Felt and velvet

This is my latest experiment in embroidery - handmade wool felt with silk, on a background of black velvet and painted bondaweb, with seed stitch used to couch silk throwsters waste, and a bit of beading. Lots more to do on it, but I'm very happy with it so far.

More webs and wheels

I've been working on my webs and wheels hoopla on and off for a couple of weeks, and I'm really happy with how it's turning out. I've experimented with quite a few variations, including size, spoke numbers,, thread type, and especially satisfyingly, working both webs and wheels with two strands simultaneously. The two colour wheels are lovely, and the webs look like flowers - I want to work one in reds to look like a rose.

I'm now stitching simple meandering lines of chain stitch over, under and around the wheels, to ground them a bit, and hopefully add to the organic feeling that I'm getting from the embroidery.

Guild are planning to pick a different stitch every month, and I think I'll work my pieces up as hooplas, so that I can display them in my house, and still have samplers to refer to for future work.

Webs and wheels

I started this little piece in our members session about web and wheel stitches yesterday, and I'm pleased with how it's going so far. I plan to shade it through brown into green, filling the hoop with big chunky wheels, scattering delicate ones in between them, and then snaking chain and wheatear stitches through the gaps.

Lovely threads

Last night at guild I purchased this beautiful bundle of embroidery threads. A former member had sadly passed away, and her daughters brought all her textile books and supplies down for us. I picked up the threads, and an Islamic pattern book, which looks to be very inspirational.

I'm using the threads to do a webs and wheels hoopla, which I started in the members session yesterday.

Felt for my Niecephews

Last night and the night before, I got the wool fibres out, and made more felt. I'm visiting my family this weekend, and my nieces love Sewing, so we're going to turn this felt into pictures for their walls.