Matching Pegs

Here is the completed stitchery for the lovely Chris, who is finishing up at Playgroup on Tuesday. We will miss you dearly Chris!

I am quite pleased with how this turned out.

I have spent quite a few hours this weekend trying to draw up this “Thank You Flower” in Illustrator. I scanned in my pencil drawing and then drew it again over the top, (on another layer) with the pencil tool. I was learning a lot as I went, but it was laborious compared with the time it took to draw the original, with a real pencil, in my sketchbook. Why was I bothering? Well eventually I would like to produce my own range of patterns for some of the things that I make, and I would like to have better line drawings than scratchy old pen or pencil drawings as my originals. This was good practice. Illustrator is such a powerful tool, and not at all intuitive. Trying to do things that you think would be simple can be quite convoluted - when I can work out which steps to take. Unfortunately I do not have a real life teacher, (Luke does know how to use some parts of Illustrator, but does not draw with it) just a book, but it is a good book, and better than nothing. I am probably going about things all the wrong way, but I have managed to replicate the flower completely, Hooray!

The 2 bigger kids have just gone off to the park with their father, while the littlest one is asleep, so I can write this in relative peace. Just before they left, this is what Amelia and Rory produced.

Unfortunately they found out why things that fall apart easily are often referred to as like a house of cards.

BTW the title for this post is “Finish” in Latin. Luke is slowly accumulating a Latin vocab. after reading several series on ancient Rome, and now reading books that proport to teach you the language. Good Luck baby.

This little dash of colour is brightening my kitchen windowsill at the moment.

We have had quite a few overcast days in the last week, along with a little bit of rain here and there (yay), so the colour is just what I need. The vase is actually a tea cup that my other half brought back from Japan when he was there with work 7 years ago.

The humble geranium is one of my favourite flowers. It’s so hardy (important in Melbourne). This particular variety really compliments the terracotta brick that our house is made of. You can just see the geraniums growing in the back yard, in the bottom right of the photo. The other nice thing about them is how easily they grow from cuttings, these came from my brother-in-law and sister-in-law’s garden.

Well here is a look at my latest WIP, and this one required the Crayons (Crayola’s “Twistables” in this case). It is for a wonderful lady who has run the playgroup we have attended for many years, she is finishing up next week.

I really love creating stitcheries that have colour applied before they are stitched, it gives them an extra ommph! I really love getting out the crayons or pencils, and trying to work out which colours best match the embroidery threads that I have.

I do most of my stitcheries onto calico, as I like the natural colour of it, and it compliments the colours that I tend to use. I usually iron on pellon (a light weight polyester wadding) onto the back, which gives the stitches a slight loft and hides the looses threads at the back from showing through to the front.

The “Twistables” are really just crayons that are thinner, but protected from breaking by the tubes they come in. I also use Derwent Artists pencils. The key to drawing on the fabric with them is to make sure the surface under the fabric is padded, slightly soft (like a pad of paper) and not a hard table top which will give you very defined lines rather than a softer applied colour. After colouring, heat set the colour with a hot dry iron, and a sheet of paper towel between the iron and the stitchery. This removes the wax in the crayon or pencil (the Artist Derwents I use are a little waxy). The colouring is fast enough to handle hanging on a wall, but not on an item that requires repeat laundering.

Here is a stitchery that I completed for my Uncle and Aunt in Toronto when I visited them last September. It is called “Flowers From Melbourne”.

This evening is one of those evenings where the light is a very strange colour, making eveything look otherworldly. The air is humid and still, and the sky is all different colours, some parts of it look almost green. It was impossible to catch on camera.

This photo looks like I have messed with the colour balance, but it is pretty true to life.

Yesterday found me in the lovely little town of Loch for their annual Quilt Hanging. It was a very warm humid day, so it was extremely pleasant to wander around slowly without my offspring. I was so caught up in the now, that I barely took any photos to capture the event (not necessarily a bad thing, but leaves this post looking a little bereft). Here is one shot that I quickly snapped of the Post Office.

The town really rises to the occasion, there were quilts on almost all of the shops and public buildings, and many eateries to refuel in. My mother, her friend Kaye and I had a lovely lunch is the colourfully named “Hard Loch Cafe”.

There was quite a good display of historic quilts in one of the halls, which was really interesting, but my best photo was of the ceiling decorations, which I thought were just beautiful.

Here is a detail of a quilt I was particularly taken with. According to the notes (that I no longer have) this was a first quilt by the maker, who confessed to having had a little help from her mother. My apologies to this quilter that I do not have her details to record here.

I really loved the colour combinations, such a delicate green.