Bouquet from the Heart of Japan

My second Japanese Embroidery piece, Bouquet from the Heart of Japan is finished. It wasn't a design I would have chosen to do but I have grown quite fond of it over the 9 months I have spent stitching it.

As it is a phase 1 design there were quite a few techniques I had already learned on Hanazume. and there were plenty of new techniques as well.

 

My next piece is Sensu and I'm looking forward to getting started on it.

Midnight Necklace

 

I made this necklace for my friend Steph's birthday. The design is Midnight from Japanese Beadwork with  Sonoko Nozue and it's understated elegance appealed to me. Also it was an opportunity to use chevron stitch. It uses 2mm Swarovski crystal rounds in jet and size 15 beads in gold and silver. The finished rope was very thin and it was a challenge to source small scale findings. It was a nice pattern to work and is one I might try again.

Two Bracelets

 

I bought 2 kits from Riverside Beads at the Farnborough Make-It Show earlier this year. The first  was a macramé bracelet using shamballa style beads. I have been curious about these bracelets for a while and wanted to try making one myself. It was very quick to make and my curiosity is now satisfied.

 

The second kit was beaded kumihimo bracelet. I had a failed attempt at beaded kumihimo last year. The problem was that the beads and cord I'd used were not a good size match and the result was very loose. The kit from Riverside Beads used size 8 beads and fine macramé cord and I was pleased with the result this time. The bracelet is actually a bit long and I doubt I'll ever wear it but it has got me started. Since finishing the bracelet I have made a necklace also using size 8 beads and for the next project I'm planning to try size 11 beads for a finer rope.

Majesty Necklace

 

This necklace was Mum's birthday pressie this year. The design is Majesty from Crystal Brilliance by Anna Elizabeth Draeger.  I used 4mm capri blue AB bicones and 3mm aquamarine AB bicones. This is the third time I have worked this design. The previous colour combinations were jet/crystal satin and amethyst AB/light amethyst.

 

Sometimes it can be challenging to get a well focused photo of a crystal beaded piece and this was one of those occasions. There is just too much reflection for the auto focus to work. I am not a skilled photographer so I rely on the auto focus on my point and shoot camera. Fortunately I was able to get some clearer shots when I zoomed in. Although I suspect the camera was zooming in on the background rather than on the necklace.

 



 I think my tension must be on the slack side because I find I need to run the thread through the beads twice and even then the beaded beads turn out a little squishy. The challenge with this is there are a couple of key size 11 beads where the thread can become a bit congested. It's important to have a strategy when working in a new thread so that these key beads are avoided, to keep the threads running through them to a minimum. I also found my links between the beaded beads don't have the round loop shape that the example in the book has. I'm not sure this is a bad thing because with the slacker tension there is more give in the links and I think this makes it a more comfortable necklace to wear.

Flowers of the Night

 

Our final workshop in Houston was "Flowers of the Night" - a thread painting workshop with Nancy Prince. This was another great class. Firstly because Nancy is an excellent teacher and secondly because the class room assistant went out of her way to be helpful. All classes at Houston have a representative from the sponsoring sewing machine manufacturer, Elna in this case,  to help out with setup of the machines. The lady from Elna was like a ninja - as soon as you reached a point in the class where the foot on your machine needed changing, she magically appeared and sorted you out. 

The class project was  the  the central panel  on my finished piece. It used a variety of threads -  #30 silk for the stems and leaves, #40 rayon for the details on the flower and #100 silk for the central shading on the flower. There is a variation of this class on the The Quilt Show website, which covers the single flower design.  I had enjoyed the class so much, that I carried on to do the 2 side panels to get more practise at the technique.

 



I stipple quilted the panels using #100 black silk because I wanted the quilting to blend into the background. This proved to quite a challenge but I came to conclusion that if I couldn't see the stitches while I was quilting it, then anyone looking at the quilt was unlikely to spot any mistakes I made!

Painting with Needles

 

 

Our third workshop at Houston was Painting with Needles - Possibilities of Free Motion Quilting with Noriko Endo. The workshop was not quite what I expecting. I didn't think the painting was actually painting on the quilt. Don't get me wrong -  this is something I had been thinking of trying. I did have a go at painting but the classroom environment was a little cramped and I wasn't altogether satisified with the results.

Also the class was more of a design class than I expected. Design is not my strength so this was a little outside my comfort zone. We were asked to pick a motif and scale it up and down. I chose a cherry blossom, mainly because my mind went blank and Steph had a template we could use. I decided to take the opoprtunity to practise different stipple designs in as many colours as I could think of. When I finished the piece off at home, I again used the satin cord binding technique we had learned in the Stupendous Stitching class.

Feathered Dreams

 

 

 



 For our second workshop at Houston we decided to do something completely different. Neither of us had done longarm quilting before but fancied having a go. We booked ourselves onto the Feathered Dreams half day workshop with Linda Taylor. One of the things I enjoy about the workshops at Houston is getting a chance to work on different sewing machines - using a longarm quilting machine took that to another level. The class was really well organised. A template for the design was already done for each student - this was the bright green stitching. The longarms had stitch regulators so we didn't need to worry about getting the speed right - we just needed to steer. We had spent the first hour of the class practising drawing feathers of different types. It was up to us which feathers we did. I finished the background quilting on my domestic machine at  home and bound it with an orange satin cord. It's not square and the the feathers are not as smooth as I'd like but it was a great way to start. In fact I would be quite happy to repeat the workshop in the future.