's one of them:

More Catch up Inchies - Map, Travel and Mountain Peak

I'm a bit late putting these on my blog having said I'd finished them all!  The next 3 late Every Inchie Monday inchies were from March 25th - April 8th and the first was Map and I decided to try and do a treasure map!!  Took a bit longer than I anticipated but realised straight off I needed to do really tiny stitches - wish I could see as magnified as the picture turns out - you can see all the faults!!  But I was rather pleased I managed to get two palm trees in and a galleon!! Sorry I took the picture against the black of my laptop and you can see the keyboard!

The next one due was travel and I had this great idea to portray a desert island complete with sunset and palm tree with a plane disappearing into the background.  My granddaughter loves this one and wants it!  She keeps saying "can I have this one please" and when I say no it becomes "will you make me one please Nana?"!!

The last one of this group is Mountain Peak which I finished last of all and came out exactly as I envisioned it.  In fact I'm really pleased with these three but they were three of the last I did so I think I'm getting better!

Or maybe it was just the subjects I liked.

Every Inchie Monday - Wing

So this Monday's title for Every Inchie Monday is Wing and I have a magazine with instructions for a stumpwork dragon fly wing which I have been eager to attempt.  However when I started to plan it out I realised I wouldn't have room on a one inch square!!  So I have compromised and made wings from doubled up organza. I know it's titled wing but I couldn't give him only one!!   I hope you like it - I do!

More Catch up Inchies - Wave, Glasses and Footprint

Well I have finally finished all the Every Inchie Monday inchies that preceded the one I started with this year which was Melody and was posted for Monday May 27th!  So I am going to post them in threes as I started doing when I first decided to join this challenge my aim being to do all the inchies in material and embroidery.  Unfortunately I started with the first one "star" at the beginning of May and managed to do about 12 in order during the next 3 weeks but realised if I didn't make and post the inchie due that date I would never join this challenge - so I have managed to keep up to date and meanwhile have been playing catch up with past Inchie subjects. 

So the next one in order of posting is Wave.  I decided I wanted to do this in Felting however  having chosen a piece of black felt to felt my wool on I tried to do a wave but somehow got lost and couldn't make it look right - even after I'd added some beads for the foam it didn't look right.  I showed it to a couple of people and the general consensus was I'd made it too light underneath the wave so I added embroidery in a darker thread and some white French knots on the top.  Still not happy with it but I've now put too much time into it so it will have to do.

My next catch up inchie is Glasses and I immediately thought of Harry Potter!!  My own daughter had to wear glasses when she was 3 and they were the National Health ones the same as Harry's so I feel empathy for him!  I drew him out on the material but realised it was going to be difficult to embroider his skin so I have done a reverse shadow (although it looks like he's got a beard!!) and when it came to his hair instead of doing it in black thread I stayed with the neutral giving it a sepia look - I hope!!! Of course the glasses were bent wire. Am very pleased with him actually!!

My third catch up is Footprint and I found a tiny stamp of a pawprint in all my rubber stamps - didn't even know I had it was looking for something else entirely so stamped in black and embroidered over it!  I love it though - think it's so cute!

Every Inchie Monday - Light

This week on Every Inchie Monday the title is Light. Now I was going to do a lovely scene of a bedside lamp giving out light but after I had tried to get the shading of white light getting gradually darker and darker there wasn't enough room left to put a lamp in!!!  So my inchie is just literally the light on a black background!  Just circles of ever increasing colour sewn on with a sparkly thread.  Not exactly what I wanted but that's the way it went so I'm sticking to it.  Plus I've been in France all week so it was quite hard getting back to my routine - there was all the washing and animals to do!

Every Inchie Monday - Bed

This week's Inchie on Every Inchie Monday is Bed and rather than do a side view I decided it would be fun to try and do a 3D version with plump pillows!! This was harder to achieve than I originally thought - I had to sew folded wool under the fabric to try and get the fullness of the pillows and sewing tiny stitches was a nightmare.  By the time I cut and put on the foot board I had cut it slightly too big so it only just fitted on and the whole thing was beginning to look unlike a bed so to be sure I embroidered BED  on the base board!!!! Oh well ....... Here goes!!!

Crazy Patchwork Glasses holder

I saw a DVD on crazy patchwork and it made me want to have a go.  Since my sister is always losing her glasses, putting them down and forgetting where she left them I thought I would make her a glasses case to hang around her neck!  The crazy patchwork seemed an ideal base and I had a whole load of tiny pieces of sample materials which I ordered in the '90's via mail order - apparently you can't do this anymore. It used to just cost a self-addressed stamped envelope!! - not any more!!  So I spent one Friday afternoon having a lovely time stitching these tiny bits together onto a base material which you don't see - This was the result.....

