Portuguese Knotted Stem Stitch

I'm working on the second embroidery in my elements series, Earth, which is lots of strong lines on a handmade green and brown felt background.

I've been enjoying looking up stitches in my lovely new-to-me 1946 edition of Mary Thomas's Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches which I bought for £5 in Stratford over Easter. Discovering new stitches is very satisfying.

This evening, I picked out Portuguese Knotted Stem Stitch, which takes a bit of thinking, but is very attractive when worked in cotton Perle. It is the green line in the photo, with some square chain stitch above and knotted chain stitch below.

Forays into Felting

Inspired by my friend Margaret, who makes lovely felt, I got up this morning and decided to make some felt.

I wanted to make a piece with colours to represent air, that I could then embroider into, so I gathered some white, grey and pale blue wool and silk, and some white Angelina.

Using Jane Doe's felting tute from Craftster (http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=56350.0), I worked onto a cut open carrier bag, then a big sheet of bubblewrap, and wrapped it up in one of my bamboo place mats.

I started with a full layer of white, then one of grey-blue, then a mixed layer of white, the silks, Angelina and blues, then I added more wool over the silk and Angelina to make sure they'd incorporate fully.

I felted away, to the musical accompaniments of Lost Prophets*, turning my work, until I had a good solid felt, probably about 10-15 minutes of rolling. Shocking the felt was fun - I wrapped it up in the place mat and whacked it on the staircase, then jumped on it on the floor.

I've now got a lovely piece of felt drying, ready to start stitching into.

Some things to bear in mind next time:
* the silk incorporated well by itself, so next time I'll try it without wool on top, as it has become somewhat buried.
* the kitchen worktop was a good height to work onto, but a bit slippery for rolling the placemat onto, so I laid it onto a cork surface protector, which did the job.
* it worked best when the placemat was rolled away from me, so that the roll stayed together.

Now, I'm going to do a few more. I want to try green, red and purple ones.

Wheeeeee!

* We Are Godzilla, You Are Japan ( http://youtu.be/oxxpm3agRfA) is awesome felting music!

Little Treasures with Christine Plummer

I also attended Christine Plummer's Little Treasures workshop, which was a fun session experimenting with lovely coloured papers and tags (painted with brusho), organza, buttons and machine stitching.

While I was aware that you could stitch on paper, I'd not experimented with the technique, and so it was good for getting ideas flowing. I also think I could modify this technique to use with my 7 and 5 year old nieces.

Silk Shaded Mushroom with Katie Pirson

Still having a marvellous time here at the Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch show. This afternoon I was lucky enough to be able to take part in a silk shading workshop with Katie Pirson, who I happen to know from my teenage years as a lighting techie, but hadn't seen since.

The workshop was excellent, and Katie is a brilliant teacher, very understanding and gives marvellous explanations.

We had a kit containing lovely linen with a mushroom design drawn on it, Madeira thread and very clear instructions. Katie took us through building up the layers in soft shading, with the very important point that your stitches need to be longer than you think, to allow for later rows of stitches to be fully incorporated.

I'm really looking forward to finishing my mushroom -thanks Katie!

(the picture of the finished mushroom is Katie's one -I'm not that good/speedy)

Newspaper brooches with Kim Thittichai

Having a lovely time with mum at the Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch, Hobbycrafts and Sewing for Pleasure shows.
I went to a workshop with Kim Thittichai, where she taught us to layer painted newspaper, bondaweb and Mica flakes to make gorgeous pieces, which we backed onto heavyweight pelmet Vilene, and cut into shapes, ready to make brooches. Inexpensive supplies, a great outcome, and fun. Recipe for success!