Time to blog again and an update as to what I have been doing recently.
A friend of mine dropped by with a big bag of furnishing samples. These are the ones you see in the big books in furniture shops.
I don't ever say no to a free-bee and after she had left I began to wade through the pile putting them into sizes, colours etc. As I was doing this the design bells began to ring and I could see bags and books and folders and many of the pieces would be very good for the backing of art quilts so I doubt that any will go to waste.
The first piece was a bag using a piece of striped red fabric. I covered it with a silver scrolled sheer fabric over angelina fibres and used the design on the sheer to make bag tags.
Onto the next piece.
I used the back of the fabric for this piece as I liked the design better on the back than the front. I machine couched yarns down the stripes and picked out the three leaf trefoil and digitised it to stitch out on the machine many times in two different sizes. Twisted and wrapped yarns were stitched around the edges and to make the fastener with two more trefoils on the ends.
The next piece of fabric became a shoulder bag. I picked out the printed border design and embellished it with fancy yarns, threads and beads. I used a matching knitting yarn to plait a long handle.
Using a similar fabric but in different colours I made another shoulder bag.
The next piece of fabric suggested a folder using the diamond design on the fabric. I picked out this diamond design and created an embossed shim accent for the centre. I also used alcohol ink pens to colour the shim. I used transfer foils to pick out the flowers in alternate diamonds and sequins for the remainder with hand stitched daisies. Gold thread and dyed chenille yarn was machine couched along all the diagonal lines. I sprayed turquoise card with Starburst stains and glued it to the inside to form the lining then machine couched more chenille yarn around the edges. I used the same yarn machine wrapped to create the tie.
A similar piece of fabric, but in reds ,was made into another folder. Again I used transfer foil on the little flowers and black beads and hand stitched red daises. Black and red yarns were couched along the diagonals and around the edges and to make the tie. This time I used four red glass jewels for the central motif. They were stitched in place using needle weaving. if you look closely you can see me taking the photograph. I forgot to put the polorising filter onto the lens....
The final piece for this post is this little book. The round medallion was a paper caste over an old brooch painted and rubbed with gilding wax. I made the pages of the book by painting some pages from a book and stamping them and the remaining pages were folded to make pockets. I stamped these too. They were all machine stitched down the spine of the lining fabric. The front and lining were stitched together with card inserted inside to stiffen.
I couched gold ribbon and fancy threads down the spine. Gold elastic was used to fasten the book closed.
Finally, at last, I have plucked up the courage to install the continuous feed ink system onto my A3 printer. I have had this system for two years being too apprehensive to install it. So, I engaged the help of my daughter and together we managed it. There were a couple of air locks in the lines but eventually it all installed and works - thank goodness. All I need to do now is to buy some bottles of ink and keep the system topped up which won't be for some time yet as there is a lot of ink in the system bottles. It works fine and I have tested it by printing out my stone queen design for an art quilt. It has been sponged with some metallic paints and is now ready to free machine quilt. It will probably be in the next post.
The world figure skating championships are on at the moment so I will be watching them for the next few days while I am working on some of my digital imaging on the computer. It is one job I can do while keeping one eye on the TV.
Until the next posting - cheers everyone