 I then cut this down to the size I wanted with a quarter inch allowance for sewing together and then placed the trimmings on with a flowing movement - well that's what it's supposed to be! This included ribbon trim, braid and some ruched glittery Indian ribbon - by this stage I had even tried out a couple of rows of embroidery on the seam lines and positioned a few flowers cut off from another trim.  And it looked like this.......

Several weeks later when I had little time to finish the project as I was going to see my sister, I spent a whole Sunday - much to my husband's stomach's annoyance - embroidering the rest of the seams putting beads and embellishments on until I thought it was enough! This proved even more difficult than usual as I had just cut my thumb rather badly cleaning the windows around the fish pool - there must have been something very sharp jutting out I didn't see, so with thumb in plaster threading a needle was pretty hard since every time I got the thread through it stuck on the plaster and pulled back out!!  It was also my excuse for not cooking Sunday roast!! We had tuna fish sandwiches instead courtesy of my other half.   However at last this is what I achieved ...

And stitched together with a cord ...... finally,  the finished article Front and Back ...

 This is the Front

And this is the Back

Every Inchie Monday - Table

This week on Every Inchie Monday the subject is Table so I thought I would do an ordinary square occasional table with a bunch of flowers on it in applique and beads.

Catch up Inchies - Every Inchie Monday - Happiness, Broom and Street Sweeper!

For the "happiness" inchie all I could think of was wanting to see the sun and then I'd be happy - this cold and rainy weather is soo depressing!  A nice big happy smiley sun is happiness to me.

For the "broom" inchie I broke a small piece off of a corn dolly I had in the kitchen and stitched it to a piece of material with leaves on because I thought it would be evocative of sweeping up leaves in autumn. A small piece of corn for the brush part and embroidered  bristles completes the inchie with a couple of the leaves touched up too.

And my last inchie catch up for the moment is the "street sweeper".  I saw a sketch once that the Irish comedian Dave Allen did where he was a road sweeper and he lifted the corner of the pavement and brushed the rubbish, so to speak "under the carpet"!!! I thought this would be a fun inchie to do and almost regretted it once I'd started - however I persevered and this is the result!

Catch up Inchies for Every Inchie Monday - Hut, and Ruin

Now I've got into the rhythm I am really enjoying doing these mini bits of art and having to go away for work one weekend I did these in a hotel room waiting for my husband and happily embroidered away the time!  The first was "hut" and I was torn between doing a little brown hut in the garden or a beach hut so I ended up doing both! The first is an embroidered hut on a promarkered background enhanced with an embroidered tree with French knots and some grass!

The beach huts I cut from a piece of striped material, which I thought looked like the colourful beach huts you get in Bournemouth, and appliqued it onto a back ground of sky and sand using some beads for sand and stone.

The last inchie in this group was "ruin" and I wanted the ruin to stand on the curve of a hill with some scrub bushes growing around.  So the "ruins were appliqued on to the base and some French knots give the impression of growing bushes. I love the sky material - to me it gives the look of a cloudy sky.

Catch up Inchies, for every Inchie Monday-- Star, Girl, and Stone

So as I say, having just decided to participate in Every Inchie Monday I have been doing some catch up inchies starting with the first three.  Star -- now there's a one and the only reason I decided to do this was that I was playing around with a piece of orange peel wondering if I could make a stamp with it, and I cut a star, it wasn't a very good shape so as I trimmed it it got smaller and smaller until I was happy with it and wondered what it would look like if I dried it in the Rayburn oven!  20 minutes later it looked like this and I was amazed at how like a starfish it was so that's how I came upon doing this inchie.

Then I thought well I wonder how hard "Girl could be! and found a tiny sample fabric with girls on holding bunches of flowers so I selected one - cut it with my one inch square die cuts and embroidered her adding beads as flowers.

And the next one I did was "stone".  I had seen a technique in a magazine I have for actually attaching real stones to an embroidered scene ... could I find it??  I did eventually and you have to encase the stone in a sheer fabric like organza and then attached it to the base cloth and by embroidering over the organza it gives the impression of flora growing over the stone ... at least that's what I hope it looks like!

So those were my first three inches which I did at the beginning of May - it has taken all month to try and catch up but there are several I haven't completed yet.

Every Inchie Monday - Melody

I have decided to join Every Inchie Monday and this weeks design is Melody.  I thought immediately of a saxophone with notes coming out ... but how to achieve that!!  First I cut out some gold fabric into a tiny saxophone but just as I was trying to stitch it on the thin bit fell off!  So back to the drawing board and I found a piece of gold ribbon which I have twisted and stitched - not as effective as I thought it would be but here goes!