blog 13th - Doodle applique

Good Morning ... or ... um, whenever it is for you,

Enclosed are two pictures of a piece that I took on the road with me yesterday. It is a homework assignment from my Creative Chick Doodling class, and involves one of my all time favorite passtimes: applique. Here is the first picture, of the overall:

Here is a close-up of the stitching.

Susan uses floss and a bigger needle and I have found that less rhythmic, (I have to pull so hard and my hand strength must not be what hers is), so I use a single thread and a size 12 needle - very tiny, but it glides through all of those fabric layers. I am calling this stitch a "cross-hatched-herringbone".

Let me see if I can make you a tutorial ... Here!

Once again my camera and I have not figured out how close I can get, but let me walk you through.

1. Come up at A, (I came up at the outside edge of the top fabric ). Go down at B, up at C, (1/8" or so inside the edge).

2. Go down at D, up at E, (outside edge).

3. Go down at F, up at G, (inside the edge).

4. Keep repeating 2. and 3. overlapping all of your cross-stitches. This is not a neat stitch, with the angles of the crosses all parallel. No, this is one of those dreaming stitches: your size 12 glides, you meditate, and Goddess takes care of all the angles.

It is doing a great job with all of those fraying edges too.

See ya tomorrow.

R

Blog 5th - dyed, beaded Timtex

Yipes! We had a power outage yesterday! I can now passionately add to my gratitudes list: I am grateful for bright, electric light to sew by. I am grateful for running water. I am grateful for sunshine on my diningroom table when I don't have electric lights. I am grateful that the Y had power. And, of course, I am grateful for all of those nice Central Maine Power people who fixed the broken transformer on our street at 9 o'clock at night!

Back to art:

Here is the heartroot!

And a side view to get a better sence of the depth and crustiness of the thing.

And a tiny beading tutorial.

Position One , on the far left there, is a stack: string two pony beads, (size 8), and then a seed bead, (size 11), pull the beads all the way down the thread until they rest against the fabric and go back through the two pony beads - NOT the seed bead - and down into the fabric. (One may stack up as many beads as one likes.)

Position Two, is what I have been calling a jump: string 6 seed beads and go back into the fabric a short distance away. The closer that you go back into the fabric , then the taller the "jump" will be.

Position Three, is a pony bead on its side - just a bit more height than a seed bead. I was trying to go from a low profile near the brick colored seed bead edge to a higher mound in the center of each root finger, the pony was a good first stage.

Position Four is that single seed bead which I also used as a filler.

Position Five is another stack: this is a stack of 6 seed beads and behind the front line of techniques is a stack in progress showing how you come back through all of the beads except one.

Sigh. Beads sure do make me happy. Oh! Y'know, I just remembered: on my 40th birthday, (which was a toughie for me, 50 was easier, just like Judy told me - that it is one or the other that gets you, but not both - anyway, on that birthday I only asked for beads. The giver's choice. It was great! I received beads that I might not have bought for myself but that have been terrific additions to many a project.

Remind me to tell you about Rudy and the chispas. Might explain my bead happiness.

R