On my desk this week...

I've not been doing lots of crafting, as I made a load of things on holiday, of that, more later.

What I have been making is stop motion animation videos, inspired by a complicated train of thought which led me to the Photojojo stop motion tutorial.

My first video was this little one with the conkers and pebbles from my nice little shelf:


Conkers And Pebbles from Heather on Vimeo.

I like this one, I think I got the light right, but I learned that I need to make sure that the camera is tight on to the tripod.

This is my second video - I need to make a found object colour wheel for my art course, and I decided it'd be a good idea to animate it!


Buttons from Heather on Vimeo.

I like it, but the lighting in it is inconsistent, and I need much brighter lights, both for future videos, and for general crafting - both my craft lights are not working, so I've borrowed my bedside lamp.

Spot the point where I got the colour wheel a bit wrong!

Then, when I was editing holiday pics this morning, I discovered that I had enough pics of me jumping waves on Criccieth beach to make a tiny vid :)


Jumping in the Waves at Criccieth Beach from Heather on Vimeo.

Hoorah for lots of pictures!

More desk posts here!

On My Desk This Week...

This week I've been practicing free motion machine quilting, ready to do Chloe's quilt. I started by practicing on a couple of sandwiches made from left over cotton fabric from previous projects. I've also got a little blanket on the go for Thomas which started as a practice for digitising, so I've quilted that:

My quilting is slowly getting better - hopefully you can see in the bottom 3 images how my attempt at stippling is getting closer together, with less loops. I think it'll take a lot more before I'm confident.

Here are the sites I've found very helpful:

• Sew Inspired - Free Motion Machine Quilting Tutorial
  
• Anyone Can Quilt - Machine Quilting 101
  
• Patsy Thompson Designs - lots of ideas for quilting designs, often beyond my current skill level, but nice to aspire to!
• Dioramarama - Longarm quilting - I don't have a longarm, but some nice examples of patterns
  
• Diane Gaudynski - good close up stippling picture
  
• Crazy Mom Quilts - Free Motion Quilting
  
• Quiltmaker - loads of good tips

I thought I'd also show you my favourite shelf in my study:
On it I have a lot of lovely old books (affectionately termed "Collage fodder") and gorgeous old OS maps - I love looking over them at the place names and contour lines (which my attempt at echo quilting, above, reminds me of).

In front of the books, I have my wind up 'alarm clock' which plays "London Bridge is Falling Down", two tiny conkers, two lovely pebbles smoothed by the sea which I picked up at Black Rock Sands, and a little wobbly headed turtle which always makes me smile.

I had hoped to post some pictures of the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, as I swapped my desk for a walk round with the camera this lunch time, but I'm still editing the pics and it is getting late!

More desk posts here.