Thursday, April 26, 2007



Heart of Gold atc. This atc has a confetti fabric background. It takes ages to make a piece of this, but I only use a little bit so it goes a long way and it is worth the effort. The heart motif was made on cold water soluable fabric, I stitched the swirls in pink thread and the stitched over with a gold based variagated thread. I only partly disolved away the soluable so the motif is quite firm. I may stitch on a brooch back so that if the recipient wants to they can wear it.

Landscape atc. This was made by using the decorative stitches built into my Pfaff, stitched onto cold water soluable fabric. The background is cotton fabrics with pelmet vilene sandwiched in between.

It was easy to do although it took a while to stitch out the patterns, the best bit is that you really have no idea how it will look once the fabric has disolved away. I can see lots of way to improve the next one...

Sunday, April 22, 2007



New toy. I got a new toy this week - a blowtorch. I like working with wire but I don't like the sharp ends. The blow torch melts the end of the wire and forms little beads. I did have to sand off black residue afterwards.

I wove the copper wire onto a frame then wove hand dyed (by me) threads through it. When I held the wire in the torch, flame ran down the wire but it didn't set the yarn on fire.

It does need more beads and I need more practice at coiling the wire, but I am happy with the overall result. The brooch measures around 1" x 1 1/2"

Tuesday, April 17, 2007


E needed a waistcoat for Victorian day at school, I didn't have the fabric, didn't have a pattern and didn't have him to measure. Found some white wool and dyed it grey, had his mum send me his chest measurement and guessed the rest. I think it doesn't look too bad, kind of mucky and grungy, just the effect I was after. Most importantly, E liked it. He also liked wearing his grand-dads flat cap!

My favorite boy in all the world sent this, he is an artist in waiting.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Workshop with Pam Watts




One Day Workshop with Pam Watts, using cold water disolvables. Sleaford Embroiderers meet at the Hub in Sleaford and we have some excellent tutors come to teach us. We meet once a month and have tutors approx 5 times a year.


Pam is a lovely tutor, with a merry sense of humour so any workshop with her is a pleasure. This was no exception and although we all worked really hard, we laughed a lot too.

I was doing my health and safety expert impression and managed to stab myself with the sewing machine needle. That will teach me to wave my arms around willy nilly. Of course I was using a microtex extra sharp needle and to my embarrasment I managed to bleed on the lady-sat-next-to-me's disolvable fabric.

I free machined a leaf shape. Wet the disolvable and dripped silk paint onto it. When it dried I had these pieces. Hard to see in the picture but they are a little 3 dimensional with the ends of the leaves curling up from the paper.

Some of my leaves are the 'wrong' colour and look a bit dodgy but if I turn them upside down and add a little face and a halo I will have some very nice little angels!

After lunch we chopped up some scraps of fabric and placed them between two layers of disolvable and using a hoop, free machined. When I disolved this I draped it over a jam jar and left it to dry.

I like the rough edges and the scraps of shiny fabric, not to everyone's taste. Maybe next I will make one with tidy edges and some nice lace. Maybe.

Workshop with Janet Edmonds

Weekend Workshop at Broadlands Art Centre with Janet Edmonds. Brian and Katydog came with me. We stayed at the Wayford Bridge Hotel in Stalham, which has a great restaurant and allows one very well behaved dog to stay. During th day Brian and Katy went off walking on the Norfolk Broads whilst I beavered away at the workshop.

On Day one we studied and sketched a 3d object, then made a wire frame and wrapped it with various heat distortable fabrics. Mine was a complicated shape and I haven't started to wrap it yet. Typical of me!


Anyway day 2 was using wire frames to weave the distortable fabrics and fibres and I chose a base of garden mesh.


I painted tyvek cloth with silk paints and cut it into strips and wove it through the mesh. Then wove shiny polyester strips and bunches of rayon threads. I made some 'eggs' from tyvek, stuffed those with cotton chenille and pushed them through the mesh. I couldn't wait to zap so there are some zapped bits even though it isn't finished.



The tyvek distorts and shrivels up except where it is held into place by the wire.

Then it goes holey and my chenille fibres popped through the holes. I added some beads threaded on wire as I just like beads.
There will be more beads added when the weaving is done and the distorting finished. I plan to seed bead and add a few hand stitches too.