Parrot with sushi

It was nice to have an extra day off but I spent most of it getting ready for holiday shows. I do basically two big art shows every year - one starts the beginning of november and one starts this coming weekend.
For one show this year I am doing something new - felted ornaments. I have made tiny little needle felted and wet felted ornaments - these sushi rolls are about 1/2" by 3/4". I have been working on them off and on for months - making a few here and there. We will see how they do.

Beaded Edging

A very simple beaded edge. I used all gold beads and this edging to finish my paisley.

First, thread your needle and tie a knot. Stitch through the back and secure the knot near the edge of your piece.

Now, thread on 3 beads to start. Make a little stitch through the front of the fabric about 1/8-1/4 in from where your thread started. This distance will vary based on how large your beads are. You want the beads to make a nice little loop and not be stretched too far.

Now come up from the back and go back through bead #3. You will have stitched through bead #3 twice now and your thread will be coming out through that bead.

Add 2 beads and repeat: make a stitch through the front of the fabric, come back up through bead #3 etc.

You can change colors if you like and make your edging look a little different by making bead A be something and bead B something else.

Coffee swap - I sent...

Here are the goodies I sent to my knitters coffee swap partner Carrie...

Caribou Coffee Obsidian. She said dark roast and this is dark!

Three skeins of Misti Baby Alpaca Lace. So unbelievably soft. I thought this icy blue color would make a great shawl. One skein of Kathmandu Aran: merino, cashmere and silk. Fingerless gloves?

Some chocolate goodies. A Sublime Stitching embroidery pattern. She had blogged about making holiday decorations and this is a fun wintery pattern. And a duct tape flower keychain from my friend Carly Stipe.

Happy Coffee drinking Carrie!

Embroidery Stitches - Paisley

The stitches. "Sharon B" does such a fabulous job with her Stitch Dictionary, that I am just going to link you there to see how these stitches are made. I use this stitch dictionary all the time and it is one of my favorite web resources ever.

Backstitch Stitched in brown with a bead added later between each stitch.

Detached Chain - Stitched in darker blue. Grouped in 3's and used alone with a bead added.

Coral Stitch - Stitched in pale blue. I chose this because the knots echoed what I had done with the backstitch and beads. I just learned this stitch and I like it a lot.

All of my embroidery was done with perle cotton. I switch back and forth between that and regular embroidery floss.

In which I digress.

I just discovered a fiber & mixed media jewelry competition on whip up and this paisley project seemed perfect.

project process - this is where you show off a completed project - it can be your own design or something you followed from a pattern - the point here is to describe the project and tell us how you did it - this is not a step by step tutorial - rather a description of how you felt, alterations or additions you may have made, challenges and choices you met along the way during the making of this project.

My paisley pin was inspired by a ceramic pendant I got for a friend (from an artist at etsy). I love paisley and this pendant yelled her name. Then I discovered that I had paisley on the brain. Nothing doing but to make my own version.

The first fabric paisley I made had a slight miscalculation and I couldn't get it turned right side out. It was a little too graceful (um... too narrow). It went in to the scrap bag and I made version two. I got it all stitched and ironed and then it sat for about 2 weeks while I worked on other things. When I sat down to work on it a few evenings ago, I had just a few leftover beads in a little cup on my worktable. Rather than go get out all of my boxes of beads, I decided to let my color choices be determined by those dregs from other projects. I tend to choose analogous colors (those that sit next to each other in a color wheel) so blue with green or blue with purple would be the first colors I would gravitate to. None of those in the leftovers, so I picked amber-brown (and I love it!) I pulled a few things off that just didn't work (sorry, blue pearls) and cursed myself for not switching out the pink thread in the sewing machine when I stitched it in the first place. A little edging of gold beads covers up most of the pink threads you can see.

I was actually so pleased with the way this turned out that I had started doing a tutorial about how I did it. I am planning to post this over the next couple of weeks (not in time for the November 15 deadline for whip up) so I decided to post it as a finished project and I will continue my tutorial from here.

Paisley Deconstructed Project

I thought it might be fun to teach you all a bit about this piece, so I have decided to break it down in to steps and show you how it was made. This is really an exercize for me to think about how I work, so that I can teach it better.



So here is step one. Making the paisley. I started with a little piece that I stitched on the sewing machine to use as a base.

As it says under #1 - Stack it. I chose batik fabric for the back, silk dupioni for the front and a little scrap of quilt batting inside. I like using quilt batting or felt as an inside "lining" because it gives you a nice something to stitch in to and then I don't have to go back and figure out a way to finish the edges - they are all stitched already. So stack up your fabrics. Use scraps that are just a bit bigger than you want your finished piece and leave them as rectangles to start. Be sure to put right sides of the fabric together (both should face inside).

#2 Stitch it. You can trace your shape on the lining fabric with a pencil. This will end up on the inside, so you don't have to be very neat. Stitch all the way around your shape with a nice small stitch. You can do this by hand too if you want to.

#3. Cut it out. Cut out around your stitching leaving a tiny little seam allowance - 1/8" or so. If you have a lot of curves, "clip them", by making little cuts through that seam allowance perpendicular (opposite) to your line of stitching. This helps the curves turn smoothly when you turn it right side out.

#4. Make a slit. Probably the trickiest step. You want to cut a nice 1" slit through just the backing fabric. Pull the layers apart and make a little clip. You can then use a seam ripper to slice a little slash through that fabric. This is the opening you will use to...

#5 Turn it right side out. Be patient and this will work great. Use a little crochet hook to help push out corners.

#6 Iron it. Use lots of steam and press everything smooth and flat. You won't be able to iron it later and trust me, it's worth doing this step.

Now you have a finished paisley or whatever ready for stitching. You can quickly stitch up the slash you used to turn the whole thing right side out. I usually do this later when I am sewing on a pin back or whatnot to the back side.

Class samples

I spent the weekend scrounging up and making a few new class samples for a series of classes I have been invited to teach in Idaho in April. I am thrilled that they have invited me. I wanted to expand my beginning embroidery class to include a little bit of bead embroidery too, so I made up these two samples to send off as photos for the class.

A Lovely weekend

Hooray. Image issues have been fixed. So now you can see this cute bunny, who I met at the booksigning for Disapproving Rabbits on Friday.

While I worked on Saturday (demos for an art educator conference), Andy took my puppy hiking and swimming! Brrr! Don't they know it's November?

Issues

My blogger is having image issues and Andy and I are trying to track it down. This post is a test.