The past couple of days have been spent on my sewing machine creating surfaces, paper and cloth as a base for hand embroidery.
The paper ones are much needed at the moment as I'm currently working on a few more of these.
Hand embroidery on these pieces is the next stage.
There will be lots of bullion and French knots along with buttonhole stitch edges and vintage fabric snippets.
These aren't 'new', in fact some of them are positively ancient!
I'm reminding myself of the value of having what Rachel rightly called a large amount of 'resources'....not stash as I called it.
Buttons and Suffolk puffs, perfect for those little finishing touches.
In addition to hand embroidery I'm also partial to a little bit of patchwork.
If you follow this link and scroll down there are some 30ish posts where I have used patchwork in several different ways.
Because I use this process regularly it's always handy to have a stash and the means to add to that stash.
These are things I pick up when I'm in need of a half hour of not thinking, just keeping my hands busy and my brain empty.
There are fabric pieces I've cut ready to add to templates, individual covered templates waiting for what comes next along with finished patches and some partially finished patches.
More has been added to the pieces you saw in my last post.
What I love most about these pieces is the irregular edges which come from tearing papers, overlaying papers.
Curved lines of buttonhole stitch, bullion knots and French knots emphasize those irregualr edges.
It's then really exciting to find snippets of white to add to that surface and continue embellishing.
Today I realised I need to stitch more papers in order to finish this piece.
Another process for these compositions which I love.
More white today, another diversion.
This time it's paper.
A stitched paper base, embellished with hand embroidery and snippets of vintage and new cloth.
There are plans for crystal buttons, seed beads and pearls too.
The large hand made ball buttons may find a place....we'll see how and if they fit further along in this process.
Petals, patchwork, Liberty print fabric.
I bought this fabric a couple of weeks ago when I was in London.
I've been itching to use it ever since.
That always happens with new stuff despite the huge pile I have which is 'in progress'.
I'm guessing I'm not the only one?
There is a short video here, a show and tell of all my London embroidery related purchases.
The progression of a design sheet.
The first three images show new additions which were completed before the embellishments on the last image.
The last image has patterned paper applied using hand stitch with a ribbon channel partially attached.
Once fully attached the ribbon channel will be further embellished with tiny seed beads.
It's coming together!
White.
Piecing.......vintage white, white trim, white couture fabcric snippets.
These pieces will be embroidered with white....bullion knots, French knots, tiny running stitches.
I intended to create a short video...ha.
It's 17 minutes long but you can skip through it.
(Sorry for my absence...again. I have had facial surgery. It kept me quiet for a while x)
You can enlarge the image by clicking on it x
I've been away. Did you miss me?
I went to London and I went shopping...all things embroidery related.
A video show and tell.
Some of my embroidered petals have now been used for a patchwork flower.
This is the third finished page for my little silk book.
I have five more to complete and then I need to decide how I will embellish the reverse of each page.
At the moment I am completely devoid of ideas!
