Crafty Bits and Pieces

Hi there, happy Friday every one. 

Once again, it's been too long since my last post and I don't really have an excuse!

I haven't actually done too much sewing since I showed you my Style Arc Gabby jacket, for a while it was too hot to even think about going and sitting at the sewing machine.

I thought I'd therefore share with you some photos of a few other crafty bits and pieces I've been doing.

A couple of weeks ago I went on a fused glass workshop at Niko Brown Glass in Hertford.  I heard about the workshops through Jo, who I was paired with last December in a Christmas decoration swap - she made me a lovely glass hanging ornament as part of my swap gift. 

The workshop was great fun, if rather warm, due to the fact that Niko had been firing pieces in her kiln before we arrived.  We had various options as to what we could create - I chose to go with a picture panel using odd bits and pieces of offcuts from other projects.  I was given a long narrow piece of clear glass and had access to lots of offcuts to play with.  I didn't really have a plan as to what I was going to create, but when I started searching through the colours I found pieces that would make the perfect abstract beach scene.  Here it is before firing.




Hopefully it has now been fired and I'm just waiting to go and collect it.  The finished piece will also be mounted for me on a white canvas.  I can't wait to see it.

I enjoyed myself so much that I've already booked another workshop.

I've also been playing with a bit more free motion embroidery.  I taught a class at Fabric HQ on Wednesday this week and decided before hand that I'd try something a bit different to take along as an example.




I started off with a sketch of this lady, and instead of filling the entire picture with fabrics I chose to just highlight her dress and clutch bag.  I cut those pieces from some scraps of Liberty Tana Lawn and fixed them onto the backing fabric with Bondaweb, as I would normally do. 

Then I traced the entire picture onto tissue paper and pinned that in place over the fabric pieces, using my tracing lines as stitching guides.  When I'd finished stitching I carefully tore the tissue paper away.

Here's the finished picture, she's now found a home with Rae at Fabric HQ who fell in love with the picture as soon as I showed it to her!





I think I'm going to have to do another for myself!

Finally, here's a collage of the free motion pictures that my students created on Wednesday evening.  Aren't they amazing?  You can see one of them was brave enough to have a go at the picture above, I was pretty impressed with the result as it was her first time doing free motion embroidery.




I've been posting more on Instagram recently than I have here - although I will try and blog more regularly, I really will.  If you don't already follow me on Instagram, pop over and say hello!  You'll find sewing, food and all kinds of other randomness.

4 comments

  1. I absolutely love the lady sam! Gorgeous!

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  2. I saw your lady at Fabric HQ and she is beautiful. I am very jealous of Rae. Did you sew the other example or was that one of your students? I love the little dog, too. I hope that you bring your finished glass picture to the Sewcial. It looks fabulous.

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    Replies
    1. The other lady was sewn by one of my students. I was very impressed!

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