Puzzle Challenges - What's for lunch?

Last year I took some online courses which I enjoyed.  This year I plan to take part in various challenges and will show my creations on my blog.

The first one I'm taking part in is the Quilt Challenge run by Three Creative Studios.  Every two months a theme is announced and everyone has two months to create a quilt based on that theme.  The first one is Puzzle and although it started on 1 January, I didn't find out about it until the beginning of February and decided to join in.  Quilting is not my main area of textiles but I have enjoyed creating my puzzle which I finished last night, three days before the deadline.

Here's a picutre of what I started with (all from my stash)

All this I planned to use to create a design in the manner of a sliding tile puzzle based on a photo I'd taken of my son's lunch three summers ago!  I just knew it had potential to be more than food for the stomach.

The background fabric was made by felting the merino fibres using my embellisher machine.  The ham is a blend of pink, blue and green merino and throwster's waste - not mould I hasten to add and I used the orange blend for the background.  Although there's only one cheese in the lunch I used several different packs of silk fibres so that each slice of cheese was slightly different.  Wensleydale curls have been transformed into ketchup!

Here's work in progress

After felting the fibres lightly I cut them up, rearranged them into the correct position, and embellished again using some fibres going across the joins underneath to hold the squares in place.  The silk paper was bonded onto the merino an then I attached the wensleydale curls with a herringbone stitch.

Next - the quilting.  I wanted to blend the squares together so I used the ketchup swirl from the original photo.  I planned to quilt with some french knots in silk thread but was worried the silk would wear thin to quickly so I embroidered them before adding the middle and bottom layers.  The running stitch and fly stitches go through all three layers providing the quilting aspect of the challenge.  More silk paper, this time in green/purple was added to the border and here is the finished piece.

I promise that if you cut my puzzle and slide the tiles like the child's toy you'd get back to a ham and cheese roll! 

I'm looking forward to the next theme which will be announced on 1 March and I promise I will blog as I go although only sneak peeks are allowed until the reveal week at the end of April.

Life after college

After four years at college studying for City and Guilds what do you do? None of us wanted to go into business immediately so our tutor suggested joining Kickstart which is the tutored development programme of the East Midlands Region of The Embroiderers' Guild. This year the inspiration has come from the Snibston Discovery Centre which is set on the site of a former colliery and includes an interactive museum and old colliery buildings - lots of variery for inspiration. I took over 200 photos from the different galleries, the playground and the colliery tour. Within the fashion gallery the corsets hanging from the ceiling caught my eye but I didn't want to discard everything else that I had already seen. While I was playing with designs in my head I came up with the idea of using my favourite photos as the design for the corset so I would have the corset shape but still utilise the other things Snibston has to offer. My piece is called Snibston Corsetry.

I started using different techniques to make the corsets but felt that there was no cohesion apart from the fact that they all came from Snibston. I was really pleased with my first corset which is taken from a piece of colliery machinery. I'd only had my embellisher for a few weeks and was having a play. I embellished small scraps of fabric onto a cotton base and incorporated some merino fibres and other yarns. I then added some hand embroidery. My sample has turned out to be the actual piece.

For my second corset of the plasma ball in the science gallery, I embellished a dark purple organza onto cotton and added a pale pink and green to finish the design I embroidered again by hand. However, I was not happy, I had been so pleased with my first corset and by comparison my second one looked so amateurish. I know I am not a professional embroiderer but there was such a stark contrast to the first that I was ashamed to put my name to it. I put it to one side whilst I decided what to do. After making the other corsets, I took the plunge and started again with purple and pink/red cottons, a multi-pink yarn for the cirle and green and black merino fibres, then added some hand embroidery. I was much happier this time round.

My third corset was originally tubes of material taken from my stash of fat quarters sewn onto the base fabric which were then embroidered. Although I liked it, a few weeks later I added a tiny amount of merino fibres and embellished them onto the corset to soften the look and to give all the corsets a similar look. The design for this one came from another old piece of colliery machinery.

As with the other corsets, I started the fourth one with a different technique. This time it was applique. The design for this one was taken from an old typewriter with white circles, embroidered around the edge, as the keys. Again when I was revamping the corsets, I embellished merino and other fleece fibres to soften the look and followed it by some hand stitching on the background.

The last design came from the children's interactive gallery where you had to put the cogs onto the correct pegs so that they would all turn when you turned the handle. The background is fleece embellished onto cotton and the cogs are commercial felt bonded on, then added some hand embroidery. However, once again it was too stark so I embellished some dark grey fleece fibres onto the black cogs.

Although I'd had ideas from the start for the background it wasn't until I'd finished all the corsets that the way I made it came to mind. My embellisher was used once more, with a base of calico followed by merino fibres in browns and black and words associated with Snibston on paper, covered by scrim.

I am happy with the end piece. It took a few months to complete as I put it to one side on several occasions whilst I worked out how to overcome the areas I wasn't happy with. It will shortly be on display at Snibston with the other pieces from all the Kickstart participants. Next year's inspiration will come from canals and I am sure I will take part again.

Taking inspiration from a child's painting

I received this thank you card from two sisters, the oldest of whom is 3.

Their mum is a fellow crafter who is into felting and I thought it would be nice to make something for the youngest's 2nd birthday using the card design. What could I make? I decided on making a bag that she could play with at home, putting small toys or a book in.







I love using my embellisher and had some red felt in my stash that I could use for the base. I've bought so much stuff over the years that I don't feel guilty not paying out more money for new supplies for presents as I have already paid for the stuff in my cupboards. Included in my stash are lots of fat quarters from my patchwork/quilting/applique period and so I chose reds, blues and bright greens. After cutting small pieces of the chosen fabrics I laid them onto the base felt, added a few merino felt fibres to soften the edges and then used my embellisher to 'mesh' them together.
To help keep them in place I used various automatic stitches on my sewing machine in matching colours, sewing in lines. Next I freemachined circles and lines in an off-white to emulate the wax resist lines in the original picture.






Using some more red felt as a lining and for the handle I made the piece into a bag. Aware that this bag is for a child under 3 I was concerned that it may be possible to pick at the merino fibres and pull some off so I coated the bag with some acrylic wax which glued them in place and also it also makes the bag more durable. I was really chuffed with how the bag turned out and wondered if it was too good to give a two-year old. Possibly one of the youngest children to have a designer bag!