Felt and Stitch

My sewing machine is getting a good workout lately! :)  This week has found me felting boots - I have 2 pairs 'on the go' - neither quite finished yet - and making hanging felt hearts for a commission.  I went to town with the stitchery on these.. adding abstract shaped felt appliques & machine embroidery to a nice textural piece of felt. 

Absolutely stuffed full of lovely lavender buds.. these are nice fat hearts :)
This is just 6 of the 11 I made..

I had so much fun applique-ing and embroidering these..
I just LOVE the dimensional effect of stitching into felt!

Working on the heart project got my imagination going.. as soon as I had finished them I stitched a hanging Christmas tree filled with allspice berries and cloves to smell like Christmas :) ...

And then went  off at a tangent thinking about holidays & seasonal stuff - Halloween.  The night before we had watched Batman Begins (Christian Bale is my fave Batman!) and I guess this must of still been in my mind 'cos I suddenly started picturing a felt bat with stitched details & swarovski crystal eyes

You cant really tell in this pic but the eyes GLOW.  They are AB swarovski crystal and sooo irridescent.  He is nice and chunky too - I used 2 layers of felt to stitch into

And THEN following the Halloween vein I felted a witches pointy hat! Hows that for random?  Its still drying at the mo.. pics to follow soon :)

Anyhoo.. time to go rustle up some food for my lot - enjoy the weekend folks

xx

Getting back on track

Oh my, I have seriously neglected this poor little blog lately! Good news is I`ll have time to give it some tlc now that my Christmas craft fayre is over & most of my Christmas shopping is now done (phew).

Unfortunately the weather was pretty rubbish at the weekend, Saturday the local radio was advising people to stay off the roads! So the fayre was really rather quiet... That said I actually did quite well! And I met some lovely people, both crafters & customers, which is something that I LOVE about craft fayres.

This was the first time Ive had a stall all to myself... I have always shared with a friend. It was nice to be able to spread out! Gary made me a double hanging rail for my shawls & bags which worked really well too. Took a couple of pics.. but only one of them was in focus. My only explanation is that it was bloomin` freezing, must of been shivering!

The fayre was in the great hall of Hartlebury Castle (the Bishop of Worcesters home). I wish I'd taken a photo of the beamed ceiling - its absolutely gorgeous! The hall also has a fabulous flagg stone floor... after spending 2 days on which, I now have the worst case of chillblanes I've ever had - despite the fact that I had my sheepskin Ugg boots on! :(

You cant see them very well in the photo, but 3 of those shawls are made from my batts done on my new drum carder... I PROMISE to post about the carder & what I've done with it really really soon.

Stay well & warm
xx

How it all went...

Well the Christmas Fayre is over & I had my last meeting at work this side of the holidays - I broken up now folks - YAY!

The fayre was lovely; I met some really nice people and when the choirs were caroling it was such a lovely atmosphere. The fayre was in the great hall of Hartlebury Castle, which is still the home of the Bishop of Worcester, it has a great high ceiling& flagstone floor - you can imagine what the accoustics were like, some of the carols gave me tingles! Unfortunately the table was TINY so it was overcrowded, & I didnt like the layout of the stalls - it didnt flow. That said my friend Nicci & me both had more success than at previous fayres. Nicci is a very talended artist - you can just about see a couple of her little paintings on the photo below - we had half the stall each & the tree was in the middle, so it shows a bit of both our work :o)

I hadnt realised how much stuff Id made until I wrote an inventory the night before - I think I had gone a little mad, I had so much stuff. Still it`ll end up on my etsy shop over the next few weeks. I took some photos, but most of them didnt turn out well...

This is my felted Christmas tree - Im really pleased with it. Its seamless, felted over a resist, I scattered twinkling angelina fibre all over it before felting & some cerise sari silk fibre to give a tinsel type effect. I wound the ribbon around it to hang my phone charms from - thought it was a different way of displaying them.

My lovely husband customized a wooden towel rail for me. Its a good job that he had, it enabled me to go UP with my display.

Unfortunately I now have a roaring cold which is slowing me down... and there is so much going on with kids at this time of year! My daughter (who recently turned 11) was performing, as part of her schools choir, at the Young Voices concert at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham last week - its the 2nd year that shes taken part & loved every minute. They had so much practice & so many songs to learn - I would not be able to remember them all, Im amazed that the kids can; the concert lasted about 3 hours so you can just imagine how much they had to learn. Today she is dancing in the schools Cinderella production - she is Cinderella in the opening dance in her raggedy clothes (guess which momas gonna be sitting blubbering) and then shes singing in the choir. My sons school have decided to close early & the weather man is promising heavy sleet & snow for around the time that he shall be coming out.... not quite sure how to be at the play & collecting him yet?! Hopefully hubby will be home in time to help out....

Hope you are all enjoying the run up to Christmas :o) TTFN