Beaded Poppy

I picked up the kit for this beaded poppy brooch from  The Bead Merchant at the Knitting and Stitching Show in October last year, thinking I would be able to finish it before Remembrance Day. I started the first petal a couple of days later and pretty soon realised it would more likely be ready for Remembrance Day this year. This one has gone to my Mum. I have enough beads left  to make another one but I suspect I won't ever get round to it.

Heartsease and Eglantine Pinwheel

I started this pinwheel at a workshop with Susan O'Connor in London in February 2011. The design is from Susan's book, Flowers for Elizabeth, which is primarily a pattern for a wool embroidered blanket. Included are scaled down designs, which can be stitched with 1 strand of Au Ver a Soie, which is how this design is done. It was a sweet design to stitch and I am tempted to try some of the other designs in the book. The book is published by Country Bumpkin, so naturally it is beautiful to look at with very clear instructions.

Calm Flow - finished

And now a picture of Calm Flow, which I made up in Februrary. It needed to come off the frame because I was starting Hanazume, my Phase 1 Japanese Embroidery piece at the beginning of March. The fabric it was stitched on had a distinct tendency to fray so I was glad I had experience from making up the Eyeglass Case. It was a nice feeling to get it out of the way - I'm a Completer/Finisher when time permits!

Eyeglass case - finished

The eyeglass case was actually made up at the end of last year. In the end, I found some burgundy cotton velvet which was a reasonable colour match.  I was keen to get it done because I was close to finishing Calm Flow and I didn't want to have a queue of pieces waiting to be made up - I have enough UFOs/WIPs. To persuade myself to get on with it, I decided to do just one construction step each evening and after a week it was done. I was dreading cutting around the beadwork, especially the notches around the corners but by thinking "Tonight I'm just going to do xxx and no more", I got over the fear.

Calm Flow

One year after starting, I finished my Japanese Bead Embroidery Phase 2 piece, Calm Flow. The majority of this piece is black or silver tri-cut beads strung on black thread, couched down with black thread. I found this a very calming technique - forgive the pun. The weekend after I finished Calm Flow, while shoe shopping for my daughter, Jen, I spotted a beaded bag with the same flowing design for £50. On the shop bag, the silver beads were bugles and and the black beads were regular seed beads rather than the tricuts but the it had the same flowing lines. Initially I was mortified and it made me think about the time I had spent doing it. But that is the point. While I was embroidering Calm Flow, I was in my quiet space, doing what I wanted to do. Working full-time with 2 school age daughters, there are a lot of things that lay claim on my time and energy. The time I get to spend on my hobbies is my treat to myself.

Small to Tall

This time it's another quilting project -a height chart for Hayden. The design is "Small To Tall" by Kids Quilts. Jen and Graeme chose the pattern at the Festical of Quilts last year. The measuring tape should have been hand embroidered but I decided it would be easier to digitize an embroidery design for the sewing machine. It was pretty accurate when I embroidered the strip but despite the stabilizer on the back of the fabric, it still managed to stretch when I sewed it to the inner border. I think it's about 2cm out overall. The 2" squares of fabric in the border were from the remainders of a "Dinosaur Uproar"jelly roll I used to make a quilt for Christopher. You don't really see the dinosaurs in the squares - there's just the odd hint of a tail. There's also some snakes in some of the squares, from the Silly Safari fabric I'd used on the back of Christopher's quilt. After quilting around the applique, I decided the background needed some wandering stems with leaves . So I finally managed to put all those free motion quilting classes to good use.

Eyeglass Case

This time it's my Japanese Bead Embroidery Phase I piece



I started it in September 2009 and added the last bead in January this year. It's waiting to be made into an eyeglass case, so technically it's not finished yet. I was waiting for warmer weather to finish it because the back needs to be sprayed with water and then left to dry. My next excuse was that I didn't like the maroon felt that came with kit and is intended to be used as the lining. That excuse has failed now because I've found some faux suede that is the right colour. Better get on and finish it!