This little snow flake wants to take you on a very brief walk in the forest.
There we are back in my office. Here is a sneak peak of some of the new stones I have been crocheting in the evenings. Enjoy your day.
The large hand-felted stone covered in lace was inspired by the snow of the moss last friday :)
Here is the little tutorial I promised yesterday inspired by the fresh fallen snow on the deep dark brown earth. It can be made in any color and with a simpler design. It could really be adapted to any thing you or your children might be inspired to stitch onto felt.
Materials : box board, template for circles, pencil, scissors, felt, embroidery thread, needles and a length of wool, ribbon or trim.
Step 1 : Trace some circles onto your box board. I used a small espresso shot glass but a small glass would be fine. The fern snow globe one was started in my office and I used my stethoscope as a template:)
Step 2: Cut out the circles.
Step 3: Using your cardboard circles cut out two felt circles for each pendant. Cut the felt about 1/8 th of a inch wider than the cardboard. You will understand why later.
Step 4: You are ready to embroider your snowflake or other pattern onto one of the felt circles. My design uses three simple stitches : outline stitch, chain stitch and the fly stitch. Hint when you are using the fly stitch start at the periphery and work your way inward. A great on-line source of stitch tutorials can be found here.
Step 5: Now turn it over, place the cardboard circle in the center and cover with the second piece of felt.
Step 6: Now you are ready to do a blanket stitch all around the edge starting just to the right of the center top of your pendant. Stop about 1/2 " from completing the circle.
Step 7: Take a length of yarn, trim or ribbon at least 2 feet long and tie the ends. Place this knot behind the cardboard at the opening.
Step 8: Now continue the blanket stitch catching the wool as you stitch.
Step 9: Secure the end of the embroidery thread and try it on.
Hint: This could easily become a pendant by adding a pin to the back. It would look lovely on a hat or head band or even attached to a hair clip or pony tail holder.
That of course is the first snow fall version of bench monday. I adore folkloric woolens.
On the last post I hinted about a first snow inspired little hand sewing project. I was thinking about how the first snow really rekindles my dwindling inspiration reserves. At the end of autumn , especially when the calendar turns to November, the time changes and the number of daylight hours I am exposed to significantly diminishes, I find myself a little listless. I often feel like curling up with the kitties and taking naps. When I experience the first snow it revives me, unfurls me and gives me the much needed energy to create.
This is how I turned this experience into a small hand sewn felt medallion. It is a resurrection fern snow globe. On one side you see the fern ( me ) curled up with the snow lying on the ground. Then you only need hold it in your hand and shake it and like magic with the snow floating everywhere the fern ( me ) unfurls and awakens.
The snow melted the next day and we experienced almost summer temperatures on the weekend. The snow may be gone but the inspiration isn't. I already completed my next snow inspired pendant. I love the white snow against the dark brown earth. This will be a simple little tutorial for young and old to sew up some small gifts for special friends. The first snow always means the beginning of christmas gift making in my house. I hope to update my list of tutorials soon for easy access.
Have a great start to your week. Remember if you are longing for snow all you need are a needle and some snow white thread and then you will be ready to sew along.
I finished an idea that has been hopping around in my mind for a while now. I wanted to combine some of my favorite things : crocheted lace, embroidery, linen, felt, lockets into something wearable. My eldest daughter said she saw a wild black bunny which is a very rare sighting. The wild rabbits are brown in this region.
The chain is nice and long so I think it will look really lovely worn. I will attempt to get a picture on a model today but for now all the little bunnies in the house are still asleep. I will leave with this beautiful image from just outside my favorite morning coffee shop.
It is late when I am writing this post. I just got back from the swell season concert in Toronto which was well , fantastic. I love how the sweetness and raw energetic vocals and instrumentals came together seamlessly. Glen work a typical Canadian toque at the beginning of the concert that he said someone on the street gave him. You can see the large green pom pom in this dim photograph.
All I have to show you are a few bits and pieces of things I am working on little by little in the tiny cracks of spare time I have these days. These were photographed in the beautiful bright sunshine this morning before work.
Making those little droplet shaped crocheted bits is becoming a little addictive.
Wish me luck with a very long day ahead of me on the H1N1 front lines.
If you have ever seen one of my crochet covered stones you would see that the cover is crocheted very tightly to the stone. So tight that it is not removable. I almost only use thrift store purchased vintage crochet or tatting threads and sometimes these are not the strongest threads in the world. I had just finished making a beautiful, very fine thread cover for a stone and was pulling very hard on the threads to make them as snug as possible and for the first time in my stone covering career the material tore, leaving a very large hole in the pattern. Rather than toss it into the compost, I decided to wet felt a cover on the stone and then open it up ever so slightly to reveal the lace pattern, hopefully in the none ripped area, beneath. This is very similar to how I made my matryoshka stones last year.
I love these blues and off whites.
Quite the contrast to the continued explosion of color in the forest.
The fields are very muted, golden and beautiful on my drives to and from work. Although I wish I could walk or use public transit to get to my office there is definitely some wonderful scenery to enjoy every day.
I do so hope your weekend glows.
I wanted to show you the last of the small hand sewing and crochet projects that I made last weekend. This one is my personal favorite. It started off as a flower that I was planning to turn into a brooch but then I was compelled to turn it into a jelly fish with an abundance of beautiful tentacles , thus the name of the post
Even though we are on to the 17th day in a row without rain it seems that the mushroom population is unaffected by this temporary drought. In a matter of days it seems that fungi, especially the gilled mushrooms varieties have popped up everywhere along my favorite forest paths. Some of them literally have grown to very large sizes almost overnight. Mushrooms are very capable of rapid growth because they do not depend of cell division ( very energy consuming) to increase the size of their fruiting bodies. They have exactly the same number of cells whether they are tiny or huge. They grow only by expansion of the size of their cells by the absorption of water. They shrink and involute at the end of their life by dehydration.
I am completely smitten with gills, folds and ripples. I made a little mushroom out of natural linen with the hint of gills and a soft, plant dyed felt cap. It accompanied me of an early morning, before my work day walk in the forest. I could actually see my breath this morning and I think the temperature was about 7 degrees. I am savoring every last day of sunshine and warmth while at the same time really feeling excitement seeing the signs of autumn. Winter is not far off at all.
I found a large piece of vintage linen that had large colorful letters embroidered to form a german phrase that I couldn't manage to translate. I bought it for next to nothing because it was badly stained and had a few holes in it. I must have been in a wanting to take a break from hand sewing and I was also in a back to school mood. I found a large piece of felt and enlisted the help of my sewing machine to sew a felt back onto the lines of german words. I cut out the letters and arranged them on the porch table in alphabet order. I am only missing p,q,x and y. I have extra fabric so I could embroider these one day if I find I can't live without them. Some of the letters are very flamboyant and a little difficult to decipher but the array of colors and shapes make them great fun to spell with. At first we were just having fun laying them out on the table but later I came up with the idea of a felt board in a quilting hoop. The felt backing on the letters now made complete sense.
