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

The best kind of collaboration - mother and daughter

September.. the year is turning!  Autumn is definately in the air..  Misty morning fields, bright berries on the trees, cool crisp evenings.. it shall be time for thick soups, hot chocolate and woolen socks soon!

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Well the summer holidays went by in a bit of a blur they were gone so quickly.. and I have been a bad little blogger!  Hopefully things shall be back to normal now.. the children are newly back at school - I am felting again (YAY) and this morning saw the Woolgatherers meet for the first time since July.  I should be hard at work, either working on my newest pair of boot slippers.. or making textural flat felt for a commission.. but my concience is telling me its time to blog :)  but I must be short and sweet and get back to work!
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This is not a new make but a piece from July which I didnt get round to showing you.  Rachael had drawn a picture which I fell in love with.. and immediately imagined it as a felt panel on the wall. 
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This is Rachaels trademark flower.. in year 4 they did a William Morris project and all had to design and make their own wallpaper.. this is the flower Rachael designed - she has been drawing it ever since :)

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I love this picture - its simple.. but I can almost hear the wind singing in the leaves of the tree..making the branches dance.  I thought it lent itself to freemotion machine embroidery - which has really gotten a hold of me I afraid - I'm addicted.  So one day I set about felting the picture (minus the chickens and bunnies :)

Wetted out and just started rubbing

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I used the colours of the fields by our house at that time.. apart from the flower of course (which is imaginery) - Rachael always uses these colours for it so I stayed true to her design :)
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When it was felted and dried I set to with my sewing machine & freemotion foot (which I LIKE) adding in the detail..
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From a distance

I LOVE the textures you can get adding machine embroidery to felt.. 
 the trunk and branches stand proud against the leaves.

Signed with our initials and the date :)

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I just need to mount it now! Which is where I have come to a standstill.. my embroidery frame is too small for the piece of linen fabric that I want to mount it on (it needs to be stretched before I stitch it on - then I stretch the linen over a board & stitch it in place). Im puzzling my way around it, while trying to avoid the need for a bigger frame...  and then it shall be on my wall :)

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So.. NOW I am off to do some felting before collecting the children from school

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Have a good weekend folks

xx

Not many words today.. just a picture to share :)    My first wallhanging with a little freemotion embroidery on..  Its a reasonable sized wallhanging 22" x 24"  Inspired by photos taken on many wonderful walks along the North Cornwall coastline between Daymer Bay & Polzeath.

Hung from a nice bit of Dorset driftwood.. collected this piece in Feb 2010, it was just perfect for this hanging.

Just a little stitchery in the sea.. to define the horizon and some swirls in the sea. I needlefelted the sailing boat. Did think of hanging a couple of Cornish seashells from the end of the driftwood.. may still add them.

Freemotion grasses

And a freemotion seagull flying high

 My next wallhanging has a LOT more stitching on it :)

Have a good week folks - hope you are enjoying the summer xx

Freemotion..

I mentioned that my (long anticipated) freemotion embroidery foot arrived last week :)  I could not wait to try it out!!  After doodling on the kids old school shirts that were destined for the rag-bag, I jumped in to my first little project.  This has been brewing in my mind for a while..  Finally got it out on Sunday :)

I think this might be classed as mixed-media? :)

I cut out a wave shape from cotton fabric - 2 different patterned pieces of fabric (can you see them?)  I used one for the main part of the wave and another for the curling under-part of the wave. 

I positioned the wave on my piece of felt, covered it all with a piece of blue organza and stitched around the outside of the wave.  Then I sniped around the outside of the stitches to remove the excess organza.. and started doodling :)  I covered the raw edges of the organza with tiny swirly movements... indicated movement with lines of stitching... added surf with white cotton thread... tiny little bit of metalic thread for sparkle on top of the wave.

Next I handstitched it to a slightly bigger piece of felt, and added a row of glass seed beeds to the edges of both felt pieces.  Pin back sewn on and a scrap of felt to cover the metal bar.  For fun I embroidered my initials on the back.. then kicked myself because I could of signed it with machine embroidery! lol.. 

I'm happy :)

brooch measures 6cm x 4cm (2.5" x 1.5")

So, there you go.. my first freemotion.. mixed media :) adventure with my new foot!